3 ms·
Pretty surprised nobody mentioned the $6 billion writedown of AQuantive. MS bought them as a (crazily impulsive) reaction to Google's DoubleClick purchase. Th
by chubot 13y ago
Pretty surprised nobody mentioned the $6 billion writedown of AQuantive. MS bought them as a (crazily impulsive) reaction to Google's DoubleClick purchase. That was also under Ballmer's watch.
You could argue $900M isn't much, but $6B has got to be one of the bigger failed acquisitions in business history.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/microsoft-will-write-down-6-2-billion-related-to-aquantive-deal.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/microsoft-will-writ...
- hga 13y agoIf the board signed off on the acquisition, which strikes me as very likely, they might not score the resulting failure the way they'd score sharp and more quick failures to execute like the Surface RT and KIN. Reading the article, its a bit less clear cut---e.g. failure over a 5 year period intertwingled with their on-line efforts---than warehouses and a supply chain stuffed with devices they can't sell, vs. so many others having wild success at selling roughly the same sorts of devices. A forward looking failure, seeing as they're missing out on the hottest categories of "new things" while e.g. old competitor Apple is succeeding despite also having the drag of a legacy PC system. But, yeah, as I note below, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_Dirksen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_Dirksen).