Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrkramer | Hacker News Reader

>Microsoft tried to buy TikTok's U.S. operations last year in a deal reportedly valued between $10 billion to $30 billion.

>Reports suggest it's in advanced talks with gaming chat app Discord for a deal worth more than $10 billion.

>A report in February suggested Microsoft was eyeing a takeover of Pinterest, worth $53 billion on the public market. Last September, it bought gaming giant ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion.

Microsoft is in full yolo mode since all other big tech companies have antitrust lawsuit against them. Microsoft spent its time on the cross in the 1990s and early 2000s now they will acquire anything they can.

View on HN

The fact that none of these companies are competing with Microsoft also makes it easier. That's not the strategy Google, Facebook etc. normally use.

Maybe they are not competing with them right now but they have aspirations to break into their industry and then compete with them. They figured out it was easier to acquire them than try to build it from the ground up.

Easier to acquire AND easier to divest from if there are any monopoly-related/law-related issues.

ZeniMax competes against XBox Studios or whatever their internal video game studio is called.

Since when was Skyrim a competitor to Microsoft Flight Simulator or Age of Empires?

Microsoft also owns Obsidian, that recently announced Avowed[1] which looks really similar to Skyrim. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3QkO8fy3tg

MS's strategy as of late seems to be buying their way inyo being competitive in every market instead of dominating a few markets. I suppose this gives them a great deal of stability and allows them to develop a massive ecosystem of interconnected products and services. It's still a concerning practice... but not as obviously unethical as the monopolistic behavior displayed by other big tech companies.

This was their strategy since always or since they achieved monopoly in PC OS market which ensured them huge profits which they used to acquire competitors or to break into some industry or niche. They would push acquired product or service to millions of Windows users meaning they had huge distribution channel and scale potential.

Microsoft's first acquisition was in 1987 of Forethought Inc. or developers of what is now Microsoft PowerPoint and they bought them for only $14m. Today PowerPoint as a product and as a brand is worth billions.

Hopefully these acquisitions wont end up like Mixer

TikTok was never a serious purchase. It was a political move to throw up a smoke screen when Trump was making noise about banning them from the US.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com