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I think Microsoft is really the only acquirer where language/platform choice would matter. They're the only acquirers that have a real stake in the success of
by subwindow 18y ago
I think Microsoft is really the only acquirer where language/platform choice would matter. They're the only acquirers that have a real stake in the success of a particular language.
Even still, they bought Hotmail, who was using FreeBSD.
- aggieben 18y agoUh...I'd wager Sun has more staked on Java than MS does on any of the languages it supports.
- subwindow 18y agoSun has been the most ardent corporate supporters of Rails. They were even before JRuby. Plus, Sun isn't really a big dog in the acquisition game.
- delano 18y agoIt takes a pretty big dog to buy MySQL.
- subwindow 18y agoI should have said: "Sun isn't really a big dog in the startup acquisition game." MySQL wasn't a startup.
- SwellJoe 18y agoSun makes plenty of acquisitions (mostly startups): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems#Acquisitions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems#Acquisitions
- subwindow 18y agoIn the past 5 years they've mostly been one of: 1) Hardware 2) Giant 3) Enterprisey None of which are very applicable to the original question, which is about web software startups.
- SwellJoe 18y ago"None of which are very applicable to the original question, which is about web software startups." You must have read a different question than I did. The original post mentions "startups", not "web software startups". Many News.YC readers are building things that Sun would find interesting, so I think Sun's acquisition history is relevant to our interests here at News.YC.
- delano 18y agoThey've been doing a lot of non-hardware, non-enterprisey stuff in the past 5 years too. Primarily Solaris 10/OpenSolaris and DTrace among (many) other things. DTrace continues to blow my mind.