On Fri, 30 Mar 2018 01:10:39 -0400, Paul
wrote:

Jason wrote:
This is probably paywalled. Someone sent me a copy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/t...ogy/microsoft-
reorganizes-to-fuel-cloud-and-ai-businesses.html?
hpw&rref=technology&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&m odule=we
ll-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well


As corporate announcements go, this is a "nothing-burger".

Call me when they run out of cash :-)

They've known for a long time that they
"need to do something".

Todays announcement still doesn't indicate they
know what the "something" is. If all the income they
had was from the Cloud business, the only consequence
would be that the company would be a lot smaller.

*******

They don't think at all, like conventional companies.

Some companies, when faced with under-performing units,
do a stock split, and cut the company in two pieces.
They could put "Windows+Office" in one half, and
"Cloud+Skype+LinkedIN+social_networking_platform " in
a second half. And a shareholder would get X shares
of the first company and Y shares of the second company.
HP has done that sort of thing in the past, as an example.
What happens then, is the value of the shares of "Y" shoots
up, with a resulting market cap to match. As a shareholder, if
you don't think your shares of "X" have any value, you
sell them immediately before the bottom drops out.

That would end up giving us copies of Windows 11 for
$150 a box (as the "new" company would have to charge
for the OS to stay solvent).

Paul

"Stock Split" already means something else on Wall Street. But yeah
reorganization and spinning off "under performing" assets, is one
thing corporations do to protect the stock price.

If they use the OS to funnel consumers into their cloud, they may
still continue "developing" the OS, but may be selling it as
purchasing on-line storage as a package.

Privacy? fuggetaboutit