10 Microsoft Acquisitions and What They Mean Now 145
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CmdrTaco
from the if-you-can't-beat-it-buy-it dept.
from the if-you-can't-beat-it-buy-it dept.
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."
Something's amiss... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like it might be an interesting article. Also looks odd - a slashdot article submission about Microsoft that's, at worse, neutral. Where's the pro-forma jab?
"And Microsoft's recent acquisition track record may lend credence to the heavy criticism levied against the company by former employees like Dick Brass."
Ah... there it is.
What a weird list. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bungie, Visio, Great Plains Software?
These three companies have made more money and been more influential than these companies!
MicroSoft Going To Innovate.... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Hi, MicroSoft here and with all this bad press coming out lately, I would like to ensure you that we have some truly revolutionary products coming out soon... blah blah blah."
Wake me up when they actually produce something cool that I can touch and feel. I'm getting tired of the standard "MicroSoft is going to innovate, just wait and see" PR tagline.
Turf Wars (Score:3, Interesting)
So how many of you have been in mid sized growing companies that eventually kill off any sort of innovation they had due to Turf Wars? Every mid
sized company I have ever worked for tend to start the death spiral just about before they hit the 300-400 million mark. Sure the brand carries
them for a while but all innovation starts dying due to politics and turf wars. Most will start heavy acquisitions at this point to stay ahead but that
only turns the acquired into mush. It is a interesting phenomena to watch from the sidelines as the business inevitably implodes.
Flurry of negative Microsoft stories (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it me, or has the press turned really critical of Microsoft in past couple of months? It sort of feels like the barbarians are at the gate, waiting to taste Balmer's bitter flesh. Yesterday it came to a crescendo with Joe Wilcox publishing a devastating piece [betanews.com] on how middle manager culture is destroying innovation at the company.
I can't really peg this on one single thing, but if I were to guess, it's probably because Apple and Google are mapping out the future while Microsoft is still hung up chasing ghosts of yesteryear with me-too products with little or no tangible value.
Or perhaps it's just confirmation bias on my part because I don't particularly care for the company or majority of their products.
It's not talked about much (Score:5, Interesting)
because you usually hear it from the executives and others who are well taken care of...
But having living through an acquisition by Microsoft of the small company I was working at, I personally found Microsoft's internal culture to be toxic to much of what made our startup successful in the first place. As I saw it, for the typical 'guy in the trenches' your competition soon stops being the other companies competing in your market and becomes your co-workers. The success of your origination is disconnected from the success of its products in the marketplace, while your personal success soon depends almost entirely upon your skills at competing against your peers, as it is predetermined how many winners and losers there will be amongst you.
Re:Still the best one by far (Score:4, Interesting)
Though not acquired in the past 5 years, Visio is still the best "Microsoft" product. It is the only one I wish I had, as the open source alternatives don't have the bells and whistles that make Visio a great product.
Visio is certainly usable and I might even grant you nicer than Dia. It is still not as nice as OmniGraffle which (while not OSS) blows Visio out of the water in many ways.
Re:Smart buys (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple did more than slap their name on it and sell it. Apple uses it's acquisitions as pieces to complete a puzzle.
"MultiTouch" was the missing piece to get the iPhone out the door.
They bought P.A. Semi in 2008, I bet the Apple ARM chip is more than something made in 2008 and stamped with a logo. But it's what was needed to get the iPad out.
iTunes has moved far beyond what it was originally.
It's because Gates is gone (Score:4, Interesting)
It's true that Gates may not have been a real leader of Microsoft since the 1980s, but like Jobs he was the charismatic symbol of his company. The media ate up his "The Road Ahead" stuff just like they fawn over Jobs' keynotes. Ballmer, despite his sometimes amusing antics, is basically a generic CEO of no real consequence or media appeal.
Re:Simple adaptation (Score:5, Interesting)
Innovation in any large company is hard regardless of the market. I don't recall MS innovating much of anything...ever, but then I'm a Mac person.
Someone above wrote about what it was like to be in a small company taken over by MS. If the corporate culture is to promote a competition amongst the employees instead of competition geared toward competitors, then MS is probably what results. If you have a good idea, your co-workers will screw you because if it succeeds, they do not. That leaves the competition aspect of MS in the hands of Business School Product who understand nothing technical and but who really get "screwing a competitor" as a measure of success. Good ideas rise to the top at MS in spite of their current culture as opposed to because of their current culture.
