Microsoft acquires Nuance—makers of Dragon speech rec—for $16 billion:
Earlier today, Microsoft announced its plans to purchase Nuance for $56 per share—23 percent above Nuance's closing price last Friday. The deal adds up to a $16 billion cash outlay and a total valuation for Nuance of about $19.7 billion, including that company's assumed debt.
Nuance is a well-known player in the field of natural language recognition. The company's technology is the core of Apple's Siri personal assistant. Nuance also sells well-known personal speech-recognition software Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which is invaluable to many people with a wide range of physical disabilities.
[...] Acquiring Nuance gives Microsoft direct access to the company's entire health care customer list. It also gives Microsoft the opportunity to push Nuance technology—currently, mostly used in the US—to Microsoft's own large international market. Nuance chief executive Mark Benjamin—who will continue to run Nuance as a Microsoft division after the acquisition—describes it as an opportunity to "superscale how we change an industry."
[...] The acquisition has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both Nuance and Microsoft, and it is expected to close by the end of 2021.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:07AM
How long will it take Microsoft to screw up Dragon so badly no one wants to use it?
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:13AM (1 child)
The original developers of Dragon got screwed long ago. If they are still alive, this must break their hearts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking#History [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 13 2021, @11:03AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:16AM (2 children)
MS seems to act more and more like IBM. Shedding their Windows business like IBM did with PC/Thinikpad business.
One thing for sure - MS is, and has been for years, no longer a high-growth high-tech outfit. Just like IBM, it's a low-growth, "high-tech" (?) dinosaur holding company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:20AM
Guess MS will hold onto Windows business for a while, just like IBM kept on their mainframe business - gotta suck on the cashcow's tits.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday April 13 2021, @12:59PM
Except, OTOH, MS has Azure, and cloud-based CRM, SharePoint, Office etc. etc. etc.
I can't even name IBMs cloud offerings, do they even have any?
MS is no longer a high-growth high-tech desktop platform (or mobile) business. And they don't care, and nor do their shareholders - compare MSFT vs. IBM over last 5yrs, I know where I'd have put my money.
(Score: 4, Funny) by drussell on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:19AM (5 children)
Sure, just like they "superscaled" change within the cellular phone industry by destroying Nokia!
(Score: 4, Touché) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 13 2021, @11:04AM (4 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday April 13 2021, @01:03PM (1 child)
Were? Some of us are still using WM10 / lumias as daily driver and dreading the hardware death and forced migration to one of the ugly-sisters or mobile OS.
I do miss WP8.1 though - much better in many ways.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 13 2021, @02:01PM
I will confess to playing with whatever MS OS was on the earlier Lumias for a day, and compared to all of the iPhone/Android/Meego/Sailfish buttonless swipey interfaces it was easily the least bad. I'd almost say I liked it. I averaged about 1 "why did it do that?" or "why is it forcing me to do this the least efficient way possible" per hour, rather than about 1 per minute in some of the others. I still have a couple of N9s (so-called Meego, which was actually marketting bullshit), and a Jolla, and I literally never use them, unless I need the GPS/maps. (So only on holiday, which is never, thanks Wuhan!)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday April 13 2021, @03:16PM (1 child)
I'm still using Nokia 5300 phones... I've got three of them.
I think I'm currently on my last good, working, original unit but with the parts from the other two (like on one, I just cracked the screen somehow) to make at least one more good one again, I'm sure. I just bought a couple more brand new batteries for about $5, so I should be good for at least another few years. :)
I love these things... Tiny, yet robust so it is easy to carry in a pocket and lasts a week on a single battery charge... Better radio in it than most "modern" phones, so reception is fine where others don't even have signal, etc.
What's not to like?!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 13 2021, @03:33PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @06:23AM (1 child)
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @06:45AM
You know, back in the days when I had to work with MS stuff, you had to search MSDN for tech/API info. You couldn't find shit with the built-in search engine or Bing. You had to google it to get some half-way decent relevant info from, get this, MSDN Lib.
All that money MS made from Windows/Office, they hired garbage talents/management and couldn't compete with Google.
NB: Fuck google.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anti-aristarchus on Tuesday April 13 2021, @06:42AM
Tos POiss bugger all co93*^n SKyp2 in Multbuzzard multi Langrupart peeehapperishy, eeheobntyheo colattatteral, Just help me!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @08:20AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @12:57PM
Me: "Dragon, take dictation"
Dragon: "OK, ready"
Me: "Dear Sir, please find enclosed $15 for purchase of Linux disk"
Dragon: "Did you mean 'Please upgrade my PC to Windows 10'?"
Me: "No, fill out Linux order form"
Dragon: "OK, upgrading to Windows 10. If you want to halt upgrade, just say so"
Me: "No, do not want"
Dragon: "OK, you did not say 'so', proceeding with upgrade"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @02:43PM
I've always wanted to learn how to speak like a drag queen.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 13 2021, @03:34PM
(Score: 1) by js290 on Tuesday April 13 2021, @08:42PM
Man, hopefully there will be updates to Swype as well. Gboard & AOSP keyboard are still horrible compared to last stable release of Swype.