
How Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14M - whyleyc
https://blog.zamzar.com/2016/06/10/deal-of-the-century-how-microsoft-beat-apple-to-buy-powerpoint-for-14-million/
======
chime
Random trivia for tech history buffs:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forethought,_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forethought,_Inc).
under founder Rob Campbell sold PowerPoint to MS and FileMaker to Apple.

Of course everyone knows PowerPoint but even most techies today have never
touched FileMaker - it was the Django/Rails/WordPress/SquareSpace/RAD
application back in the day. At a time when very few could code, FileMaker let
anyone create a full-featured database. And even today, if you are running a
small business and want basic data-collection features for internal use, it is
still relevant and useful: [http://www.filemaker.com/solutions/starter-
solutions.html](http://www.filemaker.com/solutions/starter-solutions.html)

90% of "please make me a typical DB app" requests I get, I just point them to
FileMaker. I say spend $75/mo for 5 users for a couple of months to work out
the process. If the process works and the pain-point is FileMaker, come back
to me and I will make a custom solution.

~~~
Keyframe
90's Apple (the beige phase, hah) users knew about FileMaker. At least in my
own little circle. There was even a debate FileMake vs 4D (I was in 4D camp).
Weird time to be alive. RAD tools and UML, everything visual basically, seemed
to be THE FUTURE. Look at us now.

~~~
sgw928
It's juvenile, but I can't help laughing at "Visual Basic-ally."

~~~
Keyframe
It was a sad attempt at humor :)

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raldi
The deal of the century was when SAIC bought Network Solutions for $4.7M in
1995.

Five years later, they sold it to VeriSign for $21B.

~~~
ralfd
4 years?? Holy shit, what a return.

~~~
babuskov
That's interesting. I also read it as "Four", but now I look at it and it
reads "five". Could be some brain trick.

~~~
Quinner
Interesting, same here, perhaps we actually processed the numeral in the child
comment subconsciously while reading the written-out five in the parent.

~~~
euyyn
Or the numeral in the buy price.

~~~
babuskov
This seems more plausible, because the initial comment only had that one.

~~~
brianpan
> only had that one.

Did it?

The deal of the century was when SAIC bought Network Solutions _for_ $4.7M in
1995. Five years later, they sold it to VeriSign _for_ $21B.

~~~
babuskov
You misunderstood.

He couldn't see a comment on his own post because it wasn't written yet. He
could only see the $4.7M which you quoted.

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martin-adams
I think it's so ironic that the first version of Powerpoint was for Mac which
ended up helping give Windows it's name when running Office.

I've seen Powerpoint used for so many crazy things. Most notably non-technical
managers designing a UI in Powerpoint. It's just one of those, lets just get
the job done pieces of software.

~~~
mikehearn
I am unabashedly in support of using presentation software for initial UI
design. For basic wireframing, you don't need much more than the ability add
shapes, text, color, images + a way to demonstrate user flow (e.g. by ordering
slides). Presentation software is perfect for this. It is accessible to
everyone, lets non-technical users offer constructive input and is just
incredibly fast to get something basic circulated.

~~~
martin-adams
Actually you're right. I know a UX designer who had all the UI elements in
wireframes and would move things around in Powerpoint based on feedback on
conference calls.

I think my observation is when someone who 'thinks' they know what the right
thing to do is from a UI point of view and shares it around before getting the
actual designers involved. The ones who say, we need another button here,
rather than asking, what is the user trying to achieve.

~~~
surganov
> Keynotopia transforms Keynote and PowerPoint into the best rapid prototyping
> tools for creating mobile, web and desktop app mockups

[http://keynotopia.com](http://keynotopia.com)

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baldfat
Not a deal of the century it would have just delayed the MS machine a little.

Back then they either bought you out (Power Point) or they out Advertised or
eventually caught up and passes you (Word Perfect).

~~~
bluedino
>> they out Advertised or eventually caught up and passes you (Word Perfect).

WordPerfect kind of killed itself. They never embraced the GUI because they
thought Windows was ugly. The keystroke-based interface was trashed by
critics. They were all over the map trying to make a suite of strange, semi-
office-related programs.

When they went from 4.x to 5.0 they had to re-do the printer driver model,
just as Windows was making specific dos printer drivers for your application
obsolete.

~~~
joshaidan
>> The keystroke-based interface was trashed by critics.

It's kind of ironic how nowadays I prefer using Vim for coding and other
tasks. And I also find myself preferring Markdown more and more whenever I can
for a variety of tasks, from planning meetings to preparing presentations.

~~~
eli
Vim is a tiny fraction of a percent of word processor usage. Most people like
GUIs.

~~~
babuskov
Yes.

Most people who aren't in the tech just launch a word processor (word,
libreoffice, etc.)

Tech people on Windows use Notepad or a similar GUI program.

Vim is used by a tiny, tiny fraction of people in the world.

~~~
Spivak
> Tech people on Windows use Notepad.

