zlacker

Remember when they did this?

"Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 Billion" -https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/

To then write down their assets?

"How Skype lost its crown to Zoom" - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/skype-coronavirus-pandemic Or when they did this ?

Or how in 2014...

"Microsoft buying Nokia's phone business in a $7.2 billion bid for its mobile future" - https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/2/4688530/microsoft-buys-nok...

Then in 2016 sold it for 360 million?

"Nokia returns to the phone market as Microsoft sells brand" - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/18/nokia-ret...

>>belter+(OP)
Satya was not responsible for those 2 purchases

>>belter+(OP)
Pre Satya history is irrelevant to the current MSFT

>>belter+(OP)
True, but that was when ballmer was at the helm

>>belter+(OP)
Remember when they did this?

"Microsoft to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion" - https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/04/microsoft-to-acquire-g...

only to enable GitHub to do greater things, without disrupting user experience?

"Four years after being acquired by Microsoft, GitHub keeps doing its thing" - https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/26/four-years-after-being-acq...

or when they acquired LinkedIn before that?

"Microsoft buys LinkedIn" - https://news.microsoft.com/announcement/microsoft-buys-linke...

which turned out to be fine too?

How about Minecraft? Activision?

It's easy to cherry-pick examples from an era where Microsoft wasn't the most successful. The current leadership seems competent and the stock growth of the company reflects that.

>>alsodu+m5
> Four years after being acquired by Microsoft, GitHub keeps doing its thing

The fact that this is even news speaks of the absolute shit job they've done with acquisitions in the past.

>>moffka+k6
Maybe they learned their lesson?

Looking at the global track records of what happens after acquisitions, these don't seem too bad

>>moffka+k6
It absolutely does not. Take a look around at acquisitions in general and count how many acquired teams are still doing their thing.

>>alsodu+m5
"Has GitHub Been Down More Since Its Acquisition by Microsoft?" - https://statusgator.com/blog/has-github-been-down-more-since...

"... In the two years since the acquisition announcement, GitHub has reported a 41% increase in status page incidents. Furthermore, there has been a 97% increase in incident minutes, compared to the two years prior to the announcement..."

>>meowki+T3
For those of us not following Microsoft super close, would it possible to ready a summary of the successes of Satya?

I sense a lot of respect and appreciation for his role, but unfortunately I just don’t know many details and I’m curious about the highlights.

>>hughes+c4
And despite the above track record, he somehow managed to not accidentally buy Yahoo as well.

>>belter+Af
Wouldn't incident increase in forward movement of time where there would be a user increase as well?

>>belter+(OP)
They didn't buy OpenAI, they got the best part of their team to develop new products for MS.

>>belter+Af
> 41% increase in status page incidents

Maybe they got funding for a proper incident team? Or changed the metrics of a incdient is, maybe the SLAs changed to mirror MS SLAs?

Also Betteridge's law.

>>morale+Ot
What’s the evidence behind “they got the best part of their team?”

It seems to me roughly all of the value of OpenAI’s products is in the model itself and presumably the supporting infrastructure, neither of which seem like they’re going to MSFT (yet?).

>>alsodu+m5
The Activision purchase is still way too new to judge.

>>ethanb+Px
Go to Twitter (X?) and search for "OpenAI is nothing without its people" and prepare to be mind blown.

It's seems like a cult right now, tbh.

>>alsodu+m5
> only to enable GitHub to do greater things, without disrupting user experience?

Excuse you? Greater where? Github was an amazing revolution, unique of its kind. Microsoft didn't kill it but didn't make it even 1% better for the users, just turned it into a cash cow. Linkedin is currently a PoS.

>>morale+cA
A bit culty but am I to interpret this as, “if I post that the people are important to this company, I am going to resign?”

>>ethanb+JH
Yes, it's how they pledge their alliance to @sama.

Whether they actually move to MS or not remains to be seen, but it is definitely a strong indicator that they're not "aligned" with OpenAI anymore.

>>morale+XJ
Eh, seems like an ambitious read, and obviously if they actually wanted to give Sam leverage it would’ve required saying “I will leave if he’s not reinstated,” not a more generic statement of solidarity.

>>ethanb+CK
Ok here it is, lol.

https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1726598360277356775?s...

>>morale+TQ
Yeah this is much much less ambiguous than the Twitter things. At least answers my question of, "is there actually that much support for Altman?" Now the second question, much more important and still ambiguous IMO, is whether these people will actually resign to do this. The letter just says they "may" resign, which leaves really the last thing you want in an ultimatum like this: ambiguity.

>>belter+(OP)
The Skype purchase was good for itself. It lead to Teams, which is dominating.

>>belter+Af
Speaking as someone who uses github multiple times a day, I think I've only actually noticed 1-2 downtimes in the past year. On the other hand, I've used several of the beta features that have come out, including copilot and the evolving github actions.

