Ballmer disses Oracle's decision to buy Sun

Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has derided Oracle’s decision to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4bn.

"I have no idea why a software company would buy a hardware company. We don't want to buy any hardware companies," Ballmer told the American Chamber of Commerce in Cairo, Egypt today, reports Reuters.

He also reiterated that Microsoft had no plans to buy lumbering internet giant Yahoo!, despite the fact that Ballmer recently met with the company’s CEO Carol Bartz.

However, he insisted that Redmond would continue trying to claw market share in the web search game away from internet kingpin Google.

"You'll see us innovating in search," he said.

Ballmer is currently on something of an international relations mission. On Tuesday he visited Moscow, where he confirmed Microsoft would invest 10 billion rubles ($300m) in Russian software projects over the next three years.

"The economy is challenging - our company is certainly not immune to the challenge,” he said yesterday, according to the Moscow Times.

“But even while we cut in some areas, we are going to invest in other areas. And I think Russia has one of the brightest futures both as a market and as a source of new technology development." ®