wasn't it Balmer in the 1st place who said the world was borrowing 2 much money?...

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1137038/the-world-borrowed-money

so now doesnt that mean he is also participating in this act of borrowin this large amount of cash?

Nope, MS are going to buy parts of Sun from Oracle.

They'll buy twitter, obviously.

hehe maybe it to cover the next fine the EU is going to hit them with ?

From what I know of US corporate tax policy, there are significant tax benefits to borrowing(and paying interest on) large sums of cash rather than using existing cash or near-cash assets, or issuing stock, to cover large-scale purchases.

I humble don't understand a bit or your words. I know than banks and financial institutions told MS to borrow money because is good for business, but this is a complete bullshit, more in economic downturn. Maybe it's better for them, but not for MS!!!
I don't like MS, but I don't like (more) greedy bankers and politicians.
It could be very likely that these bastards told MS that for a aquisition, antitrust actions will be milder if MS borrows money from them...

My POV: stock repurchase.

C'mon people, look to the obvious here. In the meantime, I'm investing my life savings in Seattle-based office furniture retailers.

Shurely you mean Peoplesoft?

They're going to buy the EU and make all their problems go away.

It's how they've always done it.

All the confusion surrounding zune and the MS cant sit silent while everyone zooms by like RIM, Android. MS indulged into gaming with XBOX which is hardware. MS's 196MP camera, again hardware. keyboards, mice.. hardware hardware. They have been saying no Phone hardware in making but logical step is now to buy a phone maker. things got out of pcs to laptops now mobile. Motrola alexander was known to be its last effort of survival. So MS might come up with this cash to Motorola and say ....
Talk to me softly
There's something in your eyes
Don't hang your head in sorrow
And please don't cry
I know how you feel inside I've
I've been there before...
Something changin' inside you
And don't you know...
Don't you cry tonight
I will love you baby.

I don't know what it's for but I bet it's got something to do with promoting windows 7, trying to salvage IE 8 from the beating it's taking from just about every security group of the planet or some other scheme to try to gain back the third of their stock price they've lost in the last 6 months. For those that own microsoft stock or think the company is still doing really well even in these troubled times don't get me wrong, the stock is still worth a fair amount but MS is taking a beating lately. Hell about two months ago their stock was worth about half of what it was 6 months ago.

MS does has shed loads of money, but it has been said time and again (by banks and financial institutions) that they should borrow money to do business rather than using the money in its coffers.

Why? Well for one they can offset almost any borrowing with the amount of money they already have - so effectively they are borrowing for free.

Of course it makes sense!

Plus in the current financial climate, we need people borrowing and spending money.

It is possible that Microsoft are getting ready to make a large capital invetment into something, or they may be lining up a target for aquisition.

It could also be using it as an inexpensive way to fund share buyback..

Read this article on FT:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/16c6e9a2-3e32-11de-9a6c-00144feabdc0.html

Rick, Hitler Is So Scared of Anyone Who Knows True Score. Sure Ms Could ?BUY STeWie for that kind of Loot. Yet
how Much Did KarlsBad Pay For NEW Persona of Rich? Should Stalin Simply of Bought Hitler? Think: BUY GM or AIG For Some REAL Grift $$$$$.

My, Oh My.

You press the SAP icon, and your mouse pointer turns into an egg timer, and then your system stops responding. AS such, this is one of the few applications that can claim to be better at its job, when running on Vista, than on any other operating system.

is microsoft not a multi-billion $ company in the 1st place, why do they feel the need to borrow money? i know the recession has been sumwhat bad, but come on this is not your average company, they must make billions of $ in profit, unless thats a massiv exageration.. still they will deffinately make millions in profit a year, so why dont they just use up that?
plus u cant say that the profit is to go to staff, and managers, due to the current downsize of staff they have recently made.
it is possible however that they have purchashed something big recently i.e buildings of somesort, and have fallen short of a few billion to buy the necesseties they need with this 3.75 billion $,... but i think that is unlikely due to the fact if microsoft did buy something big recently im sure it would be on the news already.
perhaps mircosoft is thinkin with the launch of windows 7 and the great hype its had, i think Mr Balmer wants this money to buy an excedingly early Xmas present that will help microsoft staff even more,... but then again, he is sumwhat selfish from my POV and he just wants to buy something special for himself and his close partners perhaps.. but anyways lets see him prove me wrong. =þ

Ever wonder how SAP got it's name? It's named after all the corporate monkey-boy SAPS that have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars each on betting their company's existence on this piece of crap.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the guys behind SAP are frustrated ex-Nazis who are determined to destroy the Western powers that combined to defeat them instead of taking on the Bolshevik threat to the east.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao: Can you guess which one(s) killed more people? Nope, not Hitler. But then I'm not making excuses for that miserable paper-hanging son of Satan. Just that the other two were even more grandiose criminals.

Don't know whether this would be a good deal for either side.

But, nevertheless, there are other takeover targets available as well.

How about good old Yahoo or even Skype?
Or both if they could get them for a bargain?