2009 Prediction: Microsoft buys 37signals for $300 million
altgate.com
altgate.com
The title was preposterous, and when I saw it I was very skeptical -- but I've seen stranger stories which turned out to be true, so I wasn't completely sure.
To be fair, that's why the prediction is for a $300 buy even though 37signals' revenue is 'only' ~ $8million.
Well, that's why this prediction won't come true. 37signals won't sell to Microsoft barring some astronomical price, and Microsoft won't pay said astronomical price for 37signals.
And Objective-J wouldn't be hard to swallow for Microsoft. They'd have to replace the widgets with less Apple-esque ones, but it wouldn't be too hard. And it would give them a base akin to Google's GWT.
Microsoft probably does need to get into the webapp world, but 37signals doesn't compete with Microsoft's lineup and Rails really isn't the toolkit to create a Visio-killer.
I think you're missing the point the author is attempting to make. 37Signals is a well-founded company which has several applications, each generating revenue. It's also well-known. The points which the author purports would make 37Signals tempting to Microsoft do not apply for 280 North.
I'm sorry but adding an abstraction layer on top of javascript doesn't make it better then javascript.