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Microsoft to Buy Rational and/or Borland?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the still-upset-over-turbo-prologs-market-dominance dept.

oblivious writes "I got this in e-mail this evening: According to a Reuters report that crossed the wires late today, the speculation is that Microsoft will make bids to buy both Rational and Borland. Shares of both Rational and Borland are up on the news, and so far both IBM and Microsoft have no comment on this report." We recently ran a story about IBMs planned purchase of Rational. Chris didn't make clear in here - it's not that Microsoft might buy both, but that Borland might be a likely target, if a bid to buy Rational out from under IBM fails, which it is likely too. Rational and IBM have signed the substantive portion of the agreement already, so any sort of counter bid would have some fun legal consequences for all involved.

2 of 475 comments (clear)

  1. Remove the competition... by larien · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This would basically be MS buying two competitors. Rational Clearcase competes with Visual Sourcesafe and Borland's development products obviously compete with Visual Studio (as well as doing a fair bit with Java, which MS probably don't like).

    If this is true, they've obviously decided to really flip the bird to the courts...

  2. Re:Hate to say it but.. by mcguirez · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well Borland is profitable:

    roughly 5m/quarter for the past 4...

    That's 8% net profit margin - now this isn't
    Microsoft level profits but it's probably
    ethically obtained!

    --
    When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras