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Since we don't know what the price is, Google might have paid a sum for the product that is simply less than it would cost them to rebuild it themselves. Plus,
by fnid2 16y ago
Since we don't know what the price is, Google might have paid a sum for the product that is simply less than it would cost them to rebuild it themselves. Plus, they get the press for the acquisition and a talented, happy new member of the team.
If it would take them 3 engineers and a year to build bumptop and they paid $200,000 for it, then everyone wins.
- _delirium 16y agoI agree how much they paid is important in evaluating the purchase (the less they paid, the more justifiable it'd be to buy it just for some talent and in the off chance some of the ideas/tech/IP turned out to be useful). But I doubt it's anything as low as $200k, because they had VC funding of a few million, and presumably the VCs wouldn't sign off on selling for a loss. This article estimates $40m, though they may have just pulled that number out of thin air: http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/05/02/google-purchases-bumptop-freeform-desktop-coming-android-os/ http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/05/02/google-purchases-bum...