10 Microsoft Acquisitions and What They Mean Now 145
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."
Smart buys (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the companies on that list were intelligent purchasing decisions by Microsoft, even if all of them didn't pan out in the end. Most of them even have examples included of where their input has specifically improved Microsoft's products. I think that Dick Brass's article in the Times was fairly harsh, but if what he says is true and Microsoft no longer has the capability for innovation, then buying innovators with their still-impressive supply of cash and then successfully integrating their work into their products is a good substitute for coming up with those ideas themselves. It's certainly not ideal, but it can work as long as they still have the funds to do so.
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Innovation at Microsoft ended long, long ago. Microsoft has failed to produce a single innovation that it has not outright purchased for a at least a decade. And no, ClearType is not an innovation: others were doing subpixel font smoothing well before ClearType came along. The sad thing is that without the ability to innovate internally, they will lack the mobility to survive the coming storm of change in their industry. Vista failed to deliver innovation in operating systems, Windows 7 is just Microsoft
Re:Smart buys (Score:5, Insightful)
and how is this different from Apple and Google which are current tech rag favorites? both are on a buying spree. Almost every new Google service in the last few years has been based on a company they bought. just like Apple's multi-touch was as a result of a tiny startup they bought a few years ago
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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.
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"MultiTouch" was the missing piece to get the iPhone out the door.
MultiTouch was a nice gimmick, something that gave them a brand identity, just like other UI quirks before that. It's not an essential feature; you can build an excellent phone without it.
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How can you say that!? Have you seen the iPad?!
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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.
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How many days till the heat death of the universe?
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In the early '90s, we were waiting for the Great Satan that is IBM to fall.
And they eventually did, just not all the way down.
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Well, that was sort of the point I was making. They're still around and doing fine but they're no longer the mighty computer powerhouse they once were. I think that's where Microsoft will end up eventually, which is good-- not so much because MS is particularly evil (there have been much worse companies in U.S. history) but because it's best that there is no one controlling powerhouse entity at all. The more distributed things get, the better off we all are.
IBM and Microsoft are evenly matched (Score:2)
IBM [wikipedia.org]
Revenue: US$ 95.757 billion (2009)
Operating income: US$ 17.012 billion (2009)
Net income: US$ 13.425 billion (2009)
Total assets: US$ 109.023 billion (2009)
Total equity: US$ 22.637 billion (2009)
Microsoft [wikipedia.org]
Revenue: US$ 58.437 billion (2009)
Operating income: US$ 20.363 billion (2009)
Net income: US$ 14.569 billion (2009)
Total assets: US$ 77.888 billion (2009)
Total equity: US$ 39.558 billion (2009)
Pretty evenly matched, actually.
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Pretty evenly matched, actually.
Interesting, but it doesn't quite tell the whole story. IBM may be making as much money as Microsoft but MS has much more impact in the computing industry. Still, it backs up my general contention which is that while IBM is doing fine, it's no longer the 600-pound personal computer gorilla that it used to be--it ceded that role to Microsoft. I think that's how Microsoft itself will end up eventually. It won't go away but it will no longer be as important as it is now.
Re:Smart buys (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista failed to deliver innovation in operating systems, Windows 7 is just Microsoft playing catchup with Apple [...]
People say this a lot, but is there really that much innovation to be done in the operating system space, at least for end users? (The server space is, of course, quite different.) Personally, I'd be a lot happier if Microsoft stopped "innovating" with Windows, unless the innovation in question is to get the hell out of my face and operate smoothly so I can focus on my applications, which are why I have a computer in the first place. It's 2010, for crying out loud. 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.
Being as we are, as a group, actually interested in the inner workings of operating systems, it's sometimes hard to remember that operating systems are mainly visible to users to the extent that they don't work as well as they should. A good operating system is unnoticeable for users and highly tractable for developers. Microsoft is failing miserably (and, for misguided marketing purposes, deliberately) at both.
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You cant convert Windows to ASM because of x86-64 and Itanium.
Both of which have different instruction sets to plain x86.
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Windows 7 is just Microsoft playing catchup with Apple
OSX 10.6 has 2% of the market. Win 7 8%. [and in daily tracking a tad under 10%] Vista and Win 7 combined have 25% of the market. Top Operating System Share Trend [hitslink.com]
Ars Technica posted this interesting chart of Windows usage on Steam: [arstechnica.com]
19% of Steam users are running 64 bit Windows 7. "There are more users on Windows 7 64-bit than any other flavor of Windows, except for Windows XP 32-bit."
