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10 Microsoft Acquisitions and What They Mean Now
FrankPoole writes "CRN takes a look at the past five years of Microsoft's acquisition history, which totals $13 billion and more than 7,000 new employees, and highlights 10 deals and how they've affected the software giant. While some larger acquisitions stand out for better or worse, such as Danger and aQuantive, there are some smaller, blink-and-you'll-miss-it deals that have proved pivotal for Microsoft's push into new areas such as virtualization. And Microsoft's recent acquisition track record may lend credence to the heavy criticism levied against the company by former employees like Dick Brass."
Most of the companies on that list were intelligent purchasing decisions by Microsoft, even if all of them didn't pan out in the end. Most of them even have examples included of where their input has specifically improved Microsoft's products. I think that Dick Brass's article in the Times was fairly harsh, but if what he says is true and Microsoft no longer has the capability for innovation, then buying innovators with their still-impressive supply of cash and then successfully integrating their work into their products is a good substitute for coming up with those ideas themselves. It's certainly not ideal, but it can work as long as they still have the funds to do so.
If a company cannot innovate internally, then they have to acquire from outside.
Grow or die... but, it has allowed MS to improve their product offerings over time. Should be interesting to see what the future holds.
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> Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator.
Microsoft has always been a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator (though I suppose dumpster-diving does require a certain amount of agility).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"CRN takes a look at the past five years of Microsoft's acquisition history, which totals $13 billion and more than 7,000 new employees, and highlights 10 deals and how they've affected the software giant. While some larger acquisitions stand out for better or worse, such as Danger and aQuantive, there are some smaller, blink-and-you'll-miss-it deals that have proved pivotal for Microsoft's push into new areas such as virtualization."
Sounds like it might be an interesting article. Also looks odd - a slashdot article submission about Microsoft that's, at worse, neutral. Where's the pro-forma jab?
"And Microsoft's recent acquisition track record may lend credence to the heavy criticism levied against the company by former employees like Dick Brass."
Ah... there it is.
Bungie, Visio, Great Plains Software?
These three companies have made more money and been more influential than these companies!
Well, It's a slight improvement over anything kdawson puts up.
I've been able to get pro-Microsoft articles posted by kdawson by slandering Microsoft in my summaries just because I know he's less likely to read the article itself if I slam Microsoft in my write-up.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
"Hi, MicroSoft here and with all this bad press coming out lately, I would like to ensure you that we have some truly revolutionary products coming out soon... blah blah blah."
Wake me up when they actually produce something cool that I can touch and feel. I'm getting tired of the standard "MicroSoft is going to innovate, just wait and see" PR tagline.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
Ah, Danger, the company that all the competent people abandoned, and ended messing up the storage/backup for all of T-Mobile Sidekick users' data?
How did that go anyway, I heard they managed to find a way to recover most of it?
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
what no supplier of chairs?
And then I'll start to sign with the surname before the name.
"[...]
Sincerely,
Brass Dick"
Though not acquired in the past 5 years, Visio is still the best "Microsoft" product. It is the only one I wish I had, as the open source alternatives don't have the bells and whistles that make Visio a great product.
If you have had to use it - you know exactly what I'm talking about. Its got all the interoperability of Microsoft products that you'd expect, with all the ease of use and understanding that each Office iteration lacks.
Dick Brass.
Really?
What? Was the given name "Balls" already taken?
Embrace
Extend
Enhance
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
Having been in the computing world more or less continuously since the early 80s, I can't remember a single instance in which MS was considered to be cool; at least not among the computer scientists I was in touch with. There were a number of cool companies over the years: Thinking Machines, Cray, Silicon Graphics, etc. But MS? For all I recall, it would elicit nothing but derision at first, and despise and fear later on. Now it is true that it became hugely popular among computer science students whose unabashed goal was to become millionaires before turning 30 - not to shine in the computer science field.
