People walk past Yahoo! offices in Santa Monica, California, May 19, 2008.

LOS ANGELES, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Microsoft intensified its recruitment campaign on Saturday to woo Yahoo's technical talent as turmoil in Yahoo intensified with a stream of new reports about departing executives.

"There is just great search talent here," said Doug Free, a Microsoft spokesman, who noted that the company has been expanding in the Silicon Valley for years.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer may have given up on the idea of acquiring all of Yahoo, but he still wants Yahoo's technical talent and is fighting hard to get it, sources at Microsoft said.

Free said Microsoft currently controls about 1 million square feet of office space in the San Francisco Bay Area. He said Microsoft plans to keep adding both square feet and employees. Nearly 2,000 people work for Microsoft in Silicon Valley.

Acquiring Yahoo would have given Microsoft about 5,000 engineers and about 2 million square feet in additional Bay Area real estate.

Microsoft withdrew its offer for Yahoo on May 3, after raising its bid to around 47.5 billion dollars. Yahoo said the bid undervalued its business and subsequently rejected a follow-up proposal by Microsoft to buy Yahoo's search business. Instead, Yahoo announced last week it would outsource some search advertising to Google.

Recruiting experts said Yahoo's decision sent the wrong message to its search engineers and created an opportunity for Microsoft.