Microsoft and Limelight
Jan 15, 2008 – 22:47 by Ryan
There have been several bloggers talking about Microsoft purchasing Limelight. The real question is why would they do this? Limelight is a public company with an EPS of -0.53. Perhaps Microsoft believes they can streamline operations and turn the company around. This sounds like a pipe dream to us. Another detractor is that it appears as if Limelight didn’t do any patent research before building their product and is currently being sued by both Akamai and Level 3. Microsoft does have an army of attorneys on staff, but are they really looking to get into a legal battle of this size?
It is possible that Microsoft is primarily interested in hiring Limelight’s 1,000 employees that are trained and working in the CDN industry.
We believe that Microsoft would get a lot more bang for their buck if they purchased one of the smaller, more agile CDN players like Panther Express.
Note: As a co-founder of Panther Express, I may be a bit biased.