GitHub is stronger now then it ever has been.

>>NanoYo+Wa1
The only people I know using Teams are the ones who are forced to by management fiat. I guess that's dominating, but not really in a positive way.

>>alchem+Ur
- Github Purchase, Linkedin Purchase - Aligned Microsoft towards "openness" culturally - VS Code + Typescript - Partnership with Open AI which might make bing actually be used

might be missing some more but Satya is like a S tier CEO, compared to Sundar who doesn't seem very good at his role.

>>NanoYo+Wa1
Teams is dominating only because they bundle it with their other services. In my personal opinion, as someone who loved Skype before Microsoft got involved with it, Teams is complete trash, and impossible to work with in a business environment.

>>novia+PH1
> Teams is dominating only because they bundle it with their other services.

This is a win from Microsoft's perspective. They don't have to have the best group messenger around, but having a significant office product being dominated by another company would be a massive risk to Microsoft, and Teams has prevented that.

>>meiral+bC
> didn't make it even 1% better for the users

I think it can be argued that giving free private repos to user is a 1% increase. Or what about private vulnerability reporting for open source projects. And so on. Github has gotten a lot of new free functionality since Microsoft bought it. It sounds like you just have not been paying attention.

Edit: Nevermind, I see you refer to Microsoft as M$. That really says it all.

>>underd+hy
With the loyal customer base (aka addicts) for the bought IPs, the purchase can only be successful.

>>alsodu+m5
Despite porting it from Java to C++, Bedrock (Microsoft's rewrite of Minecraft) somehow has worse performance and bugs than vanilla Minecraft. (Also, a bunch of it is somehow in JavaScript?)

>>ryanbr+MM1
So killing Skype was actually their goal? :(

>>belter+(OP)
Except the founders weren't included in the Skype deal. Microsoft has OpenAI's two founders and they're highly motivated to show that OpenAI is nothing without them which in time it may soon be. I openly await when Sam and Greg ship a product in say two years time.

Meanwhile Microsoft wins if OpenAI stays dominant and wins even bigger if Sam and Greg prevail. Some day soon they may teach this story at Harvard Business School.

>>belter+(OP)
Don't forget Microsoft buying aQuantive for $6 billion in 2007 and then taking a $6.2 billion dollar writedown 5 years later.

>>strike+gG1
Did MS do anything with Linux before Sataya? At present I believe that the bulk of their Azure hosts are running Linux - their own distro. And AFAIK it is successful.

>>belter+(OP)
Not every swing is going to be a home run. Billion dollar investments sound like a lot but not for companies of this size. They are small to medium sized bets.

>>alsodu+m5
GitHub has been significantly less reliable since Microsoft bought it and Actions has been a disaster of an experience.

Linkedin has not improved its problems with spam or content quality since Microsoft took over.

>>NanoYo+Wa1
And bad for users. Skype went downhill fast and Teams… well we all know what that’s like.

>>HankB9+MZ1
They did the bare minimum to let Linux based stuff run on Azure but other than that not much.

>>underd+hy
MS is destined to be substantially better than their previous owners. Your right in that it may be too early to predict the financial success, but I am very happy to see MS as the new owners of Activision, no matter what happens.

>>belter+Af
Shipping code causes incidents. Microsoft has shipped more features on github in the year they acquired it than github did 5 years before that.

>>andai+3R1
I don’t believe that is entirely accurate, but even if it was — the bedrock port has been extremely successful for Microsoft.

>>smcleo+p72
> GitHub has been significantly less reliable since Microsoft bought it and Actions has been a disaster of an experience.

Not unreliable enough to be a problem though, and Actions seems to be a decent experience for plenty of people.

The simple fact with GitHub is that it is _the_ primary place to go looking for, or post your, open source code, and it is the go-to platform for the majority of companies looking for a solution to source code hosting.

Your comment about LinkedIn is true, but where is the nearest competition in its' space?

>>smcleo+682
Seconded, teams winning is horrible for users in the long run (no competition allowed), but great for MS and IT managers.

>>NanoYo+Wa1
It was also good for the security state https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f...

>>ninth_+Gf2
All three parts of what I said are true. What you say is also true.

>>alsodu+m5
The problem with arguing with people like that who cherry pick is even after you provide examples, they will generally respond by just cherry-picking your examples instead of acknowledging the actual point you made

>>smcleo+p72
That's quite a goalpost shift. The original claim was that Microsoft ruins companies. Your rebuttal to LinkedIn as a counterexample is that they haven't made it better. This does not support the claim that they've ruined it.

>>strike+gG1
No mention of Azure? Also, anyone not already using Bing Chat is missing out. It's been a good while since I had to google anything.

>>Comple+423
We found the Micro$oft bootlicker

>>DrBazz+6t
he was going to until a time traveler told he Yahoo's actually get rich accidentally in the future after investing in Alibaba so he couldn't bear it /s