seattlepi.nwsource.com — Microsoft went on a buying spree in its recently completed fiscal year, acquiring -- 23 companies, compared with nine the year before. But the company is focusing on much smaller deals. It spent slightly less than $650 million on 23 acquisitions last year. By comparison, the company spent more than $2 billion on three companies alone in 2003.
Aug 21, 2006 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountAug 22, 2006
it's "shopping spree", not "buying spree"
dotnetnoobAug 22, 2006
well..let's put it this way. you need to throw many s**tz out there to see which one stick. who is to say that Windows/Office comobo will be their cash cow forever? Microsoft is too big to just stay in one area. this is why rail road biz back in industry revolution failed when they don't reliase rail road company are in transporting biz. when truck/airplane starting to take off, they can't compete because they don't throw any s**tz out there to see which one stick.Enron cooked their book, MS have enought cash to buy as many small companies as they want. heck they can even buy out RedHat and make it Windows Linux. just think about why Google buy other companies that doesn't relate to search?
imjustsayinAug 22, 2006
You do, of course, realize that Microsoft is worth twice as much as Google? This is true even at Google's currently artificially high stock price.Microsoft also has several times more revenue, profit, and cash than Google.
ntensifyAug 22, 2006
Except for the fact that there's little or no more incentive to invent anything once you've been bought out by a fat, rich corporation. Sit back on your ass for the rest of your life and live off the interest from your acquisition (well, if you're high enough in the company to effect anything; if you're a low level pion coder, you're likely to get thrown into the Microsoft Resource Reallocation Pool and/or fired). When competition is cutthroat, it's every man for himself, invent or be outpaced. When you're on top, all you've got to do is stay on top; do whatever your competitor's doing, even if it's half assed. As long as you've got a name like Microsoft on your side, your clients will keep purchasing your product regardless if it's crap or not.If Microsoft were serious about helping invention/innovation, it'd invest in these companies instead. Don't buy them out, give them a set amount of funds based on a fixed goal structure. They meet the goal, they get more cash, Microsoft gets to say they helped in construction of it and the company keeps innovating (because it still has to). In fact, it'd make a hell of a lot of sense for Microsoft to spin off a computer and information technology venture captial fund much as Google has with its own Google.org funds.
axemachineAug 22, 2006
Yes, it's just better to make someone else product useless with your new OS upgrade instead and encourage developers that way. At least they are getting money for their effort this way.