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A comment on Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far. Parent comment

Re:Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far by simondotau on Saturday October 29, 2022 @02:48AM (#33381640)
It wasn't strictly cash, it was an agreement to buy $150 million of stock as part of a Judge-approved settlement of a lawsuit which Apple was winning. The settlement was a win-win for both sides, because it meant Apple remained a healthy company and Microsoft got to avoid paying out BILLIONS to Apple. Instead they bought stock which they sold for a tidy profit ($550 million) a few years later.

(Fun fact: if Microsoft hadn't sold this $150 million investment in Apple stock, it would be worth $120 BILLION today and this shareholding would be Microsoft's single most profitable business unit.)

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Re:Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far by quickthrower2 on Saturday October 29, 2022 @04:09AM (#33382042)
What you don’t know is how much worse MS itself would have been without the 550M for whatever they used it for. Unlikely 120B worse off but it would be something.
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Re:Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far by simondotau on Saturday October 29, 2022 @04:54AM (#33382255)
That might be true on the margins, but it's impossible to know. Maybe they would have not pursued the original Xbox and lost out on that enormous market. Or maybe they would not have pursued Windows Mobile/Windows Phone and saved a few billion dollars on a dead end...
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Re:Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far by sircastor on Saturday October 29, 2022 @04:22AM (#33382105)
One of the important parts of that deal was Microsoft promising to develop Office for the Mac. There were definitely competing products out there, but the Mac needed Office.
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Re:Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far by simondotau on Saturday October 29, 2022 @05:09AM (#33382328)
It's really impractical to second guess history, but I don't think Office was quite as necessary as people say. Its absence definitely would have hurt sales on the margins, but it certainly didn't affect the majority of Apple's customers. The reasons why people owned computers was exploding in the late 90s, with the advent of the internet and the home digital media revolution.
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