I'm always horrified to see this. MS really shot themselves in the foot with
the dev community by not providing a powerful text editor as the default.
Getting a WinAdmin to enjoy the UNIX'y way of doing things is like trying to
feed a child broccoli.

~~~
jandrese
Also cmd.exe being a steaming pile of shit and the handful of commandline
utilities that ship by default are mostly ancient DOS versions from the 80s.

There are a couple of gems (netsh for example), but commandline on Windows is
just painful.

Powershell does give you a lot more potential, but I've found its syntax to be
too verbose to be a comfortable commandline replacement.

~~~
uxp
Powershell is an interesting environment.

On one hand, it's almost a C#/CLR REPL with amazing power to program and
script almost anything you could think of, but on the other it's not a shell
and anyone coming from *nix that tries to think like a shell will be sorely
disappointed in how verbose and unintuitive it behaves.

------
27182818284
I know lots of folks my age that loved Hypercard. Deal of the century? No, but
Hypercard not going mainstream was a huge missed opportunity. I mean I know a
generation now of people my age that grew up with that and loved that product
in elementary school and all of us ended up doing lousy powerpoints in high
school, college, and beyond.

(Additionally given the programming-like nature of Hypercard, I wonder how
many more young folks would have entered programming related fields...)

~~~
LaMarseillaise
My sister and I learned how to make things with HyperCard (and HyperTalk) when
I was about 6 or 7 years old. We quite enjoyed it, but it took me many years
to rediscover programming as an adult.

------
d33
...just $14M?! Wow, it looks like the tech bubble really grew over the years.
On the other hand, the number of people affected by the software grew a lot
too...

~~~
oblio
That's true, but I still can't shake the feeling that a ton more actual money
cycled through Powerpoint (and Word, Excel, etc.) than Snapchat or Instagram
will ever make.

I could be wrong.

~~~
giarc
Yes, but with PPT, Excel, Word you bought it once and then no longer paid MS
any more (until a new version of Office came out). With Snapchat/IG you
advertise to your user forever.

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abritinthebay
PowerPoint would never have become what it was without being on Windows and
part of Office. So no, not really.

Ignoring network effects makes this kind of silly.

Keynote has also been better for a number of years now. Still not as popular
just because Macs are less common than PCs with office.

~~~
coldcode
Having worked on Persuasion 1.0 (Powerpoint's only real competitor for a
while) being part of Office eventually killed Persuasion (when Adobe owned it
later) because Powerpoint was "free".

~~~
abritinthebay
Right, exactly. It came with Word/Excel so basically anyone at an office
already had it because they had Office.

Never underestimate the power of "it's already installed"

~~~
scholia
What's more, PowerPoint was pretty much free. The Microsoft Office bundle was
cheaper than buying the programs separately. You probably bought Office even
if you just wanted Word and Excel.

------
whyleyc
There are some timeless tips on acquisition here. Notably once more players
are interested suddenly it becomes a whole lot easier to dictate terms for the
deal ... like not relocating from Silicon Valley to Redmond.

~~~
giarc
I think the main point was that Microsoft felt they needed to simply buy a
product rather than develop their own. They may have arrived at the same terms
without Apple et al knocking at the door.

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hnal943
While obviously PowerPoint is ubiquitous and influential, it's interesting - I
don't think I've ever used PowerPoint in professional life.

The last time I needed to prepare a slide presentation was in high school.

~~~
engi_nerd
We are lacking context here. What do you do?

~~~
hnal943
Good point. I'm a dev lead in an "enterprise" company (retail). I spend my
time in Balsamiq Mockups and Visio. Meeting topics are usually complex enought
that we spend the time discussing a single diagram/flow.

~~~
engi_nerd
Interesting. Thanks for answering. I'd say that _not_ having PowerPoint
presentations reflects well on you.

Unfortunately in my line of work (aerospace engineering), PowerPoint is
endemic. All kinds of documents that _should_ be actual reports are just
PowerPoint slides.

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yuhong
Thinking about it, delaying Windows 3.0 to fix problems with DOS 5.0 would
have delayed PowerPoint for Windows further, but I still think that it would
be worth it.

------
xbmcuser
$12million worth Microsoft shares in 89 vs $14million in cash. Some of the
investors might be kicking themselves for not taking the shares.

------
epx
Good, so they invented Keynote that is a ton better. I use it even for things
that I should be using Photoshop/GIMP.

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erikb
If they know in the offer round already that they want a deal from Microsoft,
then why is the title "how Microsoft beat Apple"? They didn't do anything to
beat Apple if they had already won.

------
known
Reminds me of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc)

------
erikb
A serious question remains: How did they pitch it without PowerPoint slides?

~~~
phodo
Harvard Graphics ?

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serge2k
> The new offer, however, was for cash rather than MSFT stock, overcoming one
> hesitation of our investors.

Whoops.

~~~
nitroscott
The adjusted price of a share of MSFT on 6/25/87 was $0.37. Had they received
$14m in Microsoft stock, almost 38 million shares would be worth about $2B
today.

------
peter303
Dante created a new circle of Hell for PowerPoint

~~~
Exras
Inferno or not, PowerPoint _is_ a special product, for you can buy hardware to
control it.

An image search on PowerPoint remote will fill the screen with different
devices.

What other windows app has that same kind of hardware support?

~~~
jboles
Solitaire/Minesweeper. One of the original purposes of including them with
Windows was to familiarise users with mouse techniques.