Re:Smart buys (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't say playing catchup in marketshare, they mean catchup in features, stability performance and appearance etc..
People don't buy windows because they've assessed multiple competing options (including osx and linux) and found windows to be technically superior or better value for money, they buy it because they don't realise anything else exists, because they're afraid to learn something new or because theyre forced to by having their data held to ransom by proprietary applications and their formats.
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People don't buy windows because they've assessed multiple competing options (including osx and linux) and found windows to be technically superior or better value for money, they buy it because they don't realise anything else exists...
Should I take you as saying that Apple has been keeping its light hidden a bushel for the past thirty-three years?
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Apple might be very well known in the US, but in other countries they are less so...
They are also considered, rightly or wrongly, to be expensive and many people don't realise apple even make computers...
Re:Smart buys (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't buy windows because they've assessed multiple competing options ...
Depending on the user, the thought of the OS was probably secondary to the intended task: Run a web browser. Think about the typical user. And by typical, I mean grandma, mom, brother, dad, friend down the way that aren't tech geeks like the readers here. They just use a computer to get things done, like driving a car to get to work. They just use it, it is just a tool. This kind of user could care the hell less about the OS wars. They mock people like you and me for even caring about something "so trivial, because they all look the same anyways." (that is a direct quote, and it bugged me) And for many, many people, using a computer means running a web browser to get to FaceBook, MySpace, AOL, Gmail, etc, etc. The OS underneath doesn't matter for many of these people. Oh, sure, some of them want to type up documents, maybe write up a quick spreadsheet to help calculate some costs, but even then, the apps look the same on all platforms.
The difference comes in the money used to purchase the product. If dad only wants to spend $400 on "something that will let me read e-mail", it is probably going to be a PC with a copies of Windows already included. So, no, there is no comparison shopping be done. There is no point for them.
Think about the last time you bought a broom. Did you feature compare several models? Hate it or not, but the computer is on the level of a broom to most users. This fact bothers me...a lot. But I have had to come to terms with it.
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For people like your described "dad", Linux would sell very well if appropriately marketed... It will let them do what people want, and be available very cheaply including a large set of apps, on the cheapest of hardware.
The key however, is marketing and training the sales droids...
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Install Linux and code any applications yourself that are not commercially available? Brilliant.
No, personally, I just virtualize the legacy-ware like Windows until a viable alternative for the software I need becomes available. I'm down to one last application. Anybody know of any turn by turn based navigation solutions available for Linux?
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roadnav, not sure how good it is though.
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For linux on a desktop/laptop not that i know of, someone did mention roadnav but i haven't looked at it...
But a lot of dedicated gps devices (eg tomtom) actually run on linux, since those boxes run arm processors i wonder if it would be feasible to make their software run on an arm netbook...
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Yeah, because Steam is representative of overall desktop operating system use.
In other news, Canonical claims that Ubuntu use is nearly 100% based on their Web server logs.
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Re:Smart buys (Score:5, Funny)
LINQ
The list goes on; if you're into language design then Microsoft is definitely the place to be right now. They've managed to gather some absolutely brilliant people.
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Take out the ClearType reference, substitute 2000 and XP for Vista and Windows 7, and you have a meme from 2001.
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Gee - right around the time Bill stepped down as CEO - wonder if THAT had anything to do with it?
Re:Smart buys (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you missed a key point of Dick Brass's article. Even with innovative technologies at Microsoft (whether homegrown or acquired), there are too many internal power struggles going on for those innovations to ever really shine through or live up to their full potential. It's really a symptom of the corporate culture that's been allowed to fester for far too long there.
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Microsoft has never "innovated" anything in its history, unless you count software licenseing or vendor agreements.
They even bought DOS [wikipedia.org] from someone else, for crying out loud.
The best case you could possibly make for them is WindowsNT. They developed that in-house, but they did it by hiring the team that created VMS away from DEC and setting them loose. It wasn't entirely a home-brewed thing.
This is just a story about Microsoft doing what they've always done for the last 30 years. If you want to find
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It just makes sense. Which ever side is larger will have more influence (it works that way with everything) and Microsoft buying up a small company means that company will almost certainly be absorbed into the borg-like company that lac
It can only be good... (Score:3, Insightful)
Grow or die... but, it has allowed MS to improve their product offerings over time. Should be interesting to see what the future holds.
