[twoodfin]

Very different business, of course, but Databricks v. Fabric reminds me a lot of Slack v. Teams.

Regardless of the relative merits now, I think everyone agrees that a few years ago Slack was clearly superior. Microsoft could have certainly bought Slack instead of pumping probably billions into development, marketing, discounts to destroy them.

I think Microsoft could and would consider buying Databricks—$80–100B is a lot, but not record-shattering.

If I were them, though, I’d spend a few billion competing as an experiment, first.

[foobiekr]

Anti-trust is the reason a lot of the kinds of deals you’re talking about don’t happen.

[twoodfin]

I agree. If the anti-trust regime had been different Microsoft would have bought Databricks years ago. Satya Nadella has surely been tapping his foot watching their valuation grow and grow.

The Trump folks have given mixed messages on the Biden-era FTC; I'd put the odds that with the right tap dancing (sigh) Microsoft could make a blockbuster like this in the B2B space work.