Microsoft Rehabilitates WebTV

Courtesy of Mike Masnick, I was looking into Steve Perlman's Rearden Companies (apparently the name is an homage to Ayn Rand's Rearden Metal). Anyway, apparently he was behind the infamous WebTV box. My grandmother actually had one at one point, and I fully expect to see one featured one day on an I Love The 90s VH1 special. Anyway, they ended up selling to Microsoft (MSFT) for $500 million. According Perlman, Microsoft did well on that buy:

Twenty months after it was founded, WebTV Networks was acquired by Microsoft Corporation for over $500 million. A financially and strategically successful acquisition, WebTV (now MSNTV) was still earning $150 million annually with 65% gross margins in 2005, and has produced over a billion dollars in revenue. Also, both of Microsoft's TV distribution platforms, Cable TV Foundation and IPTV, and the XBox360 hardware were created by the WebTV team.

I'm pretty surprised that even in 2005 they did $150 million in revenue. Well done Mr. Softy.