Many other companies are in the same boat. HP used to be an innovator before they became PC/printer box makers. They screwed their engineering culture and now attempts to get it back are drowned by the Business School Product running the company. IBM appears somewhat similar although they do seem to have some hardware innovation kept alive, probably an oversight that will get killed off eventually.
It's a bit hard to tell where Apple's innovation comes from since the company is so secretive. Presumably, they have not neutered their engineering and some ideas are bubbling up from them.
Re:Danger, Danger! (Score:1, Interesting)
Danger is a funny one to me. I simply don't understand what it was that Microsoft thought they were buying. Danger phones don't run Windows, that's probably a big part of the reason why people use them. Was DangerOS suppose to some how influence Windows Mobile? Fat chance of that happening, it doesn't appear that reality can influence that beast, let alone a nimby product. They outsource their hardware, so while they probably do/did have a digital team they were still dependent upon others for manufacturing and logistics. Then I can speak as a former sidekick user (the 1 and the 3) they were pretty crappy phones; it was kind of cool to IM or do some of the email stuff but the web browser was so amazingly slow and you got nickle and dimed for every single app or anything that the glow quickly faded. As a phone they were both pieces of crap.
Were they simply after some market share with the youth? Or were they after some of that "killer" server side stuff that crashed? I just don't get it. Why not just cross license the razr or something? A lot of those other companies, I can see some sort of logic being applied, perhaps broken logic but some sort of logic none the less. but with Danger? I can't make any sense of it.
Re:Smart buys (Score:4, Interesting)
The three companies are quite different.
Microsoft invests a ton of money in research and acquiring companies, but it never seems to have much impact on their products.
Apple invests nothing in research and a lot in acquiring companies, and they are excellent at getting their money's worth by putting the technology into products.
Google invests a decent amount of money in their own research (but they aren't as blue sky as Microsoft Research), they acquire quite a bit, and they usually end up putting a fair amount of both in-house and acquired technology into products.
Agreed, 110% (w/ many of your sentiments), but... (Score:0, Interesting)
"The personal computer OS is a mature product category, and would be better served -- especially in Microsoft's case -- by fixing its plethora of bugs and security holes and misfeatures and just supporting new hardware as it comes along. While they're at it, maybe they could focus on optimizing its memory and CPU usage so that there's more left over for -- again -- the applications its supposed to support." - by Angst Badger (8636) on Thursday February 11, @12:26PM (#31101402)
Agreed, 110%! However, I do think Microsoft has begun to do THAT VERY THING, because the past few "Microsoft 'Patch Tuesdays'" (the past 4-5 or so) have been pretty "extensive" (a couple were the largest ever known @ one shot for instance, the last one & one a few before it for example)... so, I think they are "onto" your point.
The OS itself is pretty solid. imo @ least (by that, I mean the "Windows NT-based family", & of that family (2000/XP/Server 2003/VISTA/Server 2008/Windows 7) specifically Server 2003, Server 2008, & Windows 7 are the "highlights" of the best of them all...
(Well - Regarding the latter 2, Server 2008 & Win7 - albeit ONLY with a couple suggestions I sent to a MS manager who posts here named Foredecker (who actually listened (after initially objecting to 2 points I made on DNS client cache & the HOSTS file)). He is now looking into 2 said points I made on his/their/MS' end of things (which I will have an answer to soon, by March, per his "impromptu deadline" he set on the points I had made to he)).
They're NOT stupid people, & they hire some of the BEST TALENT OUT THERE (Anders Heijelsberg & Dr. Mark Russinovich being 2 I know of for example)... it's just that they have a HUMUNGOUS product line (in summation) to take care of + keep track of vulnerabilities in alone. Not a "small" undertaking I'd imagine. They just have their work cut out for them... specifically the MOST in IE & Office.
APK
P.S.=> To this point of yours though? I have to disagree, based sheerly on their results of owning MOST of the "PC Market share":
"Microsoft is failing miserably (and, for misguided marketing purposes, deliberately) at both." - by Angst Badger (8636) on Thursday February 11, @12:26PM (#31101402)
They've come QUITE a long ways, & again - look @ the size + amount of apps they have to take care of (again for both security vulnerabilities AND performance improvements purposes)... I mean, E.G.-> Last I knew of? Windows 2000 (older & smaller) topped 30-40 million lines of code (largest project I personally ever wrote or co-wrote was 5++ million lines of code + SQL backend stuff like stored procedures etc. et al)... that's NOT a 'trivial undertaking' to try to find every possible bug in OR to find performance improvements in.
