What if Microsoft goes on a shopping spree?

[Megadude]

I am talking about market cap.

"MCAP. Market capitalization represents the aggregate value of a company or stock. It is obtained by multiplying the number of shares outstanding by their current price per share. For example, if XYZ company has 15,000,000 shares outstanding and a share price of $20 per share then the market capitalization is 15,000,000 x $20 = $300,000,000. Generally, the U.S. market recognizes three market cap divisions: large cap (usually $5 billion and above), mid cap (usually $1 billion to $5 billion), and small cap (usually less than $1 billion), although the cutoffs between the categories are not precise or fixed. In our example above, XYZ would be considered a small cap company. also called market cap."

Ok so if you want to get into semantics: Microsoft is 100 BILLION dollars less valuable then it was only 2 years ago.

So my question to you is: How many Microsoft employees should be laid off to come up with the magical 200 million dollars for all these exclusives?

http://www.worldboxx.com/2009/03/17/microsoft-getting-ready-to-lay-off-17-of-staff/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/24/microsoft-outlook-dreary_n_169594.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=1193

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml/19659/20683/Microsoft-Windows-losing-share-Apple.phtml