Microsoft, fully embracing a model it once saw as a threat, said on Monday that it was buying GitHub, an open software platform used by 28 million programmers, for $7.5 billion. The deal is a bid by Microsoft to gain ground in the internet era of software development, where applications increasingly run on remote data centers — on so-called cloud computing. Amazon is the leader in the cloud market so far, but Microsoft has transformed itself in recent years to become a strong No. Its vital Office productivity applications and database software are available in cloud versions. The more programmers on a company’s platform, the more software applications are created, attracting customers and still more developers — a flywheel of growth and profit.

Source: New York Times June 04, 2018 14:10 UTC