Six billion dollars. $6,000,000,000 USD. Holy crap.It is an expensive move that reeks of desperation. For four years, Microsoft was unable to build what they now have to buy. This acquisition is a costly admission of failure.
This is a huge demonstration of fear, desperation, and dim-dog market tail-light chasing greed on [Microsoft's] part. Every acquisition represents our failure to use our 70,000+ employee base to solve a solution or create a new market.
Seeing how much aQuantive is aligned with us and our technology stack makes you on the surface say, "hmm, yes, excellent strategic acquisition." Then you see the price tag.
See also my Nov 2006 post, "Google dominates, MSN Search sinks", where I said, "It really is remarkable how badly Microsoft is doing against Google." Those same words come to mind now.
2 comments:
While I agree that $6B is too much, there isn't anything inherently wrong about a company acquiring another company or it's technology. Where would Microsoft be without MS-DOS, Hotmail, IE, SQL Server and others which weren't developed from scratch by Microsoft developers? It is equally a failure for a company not to recognize buying opportunities.
6B was far too much, making it look like a desperate move to get press headlines instead of a strategic move to fill a platform gap.
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