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Fixed that for you.
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There can be only one!
Resistance is futile.
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Sarah Palin Will Not Have Sex With You.
Man, is that ever a relief...
"Become"? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator.
Microsoft has always been a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator (though I suppose dumpster-diving does require a certain amount of agility).
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.
kdawson (Score:2, Offtopic)
I've been able to get pro-Microsoft articles posted by kdawson by slandering Microsoft in my summaries just because I know he's less likely to read the article itself if I slam Microsoft in my write-up.
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I've been able to get pro-Microsoft articles posted by kdawson...
The idea that articles would be pro or con seems insane to me. What ever happened to journalism? It seems like everyone has decided it is more profitable to have rabid, emotionally driven dichotomies to sell "news" rather than just strong, objective, fact-based journalism.
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The idea that articles would be pro or con seems insane to me.
While there's a lot to be said for objective journalism, there's as much to be said for op-ed pages. Personally, I rather enjoy the mix of both to consider and read comments for on any given day on /.
That said - there's a cycle of posting on /. and if one reads day-in, day-out for years, and remembers, then one finds that the cycle is a common outcry of "/. is anti-Microsoft" alternating with the common outcry of "/. is anti-Apple" - when neither is strictly true, it's just a cycle that's observable. (As I
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The stupid people are taking over, and they don't understand this "strong, objective, fact-based" mumbo-jumbo you speak of. They barely understand what you mean by journalism any more.
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It seems like everyone has decided it is more profitable to have rabid, emotionally driven dichotomies to sell "news" rather than just strong, objective, fact-based journalism.
This "objective journalism" you pine for never existed.
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> Where's the pro-forma jab?
I took care of that. See my comment above.
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!
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Bungie and Visio joined Microsoft in 2000, and Great Plains Software was purchased in 2001, all of which are before the scope of this list.
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.
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The new ZUNE tablet! a 10.1" LCD screen ZUNE! You've never seen tablet computing like this before!
now available in moss green, turd brown and Ballmer Blue.
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Well you're in luck! Apple has one called the iPad! [*]
[*] No woosh necessary. I knew that's what the parent meant.
You can call me Admiral Obvious. I've been promoted.
Danger, Danger! (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, Danger, the company that all the competent people abandoned, and ended messing up the storage/backup for all of T-Mobile Sidekick users' data?
How did that go anyway, I heard they managed to find a way to recover most of it?
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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 ma
Still the best one by far (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
If you have had to use it - you know exactly what I'm talking about. Its got all the interoperability of Microsoft products that you'd expect, with all the ease of use and understanding that each Office iteration lacks.
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.
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is still not as nice as OmniGraffle which (while not OSS) blows Visio out of the water in many ways
I haven't used Visio since before MS bought it, but that seems like a really unfair comparison. They are very different products for very different uses and there are a lot of things that one can do but the other can't (try creating UML in OmniGraffle, for example; it's even more of an exercise in frustration than things involving UML usually are).
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They are very different products for very different uses...
I actually find they overlap pretty well for all the uses I put either product to.
try creating UML in OmniGraffle, for example; it's even more of an exercise in frustration than things involving UML usually are
You can use OmniGraffle for simple UML diagrams if you grab a template, but for the most part neither Visio or OmniGraffle is a proper tool for exporting UML for any production purposes. There are a number of good products for that purpose, but it's kind of like using Excel as a database to use Visio or OmniGraffle for UML.
Slide Show warning (Score:2)
And I'm not seeing a print button
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Entire article in one post:
Fast Search & Transfer (January 2008)
While much of Microsoft's recent push into search has been on the consumer side with Bing, Microsoft's $1.2 billion acquisition of Norway-based Fast Search & Transfer has helped the software giant make inroads in the enterprise search market. More than 10,000 of Microsoft's enterprise customers have deployed Fast's technology to date, and Microsoft's free Search Server Express product has been downloaded more than 200,000 times, accordi
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My plan worked flawlessly
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.
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are
you inserting
hard
carriage-returns
in your
response?
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 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.
Sure, but what about CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet? (Score:3, Funny)
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They have the Internet on computers now?
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: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.
I question his creditability (Score:1, Troll)
His group invented ClearType? Don't make me laugh. The technique popular during Apple II [cnn.com] days and this guy has the gall to claim credit for it. I say this renders his creditability as questionable.
