"Microsoft never acquired Yahoo so you can't say it was a failed acquisition for that."
Failed, as in "failed to acquire".
That's like saying North Korea wasn't eliminated from the World Cup -- but instead they were unable to score enough goals to allow them to place. It's semantics. Microsoft went through a huge, year-long back and forth to attempt to acquire Yahoo, and the CEO, Jerry Yang, blocked them at every turn. Any way you look at it they failed to acquire the company, period.
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