And I'm not seeing a print button
So how many of you have been in mid sized growing companies that eventually kill off any sort of innovation they had due to Turf Wars? Every mid
sized company I have ever worked for tend to start the death spiral just about before they hit the 300-400 million mark. Sure the brand carries
them for a while but all innovation starts dying due to politics and turf wars. Most will start heavy acquisitions at this point to stay ahead but that
only turns the acquired into mush. It is a interesting phenomena to watch from the sidelines as the business inevitably implodes.
Got Code?
Is it me, or has the press turned really critical of Microsoft in past couple of months? It sort of feels like the barbarians are at the gate, waiting to taste Balmer's bitter flesh. Yesterday it came to a crescendo with Joe Wilcox publishing a devastating piece on how middle manager culture is destroying innovation at the company.
I can't really peg this on one single thing, but if I were to guess, it's probably because Apple and Google are mapping out the future while Microsoft is still hung up chasing ghosts of yesteryear with me-too products with little or no tangible value.
Or perhaps it's just confirmation bias on my part because I don't particularly care for the company or majority of their products.
To be honest I didn't read the article. I don't see why it couldn't have been on one page rather than 10 little slides. This isn't a powerpoint presentation in a meeting.
After all, Bill Gates didn't get that rich by writing a bunch of checks!
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
because you usually hear it from the executives and others who are well taken care of...
But having living through an acquisition by Microsoft of the small company I was working at, I personally found Microsoft's internal culture to be toxic to much of what made our startup successful in the first place. As I saw it, for the typical 'guy in the trenches' your competition soon stops being the other companies competing in your market and becomes your co-workers. The success of your origination is disconnected from the success of its products in the marketplace, while your personal success soon depends almost entirely upon your skills at competing against your peers, as it is predetermined how many winners and losers there will be amongst you.
His group invented ClearType? Don't make me laugh. The technique popular during Apple II days and this guy has the gall to claim credit for it. I say this renders his creditability as questionable.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Before you morons get all in a tussle, remember that Google BOUGHT most of everything it owns.
The following were outright bought:
Google Groups
Blogger
iGoogle
Google Maps
Google Earth
AdSense/AdWords
Baidu
Google Sketchup
Google Spreadsheet
Picasa
Youtube
Google Talk
Panoramio
Feed Burner
The following were developed around large chunks of bought code, IP, marketshare, etc.
Google Analytics
Android
Google Latitude
Google Documents
Google Sites
Google Chrome
Google Wave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google
The reason why Microsoft is more of an acquire company than an innovation company is that the waters it swims in are different these days.
When MS started out, they had little money and the market was nearly empty. Very little competition. So the best move for MS to make was innovation. Come up with something new and market that. And hope to make it big, which they did. It was a gamble.
Now, MS is HUGE. And the market is full - loads of competition. They don't have to innovate anymore. They can assimilate small fish that do their innovation for them. They don't have to take the risks a small company would have to take anymore. A startup in this environment would have to gamble hugely to get big. There isn't much room. Patents and other competition means there are very small survival spaces in the ecosystem. That is what MS is hoping to acquire. The "oh wow I didn't think of that" part of the market. They don't have to think like a small "hope we can make it" company anymore. They're here to stay. Now given that, what is the best strategy? Stop anyone else from competing at their scale. Buy them out and make the marketplace ecosystem even smaller.
The environment has changed, so MS changed to adapt to the new environment. It's not surprising.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It's true that Gates may not have been a real leader of Microsoft since the 1980s, but like Jobs he was the charismatic symbol of his company. The media ate up his "The Road Ahead" stuff just like they fawn over Jobs' keynotes. Ballmer, despite his sometimes amusing antics, is basically a generic CEO of no real consequence or media appeal.
The reason why Microsoft is more of an acquire company than an innovation company is that the waters it swims in are different these days.
