News is buzzing around about Microsoft’s $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive! Yep, you read that right. Microsoft didn’t want to be left behind after Google bought the DoubleClick advertising firm for a whopping $3.1 billion, and Yahoo! quickly followed that up by purchasing Right Media for a mere $680 million. Now Microsoft is back in the advertising game thanks to their all-cash transaction of $6 billion for aQuantive!
It’s kinda funny though, because Microsoft was up-in-arms when Google announced that they were going to buy DoubleClick, now Microsoft went and purchased a company that is even larger (aQuantive has 2,600 employees while DoubleClick had just 1,200). Of course, it was expected that Microsoft was bidding on DoubleClick along with Google so when they lost the war they knew they had to do something. Instead of pushing harder against the Google/DoubleClick deal, it looks like Microsoft just decided to go bigger.
According to CNN Money, Microsoft said that they are happy with the price they paid for aQuantive, and that future acquisitions aren’t out of the question. At the end of last quarter Microsoft had $28.2 billion in cash, and in regards to other acquisitions Microsoft said “We certainly have the economic fire power if we decide to do more.”
I could definitely see Microsoft eyeing other companies to acquire, and the first that comes to mind is Zoho. They offer a wide variety of Office-like applications similar to the ones being developed by Google. Microsoft seems to be falling behind in that respect, so I would expect them to try and quickly catchup by making a few acquisitions. After all, the cool thing to do these days is to throw billions of dollars around!
Is it just me or is Microsoft having to play ‘catch-up’ these days as opposed to being an industry leader? Additionally, in my opinion, if they were to purchase Zoho it would be a serious admission of failure. Mainly because it proves that they are unable to transform their current office suite from a client application to a web based product. Again, falling behind where Google, Zoho, ThinkFree, and others leading the way.
Microsoft is definitely having to play a lot of catch-up because they are trying to dip their hands into too may things. Google’s thing has always been search and advertising, but now Microsoft is trying to take on that role as well. Microsoft wants to be involved in everything, yet they must not have enough developers on their team to get the jobs done.
Ok, so Ryan and Ashley, when you guys have billions (or just mere millions) to throw around, don’t forget about your faithful early following.
Don’t worry, I’ll buy you a nice helicopter when we’re making millions.
COOL!!!
A few thoughts here:
-this (to me) seems to indicate that the Microsoft-Yahoo union isn’t going to happen.
-The first poster (Gryphen) mentions ThinkFree…as a ThinkFree user, I am torn on this. It’s great online office, and integrates well with MS-Office, would be a good for Microsoft
-the selfish downside is that I fear that Microsoft is going to move in mess up one of the great, free alternatives to Office.
I think you’re right that the Microsoft/Yahoo merger definitely isn’t going to happen. It may have been close at one point, but now the two companies are both acquiring similar technologies that would be pointless if they merged.
If Microsoft does acquire an online Office alternative I think they could provide some nice touches to it. Microsoft’s redesign of Office 2007 was a tremendous improvement in my opinion, and I think they could do a good job of bringin a lot of that to the browser. My only concern would be browser compatibility, because they seem to only have IE in mind when they develop a lot of their stuff.