David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Yes. It certainly was more a technology acquisition this time than it was the eBay time around. The reason I don’t think it’s business line is because they bought it at such a high multiple of what their operating profit was that they weren’t just going to buy and cash flow this thing. They were buying a product to integrate into the rest of their ecosystem and create a stronger offering across the board. This was an acquisition done where this product was being greatly sought after by both Google and Facebook. There were acquisition rumors swirling for about half the price of what they got bought by Microsoft for for months before this. And so, you know, in a competitive environment where video streaming technology or video chat technology is not yet commoditized, we’re still two years away from Google launching Hangouts. You know, this is a product that has a lot of users, is growing fast, and can really be integrated to beef up somebody’s offering, and Microsoft decided it needed to be them. Yup. I totally agree. It’s interesting, you know, I think the eBay acquisition really was a business line acquisition. I mean it was totally separate, it was reported separate, it was a very different product. But the Microsoft acquisition I think is very clearly a product acquisition and not with the integration that you've seen into all parts of the Office Suite and other areas within the business. Yup.…

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