March 14, 2007
Microsoft dials up the acquisitions
There are two interesting aspects to Microsoft’s acquisition of voice technology company Tellme today (Business Week has an interesting pre-acquisition piece on the company here.)
One is that Microsoft is competing harder for hot young start-ups. This is a company that might easily have gone in the past to Google, which has tended to be far more aggressive in buying into promising new ideas. Steve Ballmer laid out the importance of acquisitions to Microsoft on a trip to Silicon Valley last year, and the results are starting to show.
The other is that Microsoft is going to fold Tellme into its business division, which includes Office. Whatever the excitement about internet search (an area where voice recognition software could play a big part), Microsoft’s core business of selling "productivity" applications for office workers has plenty of room for growth. As speech comes to play a bigger part in how workers interract with the internet services they need to do their jobs, this could prove an important deal.
