

2009 Prediction: Microsoft buys 37signals for $300 million - fnazeeri
http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/12/microsoft-buys-37signals-for-200-million.html

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cperciva
Flagged for bogus title. I know it's the same as the title of the linked
article, but hypotheticals and predictions ought to be clearly marked as such.

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fnazeeri
Woops, my bad. Fixed. I just assumed the title was so preposterous that folks
would get the joke. It wasn't meant to mislead. Thx for the note.

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cperciva
Thanks, I've unflagged the story now. :-)

The title was preposterous, and when I saw it I was very skeptical -- but I've
seen stranger stories which turned out to be true, so I wasn't completely
sure.

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parenthesis
Hmm, would pulled-up-by-their-own-bootstraps, Mac-loving, RoR-open-sourcing,
37signals really want to sell to _Microsoft_?

To be fair, that's why the prediction is for a $300 buy even though 37signals'
revenue is 'only' ~ $8million.

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tlrobinson
_To be fair, that's why the prediction is for a $300 buy even though
37signals' revenue is 'only' ~ $8million._

Well, that's why this prediction won't come true. 37signals won't sell to
Microsoft barring some astronomical price, and Microsoft won't pay said
astronomical price for 37signals.

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mdasen
So, why 37signals? 280 North likewise makes web applications well and their
Objective-J model is better for making applications (vs. web pages with ajax)
than 37signals' model. 37signals is great, but they don't make competitors for
things like Visio or PowerPoint. 280 North is in that arena.

And Objective-J wouldn't be hard to swallow for Microsoft. They'd have to
replace the widgets with less Apple-esque ones, but it wouldn't be too hard.
And it would give them a base akin to Google's GWT.

Microsoft probably does need to get into the webapp world, but 37signals
doesn't compete with Microsoft's lineup and Rails really isn't the toolkit to
create a Visio-killer.

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mikeryan
"and their Objective-J model is better for making applications (vs. web pages
with ajax) "

I'm sorry but adding an abstraction layer on top of javascript doesn't make it
better then javascript.

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jamongkad
I tried learning Objective-J when it first came out. It was nice and all but I
couldn't shake the feeling of uneasiness that I could be writing this app in
Javascript + jQuery.

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viggity
For starters, I have a hard time seeing MS buying a ruby shop. Second - I have
a hard time seeing 37 signals selling to MS

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ajkirwin
Never happen. I call complete bullshit on this prediction.

