Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Trolling for New Acquisitions
NewShinyCD writes "Sources tell Valleywag that startup Ustream.tv is in advanced discussions with Microsoft to acquire the lifecasting service for more than $50 million, but there are other companies in the bidding as well. Ustream is currently raising a very large initial round of VC financing, and Microsoft is attempting to grab them prefunding for a cheap price. Our tipster also mentions that Microsoft would use Ustream as a way to promote its Adobe Flash competitor, Silverlight." Relatedly, Microsoft has also announced their intent to buy Sidekick maker Danger. Financial details of the Danger buyout were not disclosed.
I wonder how the person who wrote that title feels about Microsoft?
Next up: "Microsoft cruising seedy bars on the hunt for fresh start-up action."
Predators have to eat too...
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Joy. Another way for M$ to try to jam Silverlight down our throats...as if asking if we'd like to try it out every time we visit microsoft.com isn't quite invasive and annoying enough.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Say it has the (wildly improbable) number of 50m users. Is it really worth a buck a user to get people to install silverlight? Especially given that most web services have very low lock in and when Microsoft start exhibiting the "Hotmail factor" users will start to flee.
If I had no ethics, $50m dollars and needed to convert a lot of users in a hurry I would funnel the money through a whole bunch of shell companies to bribe tudou or 56.com* to switch to silverlight. That would get the user base up much faster because there are a million naff 'lifecasting' websites and only a couple of big sites that can operate outside the law freely.
*(popular flash video sites for pirated content, linked to frequently from western tv portals like alluc)
Okay, I'm sick of this anti-Microsoft propaganda! It's not called an "acquisition!" It's called innovation! And thank goodness Microsoft is willing to innovate! Where would we be without Microsoft's lawyers out there pushing innovation? I'll tell you where we'd be! We'd have to depend on independent-thinking coders, developers, and open-source maverick's for our software and hardware advances! Or (shudder the thought) small companies with "great ideas." Puhleez! Let's stick to reality here, Folks!
Intuit probably owns at least 80% of the SMB financial software market. By some counts, Intuit owns 92% of that market.
I think msft may be in somewhat of a price war with intuit right now, but it is not helping msft. I think msft's quickbooks competitor is selling for around $150, but it looks like intuit has dropped the price of quickbooks to about $130. I think quickbooks used to cost around $500.
I see no way for msft to steal the market from intuit. Intuit is too well established, there is a huge network of Intuit "ProAdvisors" and Intuit developers, and thousands of quickbooks add-ons available.
This is a market that msft wants, and msft is not able to get it.
They already tried, a few years back.
As I recall, the DOJ (FTC?) wouldn't let them. It was around the time MSFT first came out with Microsoft Money.
-- Alastair
Trolling for acquisitions?? These guys can just google for it.. and seems to be doing that a lot.
Part of MS's strategy is to let other companies find markets, and then compete in them once those markets exist.
XBox. Zune. Live Search (let's buy Yahoo!)
The iPhone was wildly successful so let's copy it, since that seems to be working for us so well with the iPod.
The best part of this "strategy" is that every division except the office/Windows division, loses money. Which leads me to wonder why they even try.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
... Slashdot is a self-parody at this point.
Have you ever tried working on Flash as a developer? I'd pretty much rather slam my balls in a car door than do so again.
Anything that makes Flash actually have to compete in the marketplace is a good thing.
"Microsoft Trolling"
the meaning of which can go both ways, and still summarizes the meaning of the story better
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
they were rebuffed for anticompetitive practices. they were ready to trash microsoft money and take over quicken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicken#History
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
short thread at http://www.caligari.com/.
Does this mean we'll see a 3d desktop on Blue Crystals(R) 7.5 I wonder?
or even worse a 3d virtual MS-Bob
Andy
You may be wrongly assuming the acquisitions will improve microsoft's bottom line. It is a widely observed M&A fact that most acquisitions result in no net gain to the acquiring party.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I can see that, release a crappy new version of windows, nobody buys it, look for a new revenue stream by buying up a few good idea companies...though these choices they made just look like another sad attempt by monkeyboy to take over googles place in the market.
Say goodbye to the Sidekick (aka Danger HipTop). Microsoft is simply the kiss of death for any company or product. Like chatting with your friends on AIM? Forget it! You can force them to sign up for an MSN account now. Like using sites like Google to look up info on your Sidekick? Forget it! You'll use Windows Live and like it! Like using your Sidekick and think it's pretty stable? Not any more.... here comes Windows Mobile.... to fuck up the day! Microsoft thinks that they are going to get a big youth market who doesn't even realize that things have changed. Nope. Instead they'll get millions of kids dropping their Sidekick accounts and moving on to something cooler.
