Yahoo is going to have to twist in the wind a little longer.

Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer offered no refuge for embattled Yahoo boss Jerry Yang on Friday morning, ignoring Yang's open invitation for Microsoft to rebid on the company.

"We have moved on," Ballmer said at a conference in Sydney, Australia, one day after Yang said he was open to a Microsoft buyout. "We're not interested in going back and relooking at an acquisition."

But he couldn't resist mocking Yahoo's failed search-ad partnership with Google, which collapsed this week.

"I'm sure there are still opportunities for some kind of partnership around search," Ballmer said, according to Bloomberg News. Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo's search business but doesn't want to pay for the rest of the company, even at this reduced valuation.

Yang's newfound openness to a Microsoft deal is a direct consequence of the collapse of Yahoo's closely watched search deal with Google.

The Yahoo-Google search deal represented Yahoo's escape hatch from Microsoft's hostile-buyout attempt. But now that the Yahoo-Google deal has fallen apart, Yahoo is defenseless.

Yang said so much when he put the company up for sale this week. "The best for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," Yang said at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. "I don't think that is a bad idea at all."

It was a shocking admission from Yahoo's founder, who had plegded that Yahoo wound remain independent. But Ballmer wasn't buying. And if there's one thing we know about Ballmer, Microsoft's pugnacious C.E.O., it's that he never forgets.