Microsoft Approached Pinterest About a Takeover (ft.com) 35
Microsoft approached Pinterest in recent months about a potential deal to acquire the $51bn social media company popular with hobbyists posting home decor, food and wedding collages, Financial Times reported Thursday [alternative source], citing people briefed on the matter. From the report: The talks were currently not active, said one of the people briefed. Microsoft has been pursuing an acquisition strategy aimed at amassing a portfolio of active online communities that could run on top of its cloud computing platform. Pinterest, whose market value has increased more than 600 per cent during the coronavirus pandemic, has signalled in the past that it desired to remain an independent company. Its soaring stock price would present a hurdle to Microsoft, whose shares have risen nearly 80 per cent from a pandemic low, though Pinterest's market value is only about 3 per cent of Microsoft's $1.83tn.
A purchase of Pinterest, which would have amounted to the largest deal ever for Microsoft, would also have tested the Biden administration's appetite for allowing powerful technology companies to strike deals. However, Microsoft, which mainly sells to businesses and governments rather than consumers, has avoided most of the political backlash that has made it more difficult for Facebook and Google to make big acquisitions. Microsoft first revealed its interest in acquiring a prominent social media company last year when it tried to buy the US operations of TikTok, a popular Chinese video app that was under pressure to divest its US business over the Trump administration's national security concerns. The bid for TikTok failed after rival Oracle gatecrashed the talks.
A purchase of Pinterest, which would have amounted to the largest deal ever for Microsoft, would also have tested the Biden administration's appetite for allowing powerful technology companies to strike deals. However, Microsoft, which mainly sells to businesses and governments rather than consumers, has avoided most of the political backlash that has made it more difficult for Facebook and Google to make big acquisitions. Microsoft first revealed its interest in acquiring a prominent social media company last year when it tried to buy the US operations of TikTok, a popular Chinese video app that was under pressure to divest its US business over the Trump administration's national security concerns. The bid for TikTok failed after rival Oracle gatecrashed the talks.
Pinterest is internet cancer (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know what it is about Pinterest that repulses me, but I put it in my hosts file and that was that.
I'd rather watch a creimer video than look at Pinterest.
Re:Pinterest is internet cancer (Score:5)
What I hate about pinterest is that it often appeared in my search result, but being on a real PC and not a phone, and not having a pinterest account, I can not see the pic I was looking for. Pinterest is in my Personnal Blocklist (Not by google) for years, with desertcart.
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competition.
it is past time to break up microsoft
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Hey wow. I came here to make the exact same comment. It is really horrible when their images come back via a Google image search, which is like 1/4 of them. I click to go to the website and it is actually Pinterest. I'm blocked by that login screen and get annoyed. Absolutely detest them.
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Yeap - they're holding the internet's images hostage.
Hopefully m$ buy them then delete everything related to pinterest - in the Public-INTEREST \o/
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MS doesn't care about how cancerous Pinterest is. This would have been another step in Redmond's quest to buy users any way it can.
I hope they buy it and put it out of its misery (Score:3)
Doesn't have to be intentional. Microsoft could just pull another Skype.
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MS wouldn't put it out of its misery, they'd embed the misery into Windows and Azure, maybe call it Power Misery or maybe Pisery or Misery 365.
Pinterest sucks. It hogs Google image search results, but often doesn't take you the right image when you click on it in Google's results unless you subscribe. Why Google doesn't demote bait-and-switch sites, I don't know, unless they have their fingers in each others' pockets somehow.
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Microsoft could just pull another Skype.
Please god no. The last thing we need is Pintrest's core mechanism absorbed into business products and pushed down corporate throats vis O365 subscriptions.
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You mean they can pull each other down? Don't tease me like that.
Um, no (Score:3)
"However, Microsoft, which mainly sells to businesses and governments rather than consumers..."
Last time I checked, nearly every PC or laptop sold to consumers had some version of Windows on it. How can the statement above be even remotely true? I understand that most of Microsoft's subscription business (SA, etc.) is B2B but when it comes to PC operating systems, their influence is far greater than any other manufacturer, including Apple.
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A lot of consumers, most even, do their home computing from phones and tablets these days. And Microsoft has only a weak presence there.
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"However, Microsoft, which mainly sells to businesses and governments rather than consumers..."
Last time I checked, nearly every PC or laptop sold to consumers had some version of Windows on it. How can the statement above be even remotely true?
I guess you've not looked at the Financial Times recently. It's basically junk from front to back nowadays.
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Did you purchase that copy of Windows separately from the computer, or was it bundled with it?
If it's the latter, and this is how the vast majority of people "purchase" windows, then you didn't purchase windows. A company, like HP or Dell, purchased it as an OEM.
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You paid for it when you bought your computer
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"Did you purchase that copy of Windows separately from the computer, or was it bundled with it?"
Even if it was bundled, I still have to register the product with Microsoft and I get regular updates from Microsoft. Whether the OS is OEM or not, I still need to accept the ULA. That makes me and every other Windows PC or Laptop purchaser Microsoft's customer. Think of the hardware as a decorative container with pretty lights.
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Hilarious :-)
We pay one way or another to cover microsoft's development and infrastructure costs in monetising every piece of information they gather on us.
two peas in a pod (Score:2)
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Especially if Microsoft tries to integrate Bing into the mix. Then you'll never be able to find anything on Pinterest.
Secretly a Google Takeover Attempt (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly, Microsoft wants to take over Pinterest as a hostile takeover of Google's Image Search results page.
How much money to be cool again! (Score:2)
Back in the 1990's Microsoft was Cool. (I didn't like them, but I was never cool anyways)
But when Windows 95 was released, a lot of people were interesting in getting the New OS,
People started using IE as their main browser, not a tool which they can use to download Netscape.
If someone was using DOS or Windows 3.1 by 1998 you would have been made fun of.
Product makers were rushing to make 32bit Windows products, Games which were a DOS only platform, finally pushed into windows only.
Hardware Vendors started
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It seem that MS is trying to buy companies again to make themselves cool again. But I doubt it will really work.
I don't think this is the case. Microsoft wants to buy companies that will provide them with more data that can be used for marketing, AI, and sold to businesses and governments. They also want to buy up high traffic sites and stick them on Azure so they can steadily increase the % of the web that they personally control.
Microsoft has never been concerned with being cool. The corporate mission of Microsoft has always been to be ubiquitous. Depending on being cool would mean that customers could easily aband
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If cancer reads slashdot, it's probably thinking "wtf, I'm not thaaat bad"
I hope everyone realizes... (Score:3)
The quickest way to kill your product (i.e. online community) is to sell it to microsoft.
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I mean if you're selling a product to MIcrosoft you probably don't give a shit about your users, your product, and can't hear the complaints over the sound of your Ferrari anyway.
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The quickest way to kill your product (i.e. online community) is to sell it to microsoft.
LinkedIn and Github. . .
If they wont choose azure (Score:2)
If they wont pick Azure over AWS we will buy them and make them do it.
Sounds like a sound strategy to me.
Buy it and trash it like Skype (Score:2)
Then we're relieved from this Pinterest misery showing up as the first entry on our search results.
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