"Trolling" would mean they're hanging around crappy discussion forums looking for ways to cheeze people off.
"Trawling" would mean they're out there dragging their nets and fishing lines in hopes of catching something worth keeping.
The former is intentionally pejorative, the latter is simply metaphorical.
First, it's obvious that "trolling" in the context of an online FORUM is going to have definite negative connotations. It doesn't really matter what the original term meant, it matters what it means to those you are talking to.
Secondly, since when has buying companies been new, or been evil? Google has bought a ton of stuff, and while some are honest in their thinking about it, most seem to have a "Microsoft Bad, Other Companies Good" mentality that shades their opinion about, for example, "new acquisitions."
And as for complaining about Silverlight, there isn't much complain about Flash, a proprietary essentially monopoly in the market. As someone previously stated, maybe Silverlight will be horrible, but perhaps it will at least give Flash some competition. [sarcasm] Oh wait, I'm sorry, Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to be competition for anything, because competition ruins good software. [/sarcasm]
Seriously. If Microsoft is so horrible and so obviously horrid software and so obviously non-innovative, it will die out. I guess I'm just tired of the hypocritical way of thinking about Microsoft as opposed to Apple, Google, Adobe, or open source software.
And I'm also kinda tired of the apparent opinion that Microsoft is just in it for the money, whereas grand ol' companies like Yahoo and Novell and [insert favourite non-MS company here] are really in it for the good of mankind and whatever. Hogwash. They might like computers, as I'm sure many people in Microsoft's company do, too, and like doing software or hardware stuff, but they want money, too.
Am I defending Microsoft? No. But I refuse to get into the "everything MS does is evil because it is MS and Bill Gates is the devil" camp...
[/rant]
Then don't use it. Its so 1990's anyway.
:-
There are far too many sites out there riddled with Flash 'stuff' where its not needed.
Thank god for Flashblock. We will soon need a Silverlight blocker as well
I'm curious (As I'm not a web designer)
1) What has flash/silverlight got that we really need these days?
2) If Flash is so awful to use, why do so many sites use it
???
Some investment book I was reading (Peter Lynch, maybe) referred to companies investing in areas outside their traditional areas as diworsification because when companies did it, it usually hurt the business. And in either Built to Last or Good to Great, Jim Collins says that great businesses stick to their main thing they do well (their "hedgehog concept"). I wonder if Microsoft has lost its vision. Seems like they would do better if they focussed on making a great OS (their main strength) for mobile phones rather than making phones (not their strength).
Google fanboys are jealous that Google didn't try to buy Yahoo first. Yahoo is ripe to be either bought out or broken up. There's nothing wrong with growing through acquisitions. Google did it with Youtube.
Danger likely has never turned a profit. Danger was probably facing extinction if MS hadn't come to the rescue.
The problem is that since Gates left, Microsoft has reorganized a bunch of times by corporate executives that do what executives do, make themselves look good. The new divisional lines seem designed to make certain that every division is profitable, by taking a money maker and assigning it a bunch of losers.
The corporate structure appears designed to protect executives, their jobs, and their bonuses, not identify winners to ride and losers to cut loose. The company is WAY less cutthroat and vicious that it was when Gates ran the place... and it is not dominating new markets the same way... and the stock's performance reflects that.
So either Gates saw the glory days behind him and got out on a high note, or he was a truly remarkable visionary/businessman that saw waves early enough to get in and dominate, and his replacement keeps moving the chairs around knowing that payday is on Friday, and each payday he hits is a nice win for him
The reason caution should be given to Microsoft regarding anything they do, is because what they did (in the public eye and behind closed doors) with the existing market computer market in the late 80's... take a crappy product (MS-DOS and Windows 3.0) litigate companies out of existence (like Stac Electronics,) run companies/products off/reduce the market through either bullying or blackmail (Atari, Amiga/Commodore 64/128, Wordperfect for Linux, Novell DOS7, Caldera DOS, CP/M) or through their illegal monopoly (Wordperfect in general, Visa-calc, WordPro, dBase III,) or through investment manipulation (the indirect funding of SCO Unix to litigate against Linux/IBM,) or even recently, the vote-buying and rigging of the ISO to pass a stupid standard like OOXML off as an ISO standard.
