Microsoft dismissed speculation it might still be interested in a takeover of Internet firm Yahoo after Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang said the Internet company is willing to sell "We made an offer, we made another offer ... We moved on," Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer told a business luncheon in Sydney on Friday, Bloomberg reported today. Balmer was asked for the firm's plans after a partnership between Yahoo and Google fell through this week.

"We tried at one point to do a partnership around search ... and that didn't work either, and we moved on and they moved on. We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don't know why they would be either, frankly," Ballmer said.

He added that he thought there were still opportunities for some kind of partnership around search.

Microsoft abandoned an unsolicited $47.5 billion bid for Yahoo in May.

In June, Google and Yahoo announced their planned partnership, which Yahoo had struck as a way of fending off Microsoft.

The two delayed implementation to allow the Justice Department to review it but Google later said it pulled out of the deal rather than face a protracted legal fight after regulators had concerns.

Yang told the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday that he believed a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo was still the best option for Microsoft.

Besides a deal with Microsoft, Yahoo's other option is to pursue an acquisition of Time Warner's AOL.