Re:I question his creditability (Score:4, Informative)
The claim that Apple II technique was proper subpixel antialiasing by design is debunked on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
Simple adaptation (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason why Microsoft is more of an acquire company than an innovation company is that the waters it swims in are different these days.
When MS started out, they had little money and the market was nearly empty. Very little competition. So the best move for MS to make was innovation. Come up with something new and market that. And hope to make it big, which they did. It was a gamble.
Now, MS is HUGE. And the market is full - loads of competition. They don't have to innovate anymore. They can assimilate small fish that do their innovation for them. They don't have to take the risks a small company would have to take anymore. A startup in this environment would have to gamble hugely to get big. There isn't much room. Patents and other competition means there are very small survival spaces in the ecosystem. That is what MS is hoping to acquire. The "oh wow I didn't think of that" part of the market. They don't have to think like a small "hope we can make it" company anymore. They're here to stay. Now given that, what is the best strategy? Stop anyone else from competing at their scale. Buy them out and make the marketplace ecosystem even smaller.
The environment has changed, so MS changed to adapt to the new environment. It's not surprising.
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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.
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You do know that Microsoft was a successful company before it purchased QDOS and got its big break, don't you? It's primary product was a very nice BASIC interpreter, but it got into other fields, including producing a Unix variant.
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They bought a unix variant from SCO, they did not create it.
long before SCO became SCO group and went nuts.
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Thank you for the correction.
Um, you do know that Microsoft was a successful company before it started buying other companies and products, like what they turned into Xenix and MS-DOS and that Lisp-like thing from that Hawaiian company?
Producing the best BASIC interpreter around took innovation.
Simple Adaptation (Score:1, Offtopic)
The reason why Microsoft is more of an acquire company than an innovation company is that the waters it swims in are different these days.
When MS started out, they had little money and the market was nearly empty. Very little competition. So the best move for MS to make was innovation. Come up with something new and market that. And hope to make it big, which they did. It was a gamble.
Now, MS is HUGE. And the market is full - loads of competition. They don't have to innovate anymore. They can assimila
Live by the sword, die by the sword (Score:4, Insightful)
Internal competition is common at great companies. It can be wisely encouraged to force ideas to compete. The problem comes when the competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive. At Microsoft, it has created a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence.
This sounds like the same thing they do to external competition.
Microsoft is me. (Score:2)
The small company I work for is now mired in its own processes. I have no authority to do anything to change that. The positive is that we will not get to the stage of being an attractive acquisition, so jobs are pretty safe.
The downside is all the key innovators ( I include myself) at my work feel stymied.
I would not feel sorry for the strategists at Microsoft, but I would feel sorry for their innovators. Their day cannot be a cakewalk.
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But hey...at least your still getting a paycheck, right?
That's
Unintentional monopoly? (Score:3, Insightful)
The author was only there from '97 to '04. There was nothing unintentional about it. If you know their history you know this. Their restrictive licensing began in the '80s. For example, early on they made license deals with manufacturers, e.g. Dell and Gateway. What that came down to was the manufacturer had to pay a fee whether or not a PC shipped with an MS OS. So what did they do? Ship only MS OS on their machines. MS was locking out the competition as as fast as possible.
This is also the company that said, It's not done until Lotus won't run".
Ballmer earning profits? He lead MS into their first ever period of losses. Now only remediated by Windows 7. Vista was a train wreck.
Being a monopoly has done what it always does; t makes a company fat, sloppy, lazy, and unimaginative.
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Translation:
"Wah, stop bashing my favorite big corporation! The other big corporations are no better, blah blah, whinge, whinge".
CLUE: intelligent people don't have "favorite" big corporations.
Where did he profess his love for any corporation? Pointing out that Google gets much of its innovation from others doesn't mean he loves Microsoft or any other large corporation. I guess an intelligent person such as yourself already knew that.
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BASIC is pretty much the reason why Microsoft exists. Altair BASIC, Applesoft Basic, MBASIC, Atari BASIC, Commodore BASIC, BASICA, GWBASIC, AmigaBasic, QuickBASIC, Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications, ...
Virtually every home / personal computer shipped (in the U.S.) during the early 1980s, including the original IBM PC, had Microsoft software in ROM. Those that didn't usually came with a derivative of Microsoft BASIC as part of the operating system. This factor should not be underestimated.
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Welcome to