Microsoft has finally sealed the deal for GitHub.On the evening of June 4, Microsoft formally announced plans to buy GitHub, a software hosting site, for $7.5 billion in stock, in a deal expected to be completed by the end of the year.GitHub was founded in April 2008 and has been around for just ten years now.In 2015, GitHub was valued at $2 billion, and in just three years, GitHub's market value nearly quadrupled, making it the most popular social programming and code hosting platform of the day.
By march, GitHub had 28 million high-frequency users and hosted 80 million source code repositories for programming language software such as Java, Python and C++.Public institutions such as NASA and large technology companies such as Google, apple and amazon all have operations on GitHub.
The GitHub community is dubbed by Chinese programmers as "the world's largest gay dating site" because it has a large number of white men (up to 97%, it is said).
GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath says the community platform was profitable as early as 2011.At present, GitHub's profit model mainly includes three types: code hosting service, data precipitation and cloud storage, and corporate headhunting recruitment community.
As CNBC reported last year, GitHub expects to make more than $200 million a year, with more than $110 million coming from b-side corporate services.
, according to people familiar with such a company profit ability, subject listed have no choice but to Microsoft, the part of the reason is for Microsoft attaches great importance to the developer's business ability and determination to trust.
Interestingly, Microsoft was a staunch opponent of open source software, but after Nadella became Microsoft's CEO, Microsoft became one of the most active advocates in the open source community.Since 2014, Microsoft has launched hundreds of open source projects successively.In 2016, Microsoft also surpassed Facebook and Google to top GitHub's list of contributions.
As for the significance of Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub, Nadella tweeted that "Microsoft + GitHub = enabler".According to the personage inside course of study, from Microsoft to making intelligent Cloud business sector revenue in hand, is in order to implement "AI + Cloud" strategy, to encourage developers to include Cloud platform for Microsoft Azure Cloud, multiple platform application development.
^ from left to right in turn is making co-founder Chris Wanstrath, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, making new CEO Nat Friedman
Microsoft says GitHub will continue to operate in the same style, with developers first and independent.
After the completion of the acquisition, vice President of Microsoft company Nat Friedman, will serve as chief executive officer, making making co-founder and former CEO Chris Wanstrath will become Microsoft technology researcher, reporting to the executive vice President Scott Guthrie, strategically in the software development plan.
As nokia, Hotmail, Skype and others have done in the past, people have been cynical about Microsoft's big acquisitions.What about GitHub's future?Maybe only time will tell.