The business world is a jungle. Your company may be leading a segment and emerging as the latest fashion. All use their product, they all talk about it. Comes to speculation, is a hefty order of business and profit, which is the end-goal of all venture capitalist emerges or not.
Whether you're blue or red, the fate of many startups is already successful in many cases, the absorption by larger market. In recent years, Google has become a reference on the subject, to the point of encouraging the creation of some startups whose goal, rather than profit, is being acquired by the company Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The history of mergers give rise to such thinking. Among others, in the lasts year Google bought YouTube, Blogger, Gizmo5 (base Google Voice), Keyhole (Google Earth base / Maps), among (many) more ...
Skype: Microsoft for U.S. $ 8.5 billion.
This kind of practice is ancient in the technology market. This week, Microsoft has caught the attention of the world with billion dollar purchase of Skype, VoIP, Internet telephony. The company led by Steve Ballmer spent $ 8.5 billion acquisition of another, which will become a business division within Microsoft and its technology will be integrated into virtually every line of programs from those intended for the domestic market, as Xbox / Kinect, even the corporate, with Lync and Outlook.
Taking the opportunity, we will make a tour of Microsoft's major acquisitions throughout its history? Several, 128 acquisitions, to be exact, which gives an average of six per year. As space and time are short, we will be the most expensive and / or important, ok? The complete list, including purchases of shares of other companies, can be seen in Wikipedia (in English).
Forethought (1987)
The first was the purchase of Forethought Microsoft, a software company founded in the United States in 1983 by Rob Campbell and Taylor Pohlman, which was acquired in 1987 for $ 14 million. Forethought's main product was the presenter, who years later was renamed PowerPoint. The first version of today's omnipresent creator slide shows on the Mac just worked and was in black and white, given the hardware limitation of the time. When the first colored Apple computers were introduced, a color version came out.
The Windows versions of PowerPoint have appeared only in the early 1990s, during which time also the application has been integrated into the Office suite, where it remains today.
Hotmail (1997)
Released in July 1996, Hotmail was the first webmail service history. Until then, all mail service providers were linked to and dependent on the installation and use of a local software like Outlook or Thunderbird. The service name is a play on the acronym HTML (Hotmail), markup language that underlies the entire web.
With 8.5 million users in December 1997, Microsoft bought Hotmail for their creators, Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith for $ 400 million. The service, now under the wings of the Redmond giant, continued to grow, registering 30 million active users in February 1999. After a period of stagnation of the whole segment, in April 2004 shook the world with Google Gmail and its astounding 1 GB of space, that at a time when competitors offered mega bytes dropper - Hotmail, gave 2 MB on free accounts.
Thereafter Hotmail suffered a series of changes, several name changes involving the then newly-created division of services for web, Windows Live, reformulations in the layout which, although different, minimalist, could not beat the smooth experience Gmail. Nevertheless, even today Hotmail is one of the most widely used webmail services and the world in its latest version, released in late 2010, he won very interesting improvements.
At the end of last century, Microsoft announced the Xbox, its home console, your video game. The company breast the three Japanese giants in the industry, Sony, Nintendo and SEGA, all years in this market and fierce fighting in order for the hearts of gamers of the time. Joining a niche as stiff, without expertise, and still be successful?
One of the key factors was Bungie, or rather, its main game, the Halo franchise. Synonym for Xbox and one of the most fun FPS and rich history in terms of the last decade, the acquisition of Bungie Software, the makers of the game was strategic and timely - at the time, there even was a demo version running on Mac OS ...!
With the acquisition of Bungie, Halo became a title, at first, exclusively for Xbox. The first two games of the series have been ported to Windows, but her forte even stayed on the islands. Each entry, even the less impressive titles such as Halo Wars and Halo 3 ODST, causing fury in the fan base and, of course, help sell more consoles.
Since last year, but Bungie is no longer owned by Microsoft. After launching Halo Reach, she again became independent and has signed a ten year contract with Activision Blizzard to publish their titles. The Halo franchise was left in the hands of Microsoft.
Danger (2008)
Built by former employees of Apple, WebTV and Phillips, Danger was an enormous hit in the United States a few years ago, with the Sidekick, also known as the Hiptop, a quasi-mobile-smartphone specially designed to facilitate the posting of text.
In 2008, Microsoft purchased Danger for half a billion dollars. For nearly two years, much has been speculated about what would come out of this merger. Such rumors were unified under a codename, "Project Pink". Then, months before announcing the Windows 7 Phone, Microsoft has put cell phones on the market KIN in two versions, the "soul" of the Sidekicks.
It was a failure so violent, but so violent, that apparatus, KIN KIN 1 and 2, did not last two months on the shelves of stores. With very few units sold, the project was canceled and all but forgotten within Microsoft, which, quite rightly, began to focus exclusively on Windows Phone 7. Since the announcement of KIN, moreover, discussed how this rivalry would be hospitalized. It was not, as the KIN did not live to see Windows 7 Phone born ...
And Skype?
From the above, it becomes clear that sometimes what appears to be the best deal you can, ultimately, to injury. Skype is the most expensive purchase that Microsoft has done in its history, which increases, by far, the responsability on the directions of the partnership. The company, as administered by an investment fund, was losing money, Microsoft will be able to reverse this scenario, make Skype and profitable, to boot, enhance their products by integrating back-end VoIP service to them? Only time, and expertise of company employees, they say.
