Microsoft makes all of it's money from PC sales and software licensing.

Meanwhile, they basically invented the "buy your competitor and tank their business" strategy. That's probably what this person is referring to.

That doesn't make sense. If they buy the competitor, why would they tank the business which is now their own instead of gaining the combined revenue and market share?

"Buy and trash competitor" isn't a real strategy. When an acquisition fails, it's usually poor management or vision, or just a lack of synergy in the first place, not a purposeful tanking.

If Microsoft makes all their money from PC sales and software licensing, how is Github a competitor?

How does tanking Github allow Microsoft to sell more copies of Office?

There are two ways you create value for your employer:

1) creating value for their customers

2) maintaining the moat that prevents other people from creating value for their customers

The former is constructive, the latter is destructive. They both contribute revenue.

I haven’t done a full scale analysis of Microsoft, but the argument I would entertain is that Microsoft primarily sells tools for companies and individuals to built moats around themselves.

#2 doesn't work unless you can also provide that value, so it is still constructive. You cant keep customers from using something if you have no such offering yourself to compete with.

Sure you can, why not? They will just work around deficiencies in your product as long as switching is even more painful.

Who taught you that high market cap equals nondestructive? Go ask for your money back.

What is the point of your comment? Care to explain what "destructive" means then since you're claiming to be better educated about this?

No, I don’t care to explain. You opened with incredulity, an Appeal to Accoplishment/Authority, and now you are playing Prove Me Wrong/Teach Me.

The original poster claimed it was "destructive" which doesn't logically sound like a way to build a lot of value, especially to be one of the top 10 companies on the planet, at the very least without clarity on what they are supposedly destroying. From the votes and other comments, I'm clearly not alone in wondering. You had your chance to enlighten us but went with juvenile retorts instead, ultimately only really proving that you don't know either. Thanks for playing I guess.