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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."
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/
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.