Why doesn't Microsoft buy SCO?

[NewsBot]

I have been playing with my university's Unix server lately and I think Unix has a lot of potential as an operating system, but it is so prohibitively expensive that very few people are running it.

 

Given that Unix is such an important operating system historically and even today and that SCO is not worth much after its Linux lawsuit, why doesn't Microsoft buy SCO and make Unix more affordable by lowering prices?

 

Failing to buy SCO would give Google the opportunity to accquire Unix. Google has already been working on its own operating system (Android) and it will undoubtly try to expand its OS development into personal computing. Accquiring Unix would give Google a major jump start in OS development as by accquiring Unix, Google would be getting perhaps the most stable, best written and most reliable OS in the world. Building a GUI on top of it and bundling applications like Firefox and offline versions of Google's spreadsheet and word processor tools could enable Google to target Microsoft's core Windows and Office businesses, like Microsoft targeted Netscape's core business of selling web server software with IIS. With the halo effect that a Google OS would have with younger people, people would begin to start switching to it, eroding Microsoft's marketshare, similarly to what is happening with Apple's Mac OS X with younger people today. Heck, I have not counted, but roughly 10% of the computers run by my university are made by Apple and run Mac OS X because my peers want to use Apple's computers. Imagine that happening with a much more influential company like Google without the OS being locked to any particular OEM, sort of like Google's Android OS on mobile phones is beginning to do now (all of the telecommunications companies are working on making their phones use it), despite not even being out yet.

 

Perhaps I am going a bit far, but I would really like the ability to buy a copy of Unix for my home PC for $15.75 at my university's store like I can with Windows Vista Ultimate, so I tried to make the best case I could for why Microsoft should buy SCO.

 

 

More...

 

View All Our Microsft Related Feeds