They're literally throwing around money creating new coding tools, languages, buying GitHub, LinkedIn, ... if we were to debate the effectiveness of its spending, there would be a lot to talk about.
2,5 Billion, with money from oversees on which they otherwise would be heavily taxed. They bought a game studio with significant growth potential at 20x its annual profits, but maybe even more important, they bought 54 Million and growing user accounts on a diversity of platforms, of often very young captive users, easily convertible into Microsoft accounts, a number which was poised to expand rapidly.
Indeed, Microsoft has sold and added 100M more Micecraft licenses and accounts since.
From an account acquisition point of view alone, which fairly often is the main driver of these transactions, the deal was a steal. I'd estimate the value of a fresh user account in a desirable demographic to be around $250 for Microsoft. Even the short term projected revenue would be close to $10.
Microsoft projected the deal to pay for itself in 1 year, and while not having followed the case up close, chances are it did.
