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Report: Microsoft Considering Salesforce Acquisition
An anonymous reader writes: Bloomberg reports that Microsoft is considering making a bid for CRM and cloud software company Salesforce, after hearing that Salesforce was entertaining an offer from another company. No talks are underway, but Salesforce has started working with investment banks to figure out how it wants to respond to such offers. Salesforce has a market value of about $50 billion, so any sort of acquisition would be a huge business deal.
That's mostly because we've cut taxes on corps so much that they've got more cash than they know what to do with. I miss the 90% tax bracket. It kept corporate power in check and made them think about where they were investing their money. Now they can just casually toss $50 billion here and there and it's no skin off anyone's back.
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it was 90% after the first $2 million, and that was in 1960. Adjusted for inflation that's something like $14 million today.
It was never really a tax per se. It was a check on out of control wealth concentration and the scary, scary power that comes with it. Plus it had the added bonus of encouraging real investment because hey, it was use it or lose it when it came to money. Now the rich can sit on a Scrooge McDuck style cash horde. But unlike the cartoon there are real consequences to that. Our economy grinds to a halt because all our capital is tied up in excesses like private jets & Mergers and acquisitions. No real value is added.
I saw the best quote ever in a news story a few weeks ago (I'm paraphrasing here): Finance is no longer a tool for getting money into productive businesses but for getting it out.
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This is confusing to me. My job is literally installing Dynamics software for people. (Disclaimer: If you're offered that job, consider suicide as a better career path.)
Microsoft has put tons of money into their enterprise products. They're absolute piss and crash after a fresh install, but the work is still there. What good would acquiring Salesforce be for Microsoft? The only thing I can think of is that their software sucks so bad, they're going to eliminate their competitors by buying them. Because taking one gigantic, bloated, aging set of codebases (which have trouble even talking to each other!), and buying someone else's gigantic bloating, aging set of codebases, and finding some way to merge them into something new... that seems insane.