When MS started out, they had little money and the market was nearly empty. Very little competition. So the best move for MS to make was innovation. Come up with something new and market that. And hope to make it big, which they did. It was a gamble.
Now, MS is HUGE. And the market is full - loads of competition. They don't have to innovate anymore. They can assimilate small fish that do their innovation for them. They don't have to take the risks a small company would have to take anymore. A startup in this environment would have to gamble hugely to get big. There isn't much room. Patents and other competition means there are very small survival spaces in the ecosystem. That is what MS is hoping to acquire. The "oh wow I didn't think of that" part of the market. They don't have to think like a small "hope we can make it" company anymore. They're here to stay. Now given that, what is the best strategy? Stop anyone else from competing at their scale. Buy them out and make the marketplace ecosystem even smaller.
The environment has changed, so MS changed to adapt to the new environment. It's not surprising.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Internal competition is common at great companies. It can be wisely encouraged to force ideas to compete. The problem comes when the competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive. At Microsoft, it has created a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence.
This sounds like the same thing they do to external competition.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Isn't it time we changed that Gates as Borg avatar with something like Jobs as Borg? Microsoft has lost its appeal as the "bad guy" in recent years...
I have no idea why this posted twice. Feel free to mod it to oblivion.
..."Microsoft's days are numbered!" decrees seem a bit tired. I have been hearing/reading them since I started my IT career in the early 1990's, and I am still waiting for the Great Satan that is M$ to fall.
Wow! Your point of reference is waaaaay back in the distant dark ages of the early 1990's, when man first started to walk upright?
I guess they don't teach ancient technology history in IT skool. Read up on the history of IBM, especially during the pre-dawn-of-civilization period of 1960 - 1990 (when dinosaurs still roamed the planet). I think that you'll have a different perspective after that.
"Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator."
The small company I work for is now mired in its own processes. I have no authority to do anything to change that. The positive is that we will not get to the stage of being an attractive acquisition, so jobs are pretty safe.
The downside is all the key innovators ( I include myself) at my work feel stymied.
I would not feel sorry for the strategists at Microsoft, but I would feel sorry for their innovators. Their day cannot be a cakewalk.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Need to click ten time to see the full list.
Huge pain in the ass and extremely unuser-friendly.
a slashdot article submission about Microsoft that's, at worse, neutral. Where's the pro-forma jab
In what universe is Microsoft owed positive coverage by virtue of its mere existence? Where I come from you earn your reputation, good or bad, and you wear it. Tough titties.
If you want effusiveness over Microsoft's alleged virtues, I'd suggest that you read the business pages, not the (genuine) technology pages. They might be the wet dreams of investment analysts, whose sole goal is the accumulation of maximal wealth by whatever means possible, but to real technology world, they create a huge net loss. Mediocrity (at best) and pervasiveness are not feats of technological ingenuity.
I often muse at how much more advanced the computing world would be had Microsoft not created an effective monopoly and caused virtual stagnation of the creative forces of development.
The author was only there from '97 to '04. There was nothing unintentional about it. If you know their history you know this. Their restrictive licensing began in the '80s. For example, early on they made license deals with manufacturers, e.g. Dell and Gateway. What that came down to was the manufacturer had to pay a fee whether or not a PC shipped with an MS OS. So what did they do? Ship only MS OS on their machines. MS was locking out the competition as as fast as possible.
This is also the company that said, It's not done until Lotus won't run".
Ballmer earning profits? He lead MS into their first ever period of losses. Now only remediated by Windows 7. Vista was a train wreck.
Being a monopoly has done what it always does; t makes a company fat, sloppy, lazy, and unimaginative.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"The personal computer OS is a mature product category, and would be better served -- especially in Microsoft's case -- by fixing its plethora of bugs and security holes and misfeatures and just supporting new hardware as it comes along. While they're at it, maybe they could focus on optimizing its memory and CPU usage so that there's more left over for -- again -- the applications its supposed to support." - by Angst Badger (8636) on Thursday February 11, @12:26PM (#31101402)
Agreed, 110%! However, I do think Microsoft has begun to do THAT VERY THING, because the past few "Microsoft 'Patch Tuesdays'" (the past 4-5 or so) have been pretty "extensive" (a couple were the largest ever known @ one shot for instance, the last one & one a few before it for example)... so, I think they are "onto" your point.
