> Joel Spolsky in 2002 identified a major pattern in technology business & economics: the pattern of "commoditizing your complement"
> This pattern explains many otherwise odd or apparently self-sabotaging ventures by large tech companies into apparently irrelevant fields ...
> ...they are pre-emptive attempts to commodify another company elsewhere in the stack, or defenses against it being done to them.
After having read this article, it's been interesting how a lot of these investments have started making more sense. They often aren't primarily about the product itself, rather they serve the function of minimizing any leverage other companies could have over them.
As Github offers an access to a valuable resource for tech companies, developers, Microsoft could use it to promote its products/services and to attract talent. This isn't good for Google, so they are hoping to reduce Microsoft's leverage.
In some sense this is obvious, but I hadn't consciously identified this as a pattern before.