Hostility Has Its Rewards - New York Times

A timely reality check -- and a theme Microsoft is probably happy to see promoted in Silicon Valley

Here in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurialism is a religion, people have long taken a dim view of acquisitions. A big purchase was, as Mr. Ellison put it, “a confession that there’s a failure to innovate.”

That is until Mr. Ellison decided about four years ago to go Rambo on this high-tech province of button-downs and khakis with a hostile $10.3 billion bid for PeopleSoft. At first, the bid was considered barbaric. Everyone said Mr. Ellison was bound to fail. After all, as they love to say here, a technology company’s most valuable assets — its engineers — walk out the door every evening. And with a hostile bidder circling, PeopleSoft’s engineers were bound to run.

Only they didn’t.

Hostility Has Its Rewards - New York Times