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Comment by alsodumb | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

"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..."

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

> 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.

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.

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

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.

> 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?

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.

We found the Micro$oft bootlicker

The Activision purchase is still way too new to judge.

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

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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?)

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

All three parts of what I said are true. What you say is also true.

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

> 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.

Maybe they learned their lesson?

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

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

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