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Microsoft in particular has a horrible record with acquisitions work. There are exceptions of course. Hotmail worked out well, and back in 1999 they bought my
by jdp23 16y ago
Microsoft in particular has a horrible record with acquisitions work.
There are exceptions of course. Hotmail worked out well, and back in 1999 they bought my startup for $60M, and it worked out great. But eight years later, when I left, we were still being used as the rare example of when it actually worked out. Almost all the other much bigger deals since then had foundered badly, killed by politics or the NIH syndrome or management incompetence.
Google's had some successes, most obviously YouTube, and they're probably a better cultural match for Twitter. I can see why Twitter turned down the $2.5B but it seems like a fair offer.
- riffraff 16y agoWhy is google a better match for twitter than microsoft? Google appears to have tried to "become social" a few more times than redmond and failed regularly.
- jdp23 16y agofrom the outside, Twitter seems to have more of the Valley-style engineering culture, and shares Google's API-oriented philosophy. Also there are some former Googlers in key roles there. It's a good point about Google not getting social. Then again, Microsoft's also tried and failed to go social multiple times -- Windows Live Spaces, QnA, Groove, Hailstorm, and 3° are a few fairly-high-profile examples that leap to mind.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoTwitter has become a platform. Google is far better at web-platforms than Microsoft.
- Encosia 16y agoI think Microsoft gets less credit than Google for acquisitions because they're actually better (note: I didn't say good) at rolling acquisitions into the company and moving forward with a product. Most people don't think of successful Microsoft products like SQL Server 7+, Kinect, Foxpro, Visio, and Dynamics as acquisitions. Sure, there are notable failures like Danger/Kin, but there are a lot of successes. Meanwhile, it breaks my heart every time one of my favorite services is acquired by Google. FeedBurner, GrandCentral, and Etherpad are all services that I'd have much rather paid to use on their previous innovation trajectory, rather than watch them stagnate while rewriting for Google's infrastructure (or killed, in Etherpad's case) and be saddled with the clunky GWT interface.
- krakensden 16y agoSQL Server was an acquisition? I thought they bought source code from Sybase?
- jdp23 16y agoThat's correct. And they abandoned that code base and did a complete rewrite. Dynamics and Kinect are two good recent examples of success. FoxPro and Visio are also excellent examples although that was a heck of a long time ago.