The OS itself is pretty solid. imo @ least (by that, I mean the "Windows NT-based family", & of that family (2000/XP/Server 2003/VISTA/Server 2008/Windows 7) specifically Server 2003, Server 2008, & Windows 7 are the "highlights" of the best of them all...
(Well - Regarding the latter 2, Server 2008 & Win7 - albeit ONLY with a couple suggestions I sent to a MS manager who posts here named Foredecker (who actually listened (after initially objecting to 2 points I made on DNS client cache & the HOSTS file)). He is now looking into 2 said points I made on his/their/MS' end of things (which I will have an answer to soon, by March, per his "impromptu deadline" he set on the points I had made to he)).
They're NOT stupid people, & they hire some of the BEST TALENT OUT THERE (Anders Heijelsberg & Dr. Mark Russinovich being 2 I know of for example)... it's just that they have a HUMUNGOUS product line (in summation) to take care of + keep track of vulnerabilities in alone. Not a "small" undertaking I'd imagine. They just have their work cut out for them... specifically the MOST in IE & Office.
APK
P.S.=> To this point of yours though? I have to disagree, based sheerly on their results of owning MOST of the "PC Market share":
"Microsoft is failing miserably (and, for misguided marketing purposes, deliberately) at both." - by Angst Badger (8636) on Thursday February 11, @12:26PM (#31101402)
They've come QUITE a long ways, & again - look @ the size + amount of apps they have to take care of (again for both security vulnerabilities AND performance improvements purposes)... I mean, E.G.-> Last I knew of? Windows 2000 (older & smaller) topped 30-40 million lines of code (largest project I personally ever wrote or co-wrote was 5++ million lines of code + SQL backend stuff like stored procedures etc. et al)... that's NOT a 'trivial undertaking' to try to find every possible bug in OR to find performance improvements in.
Personally? I am surprised on 2 accounts ( & here is what I'd do diff. than MS does, for their own good AND those of their users too):
1.) Ship the OS "closed" (security hardened, with most risky stuff, if not all, "turned off") - User wants to "turn them on" (such as using ActiveX &/or javascript)? Then, the USER TAKES THE RISK, period/point-blank.
2.) Dump the code into ASM (x86 assembly), or, as much as possible of it... why?? Performance! They no longer write for MIPS/Alpha (RISC stuff), so why bother keep it written in C/C++?? I mean, other than for maintenance purposes (because C/C++ are easier to read-write/understand than Assembly language is), C/C++ are SLOWER (yes, & I don't care what compiler you use either, they still are slower than straight ASM).
apk
You cant convert Windows to ASM because of x86-64 and Itanium.
Both of which have different instruction sets to plain x86.
"You cant convert Windows to ASM because of x86-64 and Itanium. Both of which have different instruction sets to plain x86." - by jonwil (467024) on Thursday February 11, @08:28PM (#31108370)
Why not though? IF performance gains aren't obtainable anymore via better engines/algorithms... then, why NOT move the code (or as much as possible of it) to Assembly code instead of C/C++? This is NOT "undoable" on MS' part (though it would be a MAJOR PAIN & EFFORT, I can concede that).
That alone would probably quite easily "eke" another 10-20% (at least) performance boost out of Windows of ANY KIND/VERSION, & right off the bat, doing that alone.
The reason I note this?
Well, that is because it was how I heard a how MS got LARGE part of how they "got more" performance out of the far older Windows 3.x series: Going "straight asm" as much as possible (or, so I heard tell in the "dim days of yore", circa 15-16++ yrs. back), vs. using C/C++ as the base code for much of it.
