Microsoft’s acquisitions of Github and LinkedIn both worked out pretty well.
Github actually has more free features now than it did before the Microsoft acquisition - they made some paid features free (like the ability to have private repos) and added a lot of new free features (like Github Actions which is built on Azure), without removing or paywalling any existing free features. Github likely wouldn’t have been able to afford that investment without Microsoft.
Microsoft’s acquisitions of Github and LinkedIn both worked out pretty well.
Github actually has more free features now than it did before the Microsoft acquisition - they made some paid features free (like the ability to have private repos) and added a lot of new free features (like Github Actions which is built on Azure), without removing or paywalling any existing free features. Github likely wouldn’t have been able to afford that investment without Microsoft.
They also use GitHub to hover up code and resell it as AI… and it’s only a question of time before they do a rugpull.
Make no mistake, they bought both for access to the data and use it daily to upend other competitors.
Remember: embrace, expand, extinguish…
Microsoft’s not the only company doing this. Pretty much all code-focused AI models are based on Github data.
This may have been common in the 90s, but I’m not sure it’s still relevant. Do you have any examples of Microsoft doing this in the past 10 years?