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Article: THE MICROSOFT/GREAT PLAINS MERGER.
- Article from:
- Soft-Letter
- Article date:
- December 27, 2000
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Aegis Resources, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Microsoft has a reputation for gobbling up software companies, but in reality most Microsoft acquisitions have been either tiny startups with sexy technology (Firefly, Entropic, VXtreme) or "strategic" investments in new markets (WebTV, ComCast). So Redmond watchers were caught by surprise last week when Microsoft announced a deal to buy Great Plains Software, a 19-year-old accounting software company, for more than a billion dollars in Microsoft stock.
The two companies do have a history of working together: In 1993 they collaborated on a mass-market accounting package called Microsoft Profit, which crashed and burned almost as fast as the legendary Microsoft ...