Ballmer on not buying Yahoo: 'Sometimes you're lucky'

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, never one to hold back his feelings, today told the audience at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that he was grateful he failed to buy Yahoo for $44 billion back in 2008.

"Sometimes you are lucky," he said in an interview with John Battelle, whose Federated Media puts on the conference. "Ask any CEO who might have bought something before the market crashed (in 2008)... Hallelujah! Putting everything else aside, the market fell apart.... Sometimes you're lucky."

Ballmer did say, however, that Yahoo has value and that he was glad that the Yahoo search deal happened, helping Bing grow its market share in fight with Google. He also told the audience to try Bing and compare it to Google.