XPost: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general   
   From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   Unlisted wrote:   
      
   > Microsoft has ...   
   > I hope they file for bankruptcy as a result.   
      
   The way high tech companies work is... diversification.   
      
   You must have more than one cash cow generating revenue   
   at a time. The projects need to overlap. Microsoft has   
   Azure as a source of income.   
      
   if you fail at *all* your enterprises, that's when   
   you file for bankruptcy.   
      
   And with the mountain of cash that Microsoft has,   
   they could fire a large portion of the staff, and   
   come up with a new plan. And have years worth of money   
   to do it.   
      
   They have tried to mop up that mountain of cash, by pissing   
   it away on LinkedIn. They tried to waste their money on Yahoo,   
   but somebody else got it. These are the kinds of moves I   
   associate with failed companies - the flailing around   
   in the mergers and acquisitions department. Smart companies   
   do strategic acquisitions, with purchases around the   
   $1 billion or less mark. As they get better value for   
   money that way. Apple and Cisco do that. Qualcomm has   
   done it to some extent in the past. The Broadcom deal   
   will be their undoing (big purchase always equals big writedown).   
      
   People forget, just how close Apple came to going out   
   of business. They might have been down to around nine quarters   
   worth of cash at one time. Which means, if they didn't produce   
   a "winner" of some sort in a couple of years, they would   
   have been dead. Even though Apple too has a vast mountain of   
   cash today, you only need to think back to their "close call"   
   to realize how fragile these businesses are.   
      
   High tech companies don't last very long. IBM is an exception.   
   And IBM only does "high margin" projects. They don't make   
   tea kettles with a profit margin of $0.05 each. They will   
   wring the cash out of you, if you do business with them.   
   That's how they can afford all those PhDs.   
      
       Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)