Microsoft BOSS Steve Ballmer feels extremely lucky that his company’s $44 billion offer for Yahoo last 2008 does not ever materialized.

“Sometimes you’re lucky, ” he stated having a giggle at Web 2. 0 Summit, answering a question from meeting co-chair John Battelle.

Attentive not to be rude to his search market companion, Ballmer put his remark in context, indicating that any CEO would certainly feel thankful for not making a significant purchase in the months before the worldwide economic failure which started in the 2nd half of ’08.

“We would have been closing [the Yahoo deal right after] Lehman Brothers, ” Ballmer stated, talking about the historical failure of one of the biggest financial institutions in the U. S. A. Microsoft made its offer for Yahoo in early 2008 and withdrew it a few months after.

Needless to say, Yahoo has carried on to have difficulty since 2008, when Microsoft made its purchase bid, and this year Yahoo’s fortunes took a more sharp recession. Its CEO Carol Bartz was dismissed previous month, and this few days the company declared that CTO Raymie Stata has been replaced, as the company battles to emerge from years-long monetary and technology funk.

Despite the fact that Ballmer stated that “there are a lot of great things about Yahoo” and that he is quite pleased with Yahoo as a search companion, it is obvious that Yahoo would be worth a lot less than what MS proposed for it in ’08.

Ballmer additionally indicated fulfillment with the improvement of Microsoft’s Bing internet search engine during the past 3 years both with regards to usage and of technological enhancement in areas like result position and relevance, in addition to interface.

Even though Google continues to be superior in search, Bing’s improvement “sets the stage for reinventing the category, ” Ballmer mentioned, showing that Microsoft harbors expects of sooner or later making a run at Google’s authority standing.