May 23, 2008
M$FT
My conspiratorial theory on Microsoft is that they have to continually invent bad business development ideas like buying Yahoo! because if they don't come up with silly ways to waste their excess cash, it'll become obvious to regulators how preposterously, wildly profitable is their business in Office and XP. If those undiluted fat margins suddenly showed up on their income statement, a lot more EU regulators would be calling for blood. So MSFT needs to reinvest the cash into low-margin businesses so that, on average, it doesn't look like they're minting money. Which they are.
¶ 5/23/2008 03:21:00 PM
