Yesterday, Yahoo and Microsoft finally announced the big deal that would transform their “search platforms into a market competitor.” Microsoft will power Yahoo Search, while Yahoo gets a revenue sharing agreement. How did Wall Street react? While Microsoft investors and shareholders had a mildly positive reaction to the deal, Yahoo shares sunk. By billions of dollars.

We were hoping that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would have something interesting to say about the market’s reaction to the search deal. And once again, he does not fail us.

At a meeting with industry analysts this morning, Microsoft’s leader described the negative reaction of Yahoo investors to the deal with three words:

“Nobody gets it.”