Ballmer’s drive was key element in Yahoo bid

updated 3:39 p.m. ET May 4, 2008

REDMOND, Wash. - As Yahoo continued to resist Microsoft's $42 billion takeover offer, a key question was just how far Microsoft's excitable CEO, Steve Ballmer, was willing to go in hopes of defeating online advertising and search leader Google.

For now, it seems Ballmer has kept his passionate side in check in choosing to walk away from a deal over the weekend rather than raise the bid amount or launch a hostile takeover.

But some see Microsoft Corp.'s decision as simply one more step in the dance and expect Ballmer to reprise his pursuit later this year if Yahoo Inc. is unable to turn around its business.

If the CEO commandeers Microsoft's coffers for another run at Yahoo, he could face increased pressure to justify the move: Is he motivated by fear, or competitive zeal? Or is chasing Yahoo a product of rational calculation?

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

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Ballmer has exhibited both tendencies in nearly 30 years at Microsoft.

A marketing guru in a company full of software programmers, Ballmer is known as an aggressive Microsoft partisan, who once allegedly screamed that he would "(expletive) kill Google."

He has strained his vocal cords exhorting Microsoft employees at sales meetings. A preposterous dance he did in front of one audience earned him the lasting nickname Monkey Boy. Video of it is widely available on the user-contribution site YouTube — owned by Google Inc.

"I'm well known not to be the world's best negotiator," Ballmer told a tech conference this year after the Yahoo deal was first put on the table.

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Yet behind his jovial presence and booming voice, Ballmer reveals a deep understanding of technology and a sharp mind. Ballmer is pragmatic and realistic even if animated. At Harvard University, where he met Bill Gates in the early 1970s, he beat Microsoft's founder on a national math test.

Rob Horwitz, chief executive of the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, landed a job at Microsoft in the mid-1980s after interviewing with Ballmer, whom Horwitz described as intense but likable, and blessed with an uncanny memory for people.

Once, when Horwitz was one of about 650 employees in the company, Ballmer greeted him by name and told him he'd hit Horwitz's car in the parking lot a month earlier. Horwitz's old beater was undamaged, but Ballmer told him he had to shell out $1,500 to get his own car repaired.

Lots of things about Ballmer, 52, belie his outsized reputation and his outsized wealth of $15 billion, which makes him America's 16th-richest person, according to Forbes magazine.

He has lived with his family in the same suburban house for years. Like many CEOs, he has 13-hour days glad-handling customers. But unlike many of his workaholic counterparts, he gets back home often and boasts he gets seven or eight hours of sleep a night.

Ballmer grew up in the Detroit area, where his father was a manager at Ford Motor Co. At Harvard, where he was equipment manager for the football team, Ballmer lived in the same residence hall as Gates, who famously dropped out to launch Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen.

After Ballmer graduated with a degree in mathematics and economics, he got his first job at Procter & Gamble Co., handling marketing for Duncan Hines' Moist & Easy cake mix. His cubicle mate was Jeffrey Immelt, today's CEO of General Electric Co.

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