when the Microsoft bought GitHub, in 2018, there were even those who considered that the platform would “die” because of this. Four years later, the service is still very good, thank you. To give you an idea, GitHub already has annual revenue of $1 billion. The fact that Microsoft has kept the business independent contributes a lot to this.
Fears about what could happen to GitHub after its acquisition by Microsoft are not unwarranted. Take for example Skype, which has been in the background for years. Today, Microsoft prioritizes Teams for video calling.
GitHub is home to a plethora of software projects. We are not only talking about an online code repository, but a community that involves from beginner programmers to very experienced developers.
Because of this, Microsoft could not be careless with the platform. And it wasn’t.
Annual revenue of $1 billion
Microsoft shelled out $7.5 billion for GitHub. At the time, the platform had annual revenue of US$200-300 million, explains the TechCrunch. Today, that number reaches $1 billion, as you already know.
Fears that Microsoft would disfavor open source projects or diminish the platform’s free features generated a migration movement to similar services, such as GitLab and BitBucket. But none of that happened.
In fact, GitHub has only grown. At the time of purchase, the repository had 28 million active users. In a video conference about Microsoft’s financial report for the last quarter, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, celebrated the number three times higher:
Since our purchase, GitHub now has an annual revenue of $1 billion, and its developer spirit has never been stronger.
More than 90 million people now use the service to develop software for any cloud, on any platform.
GitHub remains GitHub
Sometimes I even forget that Microsoft owns GitHub. The company name does not even appear in the footer of the platform’s website. The reason for this is that the company has wisely chosen to let GitHub stand on its own two feet.
Since 2018, the platform has expanded the number of features offered to its users. Recent examples are the launch of GitHub Desktop 3.0 It’s from GitHub Copilotalthough the latter has faced some controversies.
It was also possible to notice an international expansion effort by GitHub. A good example is the arrival of the financial support program GitHub Sponsors to Brazil.
CEO of GitHub, Thomas Dohmke hints that Microsoft does not intend to change its stance:
Microsoft hasn’t forgotten why we made the deal [de compra] first and what are its important pillars. The first and most important principle is to put developers first. And that’s what we do every day.
https://tecnoblog.net/noticias/2022/10/27/faturando-us-1-bilhao-por-ano-github-segue-independente-na-microsoft/