"To this day I would say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," Yang said during a keynote appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Asked by conference chair John Battelle whether Yahoo's asking price would be in the range it was in May, Yang said: "Oh no. At the right price, whatever the price is."

If those sound like desperate words, well, these are desperate times for Yahoo. It's embarking on its second round of layoffs of the year, this time looking to slash 10 percent of its staff. It is playing catch up in the social media revolution, belatedly trying to adapt its sites and services to be more like Facebook and MySpace.

A year ago its stock price closed at close to $27 per share: today it closed below $14 per share, no doubt making that final offer from Microsoft of $33 per share a very attractive one in hindsight.

Yet, for three months between February and May, Ballmer pursued Yahoo and got rebuffed, while Yang, in the eyes of his critics, seemingly tried to do his best to repel Microsoft.