Microsoft’s low-octane swan song was nothing if not symbolic of more than a decade littered with errors, missed opportunities, and the devolution of one of the industry’s innovators into a “me too” purveyor of other companies’ consumer products. ... How did this jaw-dropping role reversal happen? How could a company that stands among the most cash-rich in the world, the onetime icon of cool that broke IBM’s iron grip on the computer industry, have stumbled so badly in a race it was winning? [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen
on Jul 26, 2012 -
124 comments
Microsoft offers $44.6 billion for Yahoo! The grand old man of Redmond has finally come out of the closet to woo the loveliest lady in Sunnyvale, offering a staggering $44.6 billion in cash or shares. Cash or shares? Wow! Bearing in mind the...ah...disappointments both companies have
suffered over the
recent past, is this a marriage made in heaven? Or
hell?
posted by Duug
on Feb 1, 2008 -
199 comments
Microsoft buys stake in Facebook. Microsoft has paid $240m (£117m) for a 1.6% stake in
Facebook that values the hugely popular social networking site at $15bn (£7.3bn). Facebook spurned an offer from Microsoft's rival
Google, which was also keen to invest the site.
Microsoft will also sell
internet ads for Facebook outside the United States as part of the deal that took several weeks of negotiating.
Mark Zuckerberg started the online social networking site in his Harvard University dorm room less than four years ago.
[more inside]
posted by Tommy Gnosis
on Oct 25, 2007 -
114 comments
Earthly Empires: How evangelical churches are borrowing from the business playbook - "The triumph of evangelical Christianity is profoundly reshaping many aspects of American politics and society... This year, the 16.4 million-member Southern Baptist Convention plans to 'plant' 1,800 new churches using by-the-book niche-marketing tactics. 'We have cowboy churches for people working on ranches, country music churches, even several motorcycle churches aimed at bikers', says Martin King, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists' North American Mission Board... Many of today's evangelicals hope to expand their clout even further. They're also gaining by taking their views into Corporate America. Exhibit A:
the recent clash at software giant Microsoft."
posted by kliuless
on May 15, 2005 -
35 comments
"I think the word they are replacing is 'invention.' Only now we innovate, which is deliberately vague but seems to stop somewhere short of invention. Innovators have wiggle room. They can steal ideas, for example, and pawn them off as their own. That's the intersection of innovation and sharp business. " Cringley puts his finger on a crucial difference, touching not only on the core of ethics but on the connection to real progress.
posted by weston
on Sep 5, 2003 -
9 comments
Google: the God that failed? is the title of the article on
MSN Slate. All of us know Microsoft is working on a new search engine technology. Till date everyone considers
Google to be
the Guru. MS obviously doesn't like that, so what it is doing? Well, the same thing it always does - to survive competition, eliminate it.
The reasons being given by the article are pretty silly and more aimed at 'faming down' Google.
posted by jayantk
on Jul 22, 2003 -
39 comments
Judge rules Microsoft must split up Judge Jackson handed down the verdict today that Microsoft should be broken into two companies: one for Windows OSes, the other for all other applications and services. Many restrictions on Microsoft's behavior would also be put in place, pretty much just ensuring they couldn't lock anyone into exclusive contracts or force bundling deals on anyone.
posted by daveadams
on Jun 7, 2000 -
38 comments
