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Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

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Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#221

Post by _cerv »

tootie wrote: post #66
16bytes wrote: post #63

For those confused, this acquisition is due in large part by Nuance's dominance in healthcare related products. From Nuance's last earnings release[1]: “We are very pleased with the strong start to the fiscal year, as we delivered revenue and EPS above our guidance range expectations,” said Mark Benjamin, Chief Executive Officer at Nuance. “We continued to advance our strategic initiatives, accelerating our cloud tra…

I'm pretty sure Nuance also does the Comcast Xfinity voice remotes. They are actually really well done. And it's a humongous customer to have your claws in.

They do. The amount of magic involved to make it work is amazing from an engineering perspective.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#222

Post by throwawaysea »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #13

This is really, really unfortunate. One of the last on-device speech companies is being bought out and moved into Microsoft's cloud division. Expect nobody to be willing to sell you speech recognition without a cloud subscription now.

I agree. Even though acquiring is a good strategy for Microsoft to an extent, it is also a problem to see continued consolidation. How can anyone hope to compete against these giants in the same product segments? They have unlimited cheap capital and the ability to integrate an acquired product into the rest of their products. Then there's the issue of intellectual property and continued building of patent war chests. If one of these companies copies your innovative feature, you will have no recourse to sue them because they'll be sitting on a mountain of random mundane patents. The fact that these companies can make $20B acquisitions itself feels broken from a healthy market perspective.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#223

Post by dalbasal »

CerealFounder wrote: post #206
bombcar wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acquiring is a simple way to show the Board/Shareholders that you're "doing something" - but I suspect it's rarely very successful in the long run. Unless you acquire a business that ACTUALLY provides some synergies you're just on the path of transitioning from a successful company to a poor imitation of Berkshire Hathaway. It does have the advantage that you can "spin off" your acquisitions once they fail to do anyt…

Its rarely the syngeries that make it work, instead its often they bought a business they leave alone that has much more room to grow.

IDK if it's rare that synergies work, so much that it's common for synergies to fail.

Consider Google. They acquired Youtube, Android... Google's skillset was perfect for taking these proving concepts and making them 1080px, so to speak. Now, Youtube and android feed users & data to the adwords cash machine. Youtube and android defend the adwords castle, denying competitors. Fantastic synergy.

OTOH, no company will ever find a synergy with ebay. They have spiky bits where companies are supposed to have copulation bits.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#224

Post by temp667 »

darkwater wrote: post #108
cletus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it more likely that the quality of the voice assistant isn’t that important to most buyers?

(gonna be downvoted to death) Usually Apple die-hard buyers tend to minimize the importance of software/features that are not sported by an i-device or that doesn't work well there. When the 1st iPhone was released, the lack of native apps was a selling point "we use the web standards". When apps were introduced, they were again a selling point (and still are to the present day). The day Siri will work equal to/bette…

I'm an apple buyer. Siri is terrible. Google assistant is pretty impressive. I would switch BUT - google's integration / support for things like work calendars is so terrible, and their response to consumer / user input so bad (ie, ignored despite #1 request for years and years) that I'm like most Apple users.

Apple (and Amazon) get many things right, and actually seem to pay a tiny bit of attention to user needs. So it's really not worth playing with the google stuff because you end up in these weird nonsensical hells - everything is amazing, and then they just drop the ball in a key corner.

For example, my google work calendar is EASY to integrate with Alexa along with my personal calendar. Fantastic, what's my schedule today works great. Google - falls flat on its' face for this, despite being a paying customer of their Gsuite. Their approach is just full of excuses here, and ignores that this desired interaction works well on their COMPETITORS devices but not theirs.

Just one (of many) examples. They have some sort of eventually consistent backend more often for stuff so you also get weird states that you can't delete things, changes take longer to "flow through" etc.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#225

Post by traveler01 »

tupac_speedrap wrote: post #105
traveler01 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually kinda scary to see Microsoft stretching its tentacles like this. Only this year they bought Bethesda, Nuance and there are rumours about them buying Discord and other gaming studios. Microsoft's influence is growing deeply...

Where is the antitrust lawsuit? Microsoft got done for this before (bundling Internet Explorer with Windows) and if you look at where they are now buying out businesses and using dark patterns in Windows 10 to make people use Edge as well as implying it is a fundamental part of the OS they are way beyond was acceptable years ago.

You're right.

They've been abusing their position and power for years now and the Edge situation with Windows 10 is getting much worse after the Chromium update. They force you to use the said browser with some features, like when you use the search function it automatically opens Edge browser, even if you have another browser set as default. What's next? Removing the option to set defaults for browsers?

It's one of the reasons I'm willing to buy a MacBook next...

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#226

Post by john_moscow »

bombcar wrote: post #190
dalbasal wrote: post #188

I think a lot of big acquisitions make "sense," given the current market. The most successful companies have lots of cash, high share prices, and amazing cash cows. They could borrow for (almost) free, so resources are practically unlimited. Their R&D is already well funded. Most of their big, growth oriented endeavours are not cash-constrained. There are usually no factories to build or production to scale up. Googl…

Acquiring is a simple way to show the Board/Shareholders that you're "doing something" - but I suspect it's rarely very successful in the long run. Unless you acquire a business that ACTUALLY provides some synergies you're just on the path of transitioning from a successful company to a poor imitation of Berkshire Hathaway. It does have the advantage that you can "spin off" your acquisitions once they fail to do anyt…

Based on my personal experience, since 2008 more and more companies are about showing somebody that you are "doing something" with their money. It could be the VCs, it could be the EU grants, it could be the stockholders, but that's the business model you get with the abundance of capital and low interest rates.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#227

Post by traveler01 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #73
rvz wrote: post #10

Now Nuance. It seems Microsoft is still actively continuing to buy more companies and it seems Discord is still on the menu.

And Ubuntu! Totally expecting that in the news at this point.

Really hope not, Ubuntu is like a beacon in the Linux world, no matter if you like it or not. Microsoft purchasing Ubuntu would mean the end of Linux desktop...

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#228

Post by rllearneratwork »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #13

This is really, really unfortunate. One of the last on-device speech companies is being bought out and moved into Microsoft's cloud division. Expect nobody to be willing to sell you speech recognition without a cloud subscription now.

plenty open-source options are available. Checkout https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#229

Post by CivBase »

mrkramer wrote: post #218

>Microsoft tried to buy TikTok's U.S. operations last year in a deal reportedly valued between $10 billion to $30 billion. >Reports suggest it's in advanced talks with gaming chat app Discord for a deal worth more than $10 billion. >A report in February suggested Microsoft was eyeing a takeover of Pinterest, worth $53 billion on the public market. Last September, it bought gaming giant ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion.…

MS's strategy as of late seems to be buying their way inyo being competitive in every market instead of dominating a few markets. I suppose this gives them a great deal of stability and allows them to develop a massive ecosystem of interconnected products and services. It's still a concerning practice... but not as obviously unethical as the monopolistic behavior displayed by other big tech companies.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#230

Post by paxys »

mrkramer wrote: post #218

>Microsoft tried to buy TikTok's U.S. operations last year in a deal reportedly valued between $10 billion to $30 billion. >Reports suggest it's in advanced talks with gaming chat app Discord for a deal worth more than $10 billion. >A report in February suggested Microsoft was eyeing a takeover of Pinterest, worth $53 billion on the public market. Last September, it bought gaming giant ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion.…

The fact that none of these companies are competing with Microsoft also makes it easier. That's not the strategy Google, Facebook etc. normally use.
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