Daily Archives: 2021-03-23

Article note: Microsoft's modern strategy seems heavily based on MITMing tools communities use to organize, with Linkedin, Github, Discord, etc. Microsoft would not be the worst-case for this since they mostly take care of the platforms they buy to MITM areas, but it's still a bit of a distasteful "4 companies own everything" situation.

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Microsoft is reportedly in the late stages of $10 billion acquisition talks with Discord, a gaming-focused community chat platform, according to unnamed "people familiar with the matter" who spoke to Bloomberg.

Epic Games and Amazon were also involved in acquisition talks previously, according to Bloomberg's sources. VentureBeat also reported this week that Discord is exploring sale options with "multiple parties."

First launched in 2015, Discord lets individual users create public or private servers that allow members to chat with others in that server via text, images, voice, and video livestreaming. The service now reportedly has 6.7 million such servers, which serve as centralized communication hubs for everything from official news and discussion from game publishers and multiplayer match organization among small groups of friends to a chaotic gathering place for people betting on the stock market—and everything in between.

Article note: Neat! Nokia ended up with the old Plan9 IP when they absorbed Alcatel-Lucent, and are spinning a foundation to manage it and releasing pretty much everything under the MIT license, including the older versions that were never open. Plan9 is an artifact from an alternate universe, and it's good for your brain to play with.