Microsoft's Mistake Buying 'Enron of Norway'

I thought the billion dollar FAST deal Microsoft made was crazy based on my conversations last year with FAST about their products and prospects. The Microsoft presentation at the Independent Analyst Platform in Phoenix last week reminded me to follow up on things that have been sitting in the queue for a couple months.

InformationWeek Staff, Contributor

July 7, 2008

1 Min Read

I thought the billion-dollar FAST deal Microsoft made was crazy based on my conversations last year with FAST about their products and prospects. The Microsoft presentation at the Independent Analyst Platform in Phoenix last week reminded me to follow up on things that have been sitting in the queue for a couple months.This article has some insight into what was really going on:

"Three weeks before it embarked on its blundering attempt to acquire Yahoo, a Google-obsessed Microsoft agreed to pay a juicy $1.23 billion for a Norwegian tech company mired in enough accounting problems, regulatory probes, and conflicts of interest that it had become known as the Enron of Norway."

While I was looking for new information on what's developed since May, I came across this document in Scribd titled "FAST's Stock Market Bluff" by way of TechCrunch. To sum it up, "Just before the big scam was revealed, Microsoft bought the company." Oops.

The best part for those who anticipate interesting things to come (read: schadenfreude) is that the VP of enterprise search at Microsoft is the former CEO accused of many of the irregularities.I thought the billion dollar FAST deal Microsoft made was crazy based on my conversations last year with FAST about their products and prospects. The Microsoft presentation at the Independent Analyst Platform in Phoenix last week reminded me to follow up on things that have been sitting in the queue for a couple months.

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