Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#241

Post by wayoutthere » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

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…

I think this was once true, but is significantly less so in the context of cloud platforms. It’s very easy from a business model standpoint for Microsoft to integrate Nuance NLP modules with Azure and start selling access to them at list prices very quickly.

You don’t need to hunt new customers with a marketing plan; you likely already have customers with these needs in your pipeline so it’s a matter of making sure your AEs know what’s happening. Everything is simpler at scale in a cloud business model, which is why these 3 companies in particular are eating the world.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#242

Post by nemothekid » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #219

dalbasal wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually thinking " Satya, you know that Berkshire is you end game here... right? " I agree, but I think MSFT (and friends) are in this predicament no matter what. What's the alternative? That said, I don't really think BRK is the end game. For one thing, Berkshire is kind of an exception. There are plenty of smaller conglomerates that are actually like Berkshire, but most pretend not to be conglomerates. They…

> I agree, but I think MSFT (and friends) are in this predicament no matter what. What's the alternative? Returning money to shareholders is the common solution for when you don't know how to grow more and profitability in the businesses you're already in and don't have any particular advantage in entering new ones. I'm not saying that's what they should be doing but sitting on a pile of capital that you don't know w…

My own uneducated position is that is a new problem because shareholders don't want their money back. Shareholders have been piling money into stocks [1], so if you gave them the money back they would likely just put it right back into Microsoft (or, more likely, it would signal that Microsoft doesn't know what to do with the money, so people would pull out of Microsoft to invest somewhere else).

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-money-poured-stocks-past...

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#243

Post by xyst » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

In the next decade, there will only be 3-4 companies that own everything tech. We will only have the illusion of choice

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#244

Post by drewda » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

FWIW, I thought Google had pouched all of Nuance's key technical staff years ago.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#245

Post by mrkramer » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

CivBase wrote: post #229

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.

This was their strategy since always or since they achieved monopoly in PC OS market which ensured them huge profits which they used to acquire competitors or to break into some industry or niche. They would push acquired product or service to millions of Windows users meaning they had huge distribution channel and scale potential.

Microsoft's first acquisition was in 1987 of Forethought Inc. or developers of what is now Microsoft PowerPoint and they bought them for only $14m. Today PowerPoint as a product and as a brand is worth billions.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#246

Post by lunixbochs » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #211

lunixbochs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have users who have intentionally switched their speech engine from the latest version of Dragon to Talon, for both dictation and commands. Talon is cross platform and directly targets accessibility use cases (far more than just speech input).

I switched from dragon to talon a while back... and then back to dragon :-\ Not to bash though. You've built a great product!

I'm specifically talking about the new Conformer model, available in early access as of ten days ago. What you tried was likely the previous (circa 2018) model, which is much less accurate than Conformer.

This is a demo of Conformer in Talon: https://twitter.com/lunixbochs/status/1378159234861264896

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#247

Post by barbazoo » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

xwolfi wrote: post #136

fakedang wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of Europeans in the lower taxpaying tiers who love to shit on Americans (especially when the American healthcare system has been getting so much coverage the past decade).

[flagged]

> the situation in Europe is unsustainable with all the youth and elders voting for "free healthcare" (it's so hard to make them understand it's free for them but oh so expensive for many others)

I think you might misunderstand how the systems work. First of all, there is no such thing as European healthcare. Every country has their own system. In Germany for instance, 14.6% of your post tax income go towards healthcare (capped at a post tax income of EUR 58.050). No one thinks it's free and it isn't free for anybody except for those who really cannot afford it which have never heard anyone critizise.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#248

Post by raobit » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #15

someperson wrote: post #11

Several years ago I used a Nuance product named Dragon NaturallySpeaking that had speech-to-text capability and adds verbal accessibility features on Windows platforms (eg, say "Open Word", speak your document aloud, then "Close Word") I had no idea they had enough sales to justify a $20 billion valuation. Though to be fair, Microsoft tends to acquire companies at high price tags (eg, Skype, LinkedIn, Minecraft) comp…

Bear in mind, Nuance is often the voice technology behind other companies' speech-based products too. Nuance technology originally powered Siri, for example.

Is Nuance into healthcare or speech/voice recognition? Didn't knew about the Siri thing though

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#249

Post by mrkramer » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #230

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.

Maybe they are not competing with them right now but they have aspirations to break into their industry and then compete with them. They figured out it was easier to acquire them than try to build it from the ground up.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#250

Post by mattowen_uk » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

bentcorner wrote: post #175

mattowen_uk wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been looking for a single DIN car audio device that is nothing more than an amplifier with Bluetooth, but such a thing does not exist. My phone already does Music/Radio/Maps - all I need is the car head unit to connect to it and playback the audio through the car speakers. I've even started thinking about some sort of home built version using parts from a cheap Bluetooth speaker system (minus the actual speakers…

There's plenty of old-school single DIN devices that have bluetooth in them. You'll usually find they have a radio and other junk (e.g. mp3 over usb) but most are fairly simple and it shouldn't be hard to find one that stays in bluetooth mode all the time.

Yes, but they all look awful! XD