Personally? I am surprised on 2 accounts ( & here is what I'd do diff. than MS does, for their own good AND those of their users too):
1.) Ship the OS "closed" (security hardened, with most risky stuff, if not all, "turned off") - User wants to "turn them on" (such as using ActiveX &/or javascript)? Then, the USER TAKES THE RISK, period/point-blank.
2.) Dump the code into ASM (x86 assembly), or, as much as possible of it... why?? Performance! They no longer write for MIPS/Alpha (RISC stuff), so why bother keep it written in C/C++?? I mean, other than for maintenance purposes (because C/C++ are easier to read-write/understand than Assembly language is), C/C++ are SLOWER (yes, & I don't care what compiler you use either, they still are slower than straight ASM).
apk
Re:It's not talked about much (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, what he said.
I also worked at a smallish company that was acquired by Microsoft (funny it wasn't on the list in TFA, it fits the time span of five years, and some of the companies mentioned in TFA were acquired fist). My description of MSFT's internal culture would be "pathological," but I guess "toxic" works, too.
How pathological? *Every one* was required to go through a full series of Microsoft interviews in order to keep our jobs. Submit your resume, the whole nine yards. Of course, most of my interviewers quite obviously hadn't even bothered to read my resume, leading to some pretty "interesting" questions and some answers along the lines of "I don't know; I don't do that."
One of them actually admitted point-blank that he hadn't read my resume and said he was too busy to bother with that. Classy, that. I bet he fits in pretty well at MSFT, though. A couple of others also pretty obviously hadn't but didn't 'fess up. So mostly, my "interviews" consisted of explaining to people who hadn't a clue what I did or what my team did what it was we did, since they seemed to have not read our job descriptions either.
I met a former Danger employee not long ago. Some interesting stories there, too.
Point taken, but not "undoable" (just BIG effort) (Score:1, Interesting)
"You cant convert Windows to ASM because of x86-64 and Itanium. Both of which have different instruction sets to plain x86." - by jonwil (467024) on Thursday February 11, @08:28PM (#31108370)
Why not though? IF performance gains aren't obtainable anymore via better engines/algorithms... then, why NOT move the code (or as much as possible of it) to Assembly code instead of C/C++? This is NOT "undoable" on MS' part (though it would be a MAJOR PAIN & EFFORT, I can concede that).
That alone would probably quite easily "eke" another 10-20% (at least) performance boost out of Windows of ANY KIND/VERSION, & right off the bat, doing that alone.
The reason I note this?
Well, that is because it was how I heard a how MS got LARGE part of how they "got more" performance out of the far older Windows 3.x series: Going "straight asm" as much as possible (or, so I heard tell in the "dim days of yore", circa 15-16++ yrs. back), vs. using C/C++ as the base code for much of it.
Still: I concede, that You have a point, & that it'd mean more than just doing a conversion for 32-bit processors today. I wasn't thinking about 64-bit (so, point taken) but... that doesn't mean that changing to assembly level code, vs. C/C++, on the Itanium or other 64-bit (or hybrids) chips is "undoable" either!
(Only REAL question is, would it worth the effort & dollars that'd have to be expended (because as we all know from the world of business, there is a matter of "ROI"... would gaining another immediate say, 20% gain, be worth changing over the code of an entire OS for the dollars spent in the doing of it?)).
APK
P.S.=> It's just a thought on MS doing a build of a modern Windows (such as Windows 7) in pure or NEAR pure ASM code for x86 (or variants possibly, but I'd think that'd matter most for gamers actually as far as performance nuts go out there)...
ALSO - I still think that MS would be much better served by going to a "security hardened" model of Windows (per my 1st of my 2 suggestions in my previous posts' "p.s." section @ its termination to which you replied to here)!
Why?
Well, then they would put the responsibility onto the end users out there, letting them know the risks of various things they face by "turning said things on", & thus, letting users assume the responsibility of "turning on" the things in computers that are risky today, such as Javascript &/or ActiveX (as just a couple examples thereof)...
I mean, hey - Let's face it: Those tools are "the harbingers of doom" in a GOOD 90% or better of today's exploits upon end-users worldwide... apk