TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS

Microsoft Finally Giving Up On Windows OS After They Acquired Garmin For $50 Billion

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If you can’t beat the market, then build/buy a cheaper alternative. Wait a few years of terrible reviews until you abandon your homemade products just to buy out those from your superior competitors. Even if your competitors are so old that R. Kelly would refuse to touch them.

Microsoft’s strategy of buying out boomer companies that can do the job better than the 90’s tech behemoth is nothing new. Although Silicon Valley downplays it as “giving up”, CEO Satya Nadella calls it “hitting refresh.” Despite scorn from tech enthusiasts, Microsoft’s strategy has surprisingly been successful in many aspects of the tech sector. Below, we listed different acquisitions, with in italics and in parentheses the year the acquired company was formed in.

• Microsoft bought LinkedIn (2003) after failing to grow its prior social network acquisition in Yammer. We agree this was a good move, as LinkedIn is still one of the top social networking sites. Although we’re still annoyed at people constantly posting how the homeless dog they helped out today ended up being their interviewer for the job they applied for.
• Microsoft bought Hotmail (1996) after failing to build a successful webmail on MSN.com. They rebranded it as Outlook, which is used in every enterprise. We begrudgingly agree that this is a good product, as we don’t know any other alternative (speaking of which, how has GMail not stepped up their game?)
• Microsoft bought Skype (2003) after failing to grow its prior acquisition in Lync Up. At one point, Skype For Business was the corporate video conferencing tool that everyone hated to use. Microsoft brilliantly turned Skype for Business into Microsoft Teams for enterprises. We’re not sure if we love Microsoft Teams because it’s actually a fantastic product, or if we just loathe Skype for Business even more.
• Microsoft bought Nuance Communications (1992) after failing to grow homemade Azure products: Speech to Text and Azure Bot Service. We’re impressed that Microsoft has made an excellent play in acquiring the leader in the healthcare and communications space. A+
• Microsoft bought the #1 version control system Github (2008-ok, this isn’t that old) after failing to market a better git version control system. We think this is a fantastic move, as we still don’t know the name of the version control system Microsoft released.
• Microsoft bought Nokia (1865 — wait seriously? Nokia was born during the American Civil War??? How is it still surviving? Did it drink the blood of the fallen soldiers to achieve immortality? — CLARIFICATION: Microsoft bought Nokia Mobile Phones, a division of Nokia. I’m still leaving this joke in) after failing to grow Windows Phone/Zune. Windows 10 Mobile was released as a competitor to iPhone and Android phones, and continues to be more successful than Zune. Out of the 3 biggest smartphone players, Windows 10 Mobile is the 3rd most successful….we’re sorry, we can’t do this. This product is still trash. There’s a reason why Microsoft discontinued it. F- -

The 83% acquisition success rate convinced this tech company to drop $50 billion on another boomer tech company: Garmin¹. While the world was wondering how on earth Microsoft still had this much money to drop for no reason, we were curious why Nadella thought buying a GPS company, one that was founded in 1989, was a smart investment. People only use Google Maps, as they’re fed up with Apple Maps telling them that Austin, Texas is located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

We scheduled a meeting with Nadella, who provided his sound reasoning.

“Garmin did start out as a GPS company. That sector is still profitable in the automotive, aviation, marine, outdoor, and sport industry. However, Garmin recently emerged as a key player in the wearable technology industry.”

We asked why Microsoft wanted to get into wearable tech. Nadella continued.

“Internet of Thing and sensors for healthcare have been hailed as 2016’s biggest tech trend. We at Microsoft realized the importance of tech in healthcare, as you can tell from our Nuance acquisition. We at Microsoft tried to enter the wearable device market by building Microsoft Band in 2014. However, we didn’t realize that people hated using Windows OS on any devices. Even our developers would rather build code on Linux than use our bloated operating system.”

Nadella shook his head.

“We had a feeling this would happen. But we thought we could bypass these operating system concerns by drastically improving our user interface. Unfortunately, we learned the hard way that you can’t call something classy if it’s nothing more than scent on dog shit.

“Poor security, outrageous license agreements, and incomprehensible commands forced the government to use our operating system to torture domestic terrorists. Despite impressive UI advancements, Windows OS couldn’t take off in the wearable device industry due to its poor infrastructure.

“Microsoft Band eventually failed because no one wanted to use Windows OS on a wearable device. While we discontinued the product, we simply can’t sit back and have our competitors Apple and Google eat up the market. We already lost to both of them once in the smartphone market, and we can’t do the same with wearable devices. Apple already created a fantastic product in Apple Watch, while Google bought a competent rival (Fitbit) in 2021.

“In hindsight, we should have bought Fitbit in 2014 instead of forcing our consumers to buy Microsoft Band. To correct our mistake, we bought Garmin just to retain our presence as a big tech player.”

We were surprised that Nadella was brutally honest about Windows OS. We wondered if Nadella has any thoughts of blowing Windows OS up and purchasing Linux from creator Linus Torvalds. Nadella laughed.

“Linux has been free for all developers since 1991. Trying to profit off this will just anger the developers who support us.

“That being said, it is time to accept that Windows OS is a disaster. We can no longer compete with Mac OS or Linux, and will have to accept this sunk cost. However, we aren’t opposed to making adjustments. We moved Windows Suite, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams to web and mobile apps that work on any operating system. We’ve made our software products accessible to everyone on any operating system.

“With Garmin, we’re not going to repeat the same mistake we did with Nokia. We’re going to market their hardware and allow people access to our software products through Garmin’s operating system (Garmin OS). For example, we can configure Microsoft’s AI assistant Cortana on Garmin wearable devices to make suggestions regarding data from healthcare sensors, such as heart rate and bpm.”

We admired Microsoft for catering to their strengths and working with other vendors. That being said, we wondered if Microsoft is ready for such a huge responsibility in AI again. Last time Microsoft got its feet wet in AI, they created an AI Bot that preached anti-semitism and death to feminism within 24 hours. Nadella reassured us that it won’t happen this time, as they tested out every edge case to make sure the bot won’t become a depraved cunt. If such a scenario happens again, we got permission from Nadella to name the bot Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Disclaimer: All characters and events in this article, even those based on real people and events, are entirely fictional. It is written to poke fun at the subjects mentioned. It is satire. For now.

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Footnote #1: As of now, Microsoft has not bought Garmin for $50 billion. We’ll keep you posted when that happens. We have no evidence of Microsoft showing any interest in Garmin, but we’ll blindly follow this “theory” based on our cherry picked stats.

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Update: On January 18, 2022, Microsoft bought Activation Blizzard for $68.7 billion. This was not the acquisition we predicted. Shame on us for failing to notice that despite creating critically acclaimed titles like Halo and Gears of War, Microsoft still couldn’t create a worthy rival to Candy Crush.

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