The latest Microsoft-related news has been more about Seinfeld, Vista, and Windows 7 than anything else.  Steve Ballmer recently made some public comments on another subject, though, and it turns out that the CEO remains as committed as ever to competing with Google in search.

Microsoft executives said the company does not plan to make a slew of Internet acquisitions since it ended its bid for Yahoo.

There has been speculation that Microsoft would possibly buy Facebook, which it has a small stake in or Time Warner’s AOL along with a number of other companies.

Microsoft claims it is through with its acquisition plans of Yahoo according to Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie.

Recounting the recent Microsoft-Yahoo stuff would be a waste of space; we all know what happened and who was involved.  One name rarely came up, though, and in case anyone was wondering what Bill Gates thought about the outcome, well . . . he doesn’t seem to have lost sleep over it.

Ben Franklin might not have agreed, but after Microsoft withdrew its offer, the drop in Yahoo’s stock became as certain as death and taxes.  The only surprise was that, after a full day of trading, the drop was more of a dip than a plunge.

Microsoft announced it will not be going forward with its plan to buy Yahoo, after it was clear the two sides could not agree on a price, and Steve Ballmer elected not to risk his entire career on the deal.

Here are some links about the news:

As Microsoft weighs its acquisition options with Yahoo, it’s interesting that its board is pretty much leaving the decision to CEO Steve Ballmer. Could it be that Ballmer’s next move be the one that decides his future at Microsoft?

Google has expressed concern over the possible Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo.

Can you picture a world without Yahoo?  Well, for your imagination’s sake, let’s hope so.  This scenario shouldn’t become a reality, however, since in the event of an acquisition by Microsoft, the Yahoo name will continue to exist.

How much do you trust Wikipedia?  Because, for whatever it’s worth, Steve Ballmer briefly became "Rob Dunbar’s Dad" on the user-edited encyclopedia.

Microsoft is making a bid to acquire Yahoo for a record setting $44.6 billion. At $31 per share, Microsoft’s bid represents a 62 percent premium over Yahoo’s current stock value. There is speculation that Yahoo could try to get Microsoft to pay as much as $35 per share.

There have been rumors about such a deal since late 2006. One obstacle in Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo could have been former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel who was rumored to be strongly opposed to being purchased by Microsoft.

There have been days, weeks, and months where it seemed like Google was on a never-ending acquisition spree.  Now Microsoft seems to have picked up on idea; Steve Ballmer has announced that his corporation will acquire 20 companies per year for the next five years.

It’s time to put the Yahoo or Facebook acquisition deals from Microsoft to rest, as Steve Ballmer disclosed a less broad scope for what the company buys.

In my years of retail work, I’ve encountered tough guys, wicked old ladies, and thousands of screaming children.  Yet the scariest creatures are often the mothers of those children, and Steve Ballmer may have seen a hint of that when one woman confronted him over Windows Vista.

Ask an average guy on the street, and, assuming he’s not a conspiracy theorist, he’ll tell you that the only people who read an email are listed in the “to” and “from” address boxes.  But Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has stated that information sent through Gmail is read by Google, too.

How much money would you put towards a fad?  The price of a pair of jeans?  The cost of a new kitchen counter?  Because Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has used a form of the word “fad” in connection with Facebook, and people are wondering what this signifies for the social network’s future.

The favorite of Googlite war cry formats has been to pair up a Microsoft product with the word "killer": Windows-killer; Office-killer; [Insert product here]-killer. Google’s free, advertising-based software-as-a-service model is what has made Google, in theory at least, Microsoft’s most intense new challenger.

Well, he didn’t put it exactly like that, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer didn’t pull any punches in regard to Google during an appearance in front of 450 Stanford University business and engineering students yesterday. In addition to calling Google’s employee growth-rate "insane," and its non-search products "cute," Ballmer implied Google was a one-trick pony.

(And we’ll have some class and not mention the shellacking Stanford took in the NCAA tournament by Louisville. Oops, guess we just kind of did.)

Advocates for Linux want Microsoft and their CEO, Steve Ballmer, to dispense with the threats and show which code in the Linux world infringes on Microsoft’s property.

Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system will support RSS, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer thinks RSS feeds will grow in importance to Internet users.