They were pissed, and felt pressure to compete. See the other thread where I expose ad pyramids and the likes of Ad Exchanges for more info on why.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/03/us-microsoft-charge-idUSBRE8611BR20120703

Microsoft Corp admitted its largest acquisition in the Internet sector was effectively worthless

aQuantative turned out to be worthless. Why? Online advertising contracts go with individual contact relationships, the same way insurance policies work.

It's not like Skype where you get the whole customer base after the acquisition. Also online advertisers are salespeople and thus they are born natural liars. The valuation was fiction and so were the sales.

Google really did a good job with retention after their acquisition of DoubleClick, in part because they probably knew the complexity of the deal before hand.

All this to say, if you miss out on an opportunity, don't feel pressured to compete and make a bad decision to compensate. It almost 99% of the time never works out. I suspected it was a bad deal at the time, but now we have confirmation. Also the 100M Powerset acquisition was worthless as well. The fact that they only indexed a single website, Wikipedia, should have set off the necessary warning bells.

C

So you seem to be poking at determining a motivation behind my post here. Like "what motivated you to post this"?

I want to know what the real psychology behind these hella bad acquisitions is?

Why? Because I happen to know a lot of these people in that industry and I would like to sell the information off so that they can perfectly position themselves to deceive Microsoft et al into a huge acquisition of essentially worthless crap. And believe it or not they'll actually buy it, because they're like that.

Then I won't have to be bored any longer. kay?

C

"Many things in business involve calculated risk. Sometimes you make the right bet. Sometimes you don't."

Same can be said for a lot of things in life.

Many things in business involve calculated risk. Sometimes you make the right bet. Sometimes you don't.

That's just the kind of thing I can't sell to even the dumbest Advertising CEO.

....and Microsoft said "you win some, you lose some"

Not. Helpful.

Information that would be useful is info on the process of gathering comparables, and the process of narrowing down comparable acquisition targets.

It would also be helpful to know why MSFT thought it could just build it's own Youtube with Soapbox rather than buy Vimeo or something. Why did Microsoft think it could compete that time and not any other time?

".... strategic acquisitions something ...."

Please tell us what that title is at Microsoft for the USA.

This is about core-competencies, not about companies suddenly making rash decisions because one just fell through. You can flip the whole thing around and look at many of Google's attempts at building software platforms live Wave, Gears or App Engine and messing the process up badly not necessarily because the underlying ideas or technology weren't there, but because it's so far divorced from what they know how to do that they made many of the mistakes an established platform builder like Microsoft knows only too well how to avoid.

Any time you attempt to branch a business out into unknown territory you have to accept a greater degree of risk. And when you do, you have to go with the "sometimes you win, sometimes you lose" mentality and not bet more than you can afford to lose.

3 hours ago, 01001001 wrote

Always bored. Especially when I am working.

Then I suggest you find a different line of work.

Thanks,

C

1 hour ago, Charles wrote

Whoever locked this thread, please send mail to the C9 team when you do this sort of thing.

Thanks,

C

He's been banned before and he will be banned again because you allow him to come back every time. In the mean time he will keep trolling/annoying everyone on the forum.

15 hours ago, Charles wrote

Many things in business involve calculated risk. 

Fair comment. But when you're talking about a six billion dollar write-off then I'm inclined to think there was not too much calculation involved.

How did this thread get momentarily locked, then unlocked. It's almost like MSFT wants to keep investors from learning about these huge losses due to a failed strategic acquisition.

It's a shame that you set out to destroy your own credibility years ago, because when you actually come up with a good point, no one can be bothered to read it.

Stop devaluating my pagerank or I may have to cancel my speaking tour in the very near future, and you sir will be to blame.

25 seconds ago, 01001001 wrote

@Ray7:

How did this thread get momentarily locked, then unlocked. It's almost like MSFT wants to keep investors from learning about these huge losses due to a failed strategic acquisition.

Is that why they released a statement to finance press?

If investors want to find out about Microsoft financials, then I think Channel9 would be very nearly their last port of call.

I think the thread was locked because someone finds you tiresome and was a little too trigger happy. There's no conspiracy to defraud the world markets by locking a thread on a geek forum.

There's no conspiracy to defraud the world markets by locking a thread on a geek forum.

I didn't say there was. Clearly there are people who wouldn't have known about aQuantative had they not read about it off of Reuters or some national PR distribution lists.

And frankly this advisory is way better than the people telling you how great of a buy Nokia was at $3 because they're just taking a rest from winning the smart phone market over at the moment.

1 minute ago, 01001001 wrote

*snip*

I didn't say there was. 

Yes, you did.

How did this thread get momentarily locked, then unlocked. It's almost like MSFT wants to keep investors from learning about these huge losses due to a failed strategic acquisition.

There's no conspiracy to defraud the world markets by locking a thread on a geek forum.

I didn't say anything about a conspiracy. Locking a thread containing a post about negative financial information about your publicly traded company is pretty flagrant protectionism.

If it was a conspiracy they would have immediately deleted the thread, added me to the firewall, and somebody would have visited my home and cut my brake cables like in the movie Antitrust. Get with the program. The answer's not in the box, it's in the band.

How did this thread get momentarily locked, then unlocked. It's almost like MSFT wants to keep investors from learning about these huge losses due to a failed strategic acquisition.

I was the one who said it was just someone being overzealous. 

Seriously, Microsoft isn't out to stop you.

I was the one who said it was just someone being overzealous.

That's not at all what you said.

Seriously, Microsoft isn't out to stop you.

Microsoft is only out to make money. I think that's pretty clear.

Overzealous employees are scary and dangerous as seen with Google Inc.

Though there are degrees of that. Apple employees probably by far win the gold medal of culticized scariness in my book, and that's saying a lot.