March 15th, 2007
Microsoft-Tellme: How the deal went down
News.com's Ina Fried has some of the inside story on how the Microsoft-Tellme deal went down on Superbowl Sunday.
It was only a few hours before kickoff on Super Bowl Sunday, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wasn't at home getting ready to watch the Bears take on the Colts.
Instead, the Microsoft chief executive was in his conference room inside Microsoft's building 34, the main executive offices, with a room full of colleagues and executives from speech recognition company Tellme Networks. Ballmer peppered Tellme executives with questions about their business, entering the answers into an Excel spreadsheet he had started from scratch.
Three-and-a-half hours later he had built a complete business model, and one thing was clear: an acquisition made a lot of sense.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