No, Bill Gates is not the Devil, but he might be listening to him. And a lot of what MS-Executives do, not necessarily the employees, is Evil. Evil against a true democratic-judicial system that is somewhat prone to influence, bribery, and special interests when enough money is presented with a certain level of political maneuvering. True justice is when a person without large sums of money, a person like the consumer, can be protected from a person with a lot of wealth, power, and influence. (BTW: When someone can successfully use power, wealth, and influence to compromise a market and law enforcement the way microsoft has done over the years, that is not True Capitalism. That is Greed, Suppression of the People, and Taking Unfair Advantage of the consumer market. There is a reason they call it ANTI-TRUST, because the market DOES NOT TRUST them. You can defile the true beneficial impact of ANTI-TRUST by paying off the guardians of Trust.)
And no, how Microsoft runs their business is not how it is suppose to be, because there were certain laws established to protect consumer markets, and all Microsoft see them as are marketing hurdles, not items that give respect to the people. By their actions, they reduce the options available to the market, because they know themselves, that anyone can out-produce, out-innovate, or out-create them. They had to change the rules to suit their corporate personality, which is equal to that of a high-school bully.
Defending Microsoft? You claim you are not. But I refused to buy into the lie that Microsoft is a good corporate citizen of it's market and country. I want corporate responsibility, accountability, and true innovation by even the smallest least insignificant inventor, to give them a chance to get themselves out of poverty or a lower economic class just like people in pro-sports do. All of the citizens are valuable, not just a select few rich and wealthy people who also happen to be bent on Greed instead of being a public or market servant.
Apple, when they got the technology from Xerox Parc, technology that Xerox execs outrightly rejected, Steve Jobs was there to get it, legally and fair. But then Bill Gates stole it. (see Pirates of Silicon Valley) - Justice is not brought on those who slip up with stupidity like Steve Jobs may have done. Justice is brought on to those who break the law. And Bill Gates and co had enough power and politics to slither out of justice being served in the proper way when Apple and Microsoft went to court. Apple had to settle in order to survive. Just because Microsoft came out the victor, does not make Microsoft right or the winner of Justice. There are many court cases in the U.S. where the people lose and the criminals win because, in that case, justice is either corrupt or ignorant.
Silverlight has been shipping on Mac and Windows day-and-date. A Linux version based on Mono is being developed with Microsoft's cooperation.
My video compression blog
I'm not particularly sure how far Microsoft going to get with their attempts to compete with Flash. Considering how widely used it is everywhere. It's even used outside of web applications. An ungodly number of cartoons on TV are animated using Flash. It's even beating out similar products in that field as well. Toonboom studio which is supposed to be a more animator friendly vector based animation program isn't even touching Flash. So I'm not sure what the hell Microsoft intends to do here. I think they should have released their Flash knockoff maybe 10 years ago, instead of now when they have absolutely zero chance of success.
I have nothing compelling to say
Considering that they were prepared to spend 40-odd bn for yahoo when Vista probably cost them 5 bn, they are very serious about aquisitions.
MS have never really got far with their aquisitions (except office and MSDOS) so this new policy will probably burn a hole in the bottom of the ship.
Expect MS to go on a big shopping spree.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Half of the shit in windows/zune/xbox/server/sync..... was in some way created or innovated or copied at MSR.
Seriously, what's innovative about zune/xbox/server/sync... or windows, for that matter?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I'd be interested to hear what you think about Starbucks business practices. Unethical, but legal, IMO.
Yes, the democratic-judicial system is prone to influence, bribery, and special interests, and money goes a long way.
At any rate, I certainly do not agree that MS is a good corporate citizen of its market and country. I personally think of its software is pretty decent, and certainly quite functional, and to argue that it's not that and that nothing good has ever come out of Microsoft is to be blind.
Anyway. True innovation seems to come out regardless of companies like Microsoft. Or... in spite of.
Doesn't anyone remember that it's been less than two weeks since the DOJ Antitrust oversight finished? Is there any wonder about the timing?
My opinions are my own, but you may share them!
Self explanatory really. Buy a dictionary.
Oh, oh... pick me... pick me... Pick me, please! Pleeeaaassseee... pick me.
(I'm cheap... not more than $15 Million.)
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
With respect to the title, unless it's meant in jest, I think you meant "trawling".
"Trolling" is that, you know, other thing.
Go, Bill, go.
For those of us hating Microsoft, let them continue to acquire. We all know what happens when we eat to much. We expand, become bloarted, cannnot walk without wobbling .... they may very well overexpand.