Still: I concede, that You have a point, & that it'd mean more than just doing a conversion for 32-bit processors today. I wasn't thinking about 64-bit (so, point taken) but... that doesn't mean that changing to assembly level code, vs. C/C++, on the Itanium or other 64-bit (or hybrids) chips is "undoable" either!
(Only REAL question is, would it worth the effort & dollars that'd have to be expended (because as we all know from the world of business, there is a matter of "ROI"... would gaining another immediate say, 20% gain, be worth changing over the code of an entire OS for the dollars spent in the doing of it?)).
APK
P.S.=> It's just a thought on MS doing a build of a modern Windows (such as Windows 7) in pure or NEAR pure ASM code for x86 (or variants possibly, but I'd think that'd matter most for gamers actually as far as performance nuts go out there)...
ALSO - I still think that MS would be much better served by going to a "security hardened" model of Windows (per my 1st of my 2 suggestions in my previous posts' "p.s." section @ its termination to which you replied to here)!
Why?
Well, then they would put the responsibility onto the end users out there, letting them know the risks of various things they face by "turning said things on", & thus, letting users assume the responsibility of "turning on" the things in computers that are risky today, such as Javascript &/or ActiveX (as just a couple examples thereof)...
I mean, hey - Let's face it: Those tools are "the harbingers of doom" in a GOOD 90% or better of today's exploits upon end-users worldwide... apk
IBM
Revenue: US$ 95.757 billion (2009)
Operating income: US$ 17.012 billion (2009)
Net income: US$ 13.425 billion (2009)
Total assets: US$ 109.023 billion (2009)
Total equity: US$ 22.637 billion (2009)
Microsoft
Revenue: US$ 58.437 billion (2009)
Operating income: US$ 20.363 billion (2009)
Net income: US$ 14.569 billion (2009)
Total assets: US$ 77.888 billion (2009)
Total equity: US$ 39.558 billion (2009)
Pretty evenly matched, actually.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
1. that would be an absolute nightmare in terms of code maintainability, debugging, etc. Windows source code today is far larger than Windows 3.0 code
2. compilers have improved since the Windows 3.0 days, they're far better than humans at optimizing in many cases
3. Itanium architecture is explicitly parallel, writing assembly for that is completely different from writing x86, it's far from a simple conversion
4. Game performance is limited mostly by your GPU, and CPU usage by your OS is minimal compared to CPU usage by the game itself. Gamers won't see much benefit from this.
The effort required to write and maintain the code in assembly is so great that it's infeasible in practice, and you wouldn't really get that much benefit from doing it.
If you really wanted to do hardware-specific optimizations today, you'd probably be better off finding parts of the code where you can execute things in parallel. You could get good performance benefits from multicore processors.
"1. that would be an absolute nightmare in terms of code maintainability, debugging, etc. Windows source code today is far larger than Windows 3.0 code" - by w32jon (1317789) on Friday February 12, @05:06AM (#31110922)
I noted that already here ->
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"2. compilers have improved since the Windows 3.0 days, they're far better than humans at optimizing in many cases" - by w32jon (1317789) on Friday February 12, @05:06AM (#31110922)
The best C/C++ compilers STILL aren't as fast as straight ASM, point-blank though...
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"3. Itanium architecture is explicitly parallel, writing assembly for that is completely different from writing x86, it's far from a simple conversion" - by w32jon (1317789) on Friday February 12, @05:06AM (#31110922)
Personally, since MS "dumped" MIPS/ALPHA (& other RISC based chips, like PowerPC too)... why the heck are the sticking by ITANIUM? Makes NO sense to me, but still - this is NOT "undoable" for even more/better performance by going "straight ASM" or, as much as is possible though, period.
