Steve Ballmer, speaking to Microsoft employees today, said the company will announce its next step in its Yahoo acquisition bid "in relatively short order." But in those comments and a Wall Street Journal interview, Microsoft's CEO didn't indicate clearly which way the company is leaning.

"With the right circumstances it'll happen," Ballmer told the Journal, according to the story. "Without the right circumstances it won't happen."

Is this all a prelude to Microsoft walking away from the offer? The Journal reported that Ballmer "expressed optimism about Microsoft's options if it decides not to pursue its Yahoo bid." The paper observed that "his remarks to employees and in the interview appear to be an effort to build a case for backing away from the deal."

Ballmer's comments to employees were reported earlier by Silicon Alley Insider. I independently confirmed and clarified some of them. Excerpts:

"I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth to me, exactly. I won't go a dime above, and I will go to what I think it's worth if that gets the deal done.

"Why buy Yahoo!? Yahoo! is a way to accelerate some of the other goals. It gets us scale of advertisers, it gets us search query scale more quickly. We've said very clearly that our goal would be to keep all the engineers in both places, it helps get us scale where in some of the areas of search and advertising where frankly we've got more things than we want to do than we can get to today. So, it helps with scale."

"Yahoo! is not a strategy; it's a part of a strategy. It helps with some of the elements of speed and scale and acceleration in the strategy that we're on."