On this day in 1995 Microsoft Corp. announced it was officially discontinuing its efforts to acquire Intuit Inc. The planned merger started when Microsoft sought ways to better penetrate the financial software market with their product, Money, which was not performing as well as they had hoped. At the time Intuit’s own product Quicken had a commanding market share of 70%. Microsoft first made a $1.5 billion offer to Intuit in 1994, which eventually increased to $2 billion. Almost immediately the Justice Department stepped in and raised concerns that such a merger would result in anticompetitive effects on the personal finance software market. Specifically, the DoJ argued that it would add to the dominance of the top product Quicken, and substantially reduce competition in the market as it would be much more difficult and costly for newer entrants to compete with Quicken. In the end, Microsoft and Intuit agreed to abandon the merger so as to avoid a long and expensive court battle with the Justice Department.
That means it’s been 25 years ago. It’s been a while, but of course there are lessons to be learned