Microsoft acquires GitHub for $7.5 billion

Microsoft has announced that it is acquiring GitHub for $7.5 billion. The acquisition should be completed by the end of this year, both companies have announced.

Microsoft writes that the acquisition is for $7.5 billion in Microsoft shares. Microsoft vice president and Xamarin co-founder Nat Friedman will become CEO of GitHub. The Redmond-based company says in its announcement that GitHub will continue to operate independently. GitHub writes in its own announcement that Microsoft’s vision for the future matches its own vision.

The announcement follows reports from Bloomberg news agency, which claimed on Sunday evening that Microsoft might announce its acquisition of GitHub on Monday. There were also rumors about a possible takeover by Microsoft.

GitHub has previously published statistics for the year 2017, in which Microsoft emerged as the owner of the project with the most contributions: Visual Studio Code. In addition, Microsoft shut down its own software hosting site Codeplex last year and recommended that users move to GitHub.

According to Microsoft, there are now 85 million repositories on GitHub, and 28 million developers use the service, which allows them to host and collaborate on code. As a result of the rumors about the takeover, a discussion has arisen among developers about what such a development could mean for the platform.

Some have transferred their projects to alternative GitLab. The company claims on Twitter that the number of imports from GitHub is ten times the normal daily amount. GitLab, which offers a similar service, also has a publicly accessible dashboard where statistics about its service can be requested. There is an increase in the number of imports with two recent peaks.