Re: But *Why* did they buy them?
"I'm still trying to figure out "why" they bought Red hat."
What they say? It somehow helps them with cloud. Doesn't sound like much money there - certainly not enough to justify the significant increase in debt (~US$17B).
What could it be then? Well RedHat pushed up support prices and their customers didn't squeal much. A lot of those big enterprise customers moved from expensive hardware/expensive OS support over the last ten years to x86 with much cheaper OS support so there's plenty of scope for squeezing more.