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from the good-business-or-something-else dept.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/06/01/microsoft--github-acquisition-talks-resume.html
Microsoft held talks in the past few weeks to acquire software developer platform GitHub, Business Insider reports.
One person familiar with the discussions between the companies told CNBC that they had been considering a joint marketing partnership valued around $35 million, and that those discussions had progressed to a possible investment or outright acquisition. It is unclear whether talks are still ongoing, but this person said that GitHub's price for a full acquisition was more than Microsoft currently wanted to pay.
GitHub was last valued at $2 billion in its last funding round 2015, but the price tag for an acquisition could be $5 billion or more, based on a price that was floated last year.
(Score: 4, Informative) by canopic jug on Saturday June 02 2018, @02:55PM (1 child)
M$ has made a lot of big purchases in recent years. If you look at them individually they do not make economic sense and have no possibility for return on investment. However, if you look at the fact that M$ makes its money from monopoly rents, not software or services, then they make sense in that they cut out competitors to the monopoly. M$ has purchased lately these:
And there are more, too, but none of those will bring in anything close to their purchase price, let alone leave room for a profit on top of that. All of those are past peak and M$ overpaid. If you take the devices that people actually use into consideration, M$ Windows has dropped to 36% of the market [statcounter.com] and even if you limit the scope M$ Windows has dropped to 82% of the market [statcounter.com]. The cutoff to be able to pull in those rents probably was around 85% of the desktop market, but when it drops below 80% even people not paying attention will notice.
M$ also seems to be shuffling its budget around to give the illusion that Azure is doing ok economically.
So when it goes, it will deflate rather quickly though because of its cultlike nature there will be a very long tail.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 02 2018, @05:57PM
the biggest and fastest growth market in history... buggy whips, indeed.
I anticipate a periodic gasp of mildly exciting profitability to emanate from Redmond in the future, similar to IBM's performance over the past 25 years. We do need to keep them on a short leash with respect to monopoly rents, that has always been the nature of their beast.
🌻🌻 [google.com]