Start your engines, entrepreneurs. Or, if they're already started ... take off the parking brake. If Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer is to be believed, then it's a good time to flip a startup. During his Q&A at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday he made the ballsy claim that the company is prepared to purchase 20 companies a year, for the next five years.
However juicy the proposition may sound, one should still take heed. One thing Ballmer didn't state in his froth was a solid direction for all these purchases. He merely went on to say that the buys will be "good acquisitions . . .and they're of strategic importance." If we're keeping score, that potentially means that Microsoft is prepared to spend a lot of money over a five year stretch on companies that it hasn't seen yet, that will ultimately provide services or products that it hasn't identified yet.
This type of move isn't unheard of (Yahoo and Google are snapping up companies left and right), but we were hoping for a little more from Microsoft. It's clear that the company needs to build out to stay competitive, but throwing out arbitrary numbers without a solid accompanying game plan just seems sloppy. If Microsoft wants to climb back to the top then it needs to flaunt its abilities and direction, not its acquisitions budget.
