Ballmer spotlights R&D at Microsoft shareholder meeting

ENT News | at | by Mike

Microsoft held its Shareholder meeting for 2008 on Wednesday, and shareholders approved all nine board-member nominees on the proxy slate. Shareholders also approved two executive compensation measures, ratified Deloitte & Touche as Microsoft's independent auditor and defeated three shareholder-initiated proposals.

In response to a question, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer nixed the idea that Microsoft is planning to acquire Yahoo. Ballmer said Microsoft was "done with all of these [acquisition] discussions with Yahoo." However, he added that Microsoft is "very open" to doing some sort of search collaboration deal with the company.