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"4. Game performance is limited mostly by your GPU, and CPU usage by your OS is minimal compared to CPU usage by the game itself. Gamers won't see much benefit from this." - by w32jon (1317789) on Friday February 12, @05:06AM (#31110922)
Oh, really? I went from an AMD X2 4800+ CPU 2 core CPU (2400mhz, & less cache than my new one) to an INTEL Core I7 920 4 core CPU (2600mhz & more L1/L2 etc. cache onboard the CPU by far)... & in Quake 4 + Doom III, for example?
Well, on my older machine I could "keep up with" the enemies on nightmare level + uncapped (you can release the 60fps lock in IDSoftware's games in these 2 examples)... on my newer one? NO WAY.
By the way?? SAME VIDEO CARD WAS USED (NVidia/EVGA 8800 GT OC)...
(So much for that, because "anecdotal evidence" or not? It's the truth!)
Now, don't get me wrong - on many games, this matters (GPU more important than CPU etc. et al), but, that's not only what I saw in IDSoftware's stuff (my fav, because J. Carmack's a GENIUS).
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"The effort required to write and maintain the code in assembly is so great that it's infeasible in practice, and you wouldn't really get that much benefit from doing it." - by w32jon (1317789) on Friday February 12, @05:06AM (#31110922)
Uhm, once more - IF you're going to "troll me", or attempt to "get the better of me"? Don't use points I already covered in my replies, per this one here in this exchange in reply to others here -> http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1546446&cid=31109564
APK
P.S.=> Thanks, & "better luck next time"... apk
"If you really wanted to do hardware-specific optimizations today, you'd probably be better off finding parts of the code where you can execute things in parallel. You could get good performance benefits from multicore processors." - by w32jon (1317789) on Friday February 12, @05:21AM (#31110988)
This from you, vs. your other post reply here -> http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1546446&cid=31114804
This much I can agree on... but, with "reservations" (per my subject-line above). Why? Well... here is why:
The ONLY question here is, is actually FINDING the parallelism...
So you know, I do actually speak from decades of professional experience on that account here!
(E.G.-> I've been writing multithreaded & even EXPLICITLY parallellized code (via Win32 API calls for processors present creation + API methods/functions/calls like "SetThreadAffinity" or "SetProcessAffinity" even, but I usually do what's called "coarse multithreading" because it's less work & the fact that today's Process Scheduling Kernel mode subsystems can take care of sending parent &/or child threads to less/least CPU cycle saturated processors, for me... without ME having to do it via my own scheduling for that much... I've done that, professionally + for 'fun' too, & for over 15++ years now here, example thereof here -> http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/389/APK_Registry_Cleaning_Engine_2002++_SR-7_.html & here too -> http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/390/APK_Matrix_ScreenSaver.html as evidences thereof in freewares alone, many more in commercial code or enterprise class business apps usually... )
Finding tasks that lend to "coarse multithreading" is tough enough, but for "fine grained multithreading"? What DOES lend itself to that, is often prone to race conditions for example, & it is NOT as easy to do as "coarse multithreading" is.
E.G. on "COARSE MULTITHREADING" -> Recalc 1 workshee's cells in a spreadsheet in 1 THREAD, while printing another worksheet of said spreadsheet via ANOTHER THREAD... easier to do by far, because diff. datasets are being worked on.
E.G. on "FINE GRAINED MULTITHREADING" -> In the same datafile, attempting to reformat it's interior format while taking said data & putting it out to a printer... this IS tougher, but NOT "the greatest example" thereof though on my part, admittedly.
BAD MOVE would be trying to put this on 2 diff. threads:
A=B+C
B=A+D
Where B has to wait out B completing first, so what's the point of using two diff threads here (1 for Operation A, & 1 for Operation B)? None... they "block" one another.
APK
P.S.=> Hope you caught my drift, & I wasn't trying to be mean, but in the URL above in your first comment? I covered MOST of what you noted too... you just skimmed it seems, without reading my replies to others here perhaps... apk