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Building products/features and then killing them when they don't work is generally fine. And renaming/merging/consolidating them isn't really killing them. But…
by paulannesley 8y ago
Building products/features and then killing them when they don't work is generally fine. And renaming/merging/consolidating them isn't really killing them. But…
> Sparrow was an email client for OS X and iOS. They acquired and then killed it. It was over 1 year old.
Buying then killing is sad. Acquihire I guess?
> Google Reader was a RSS/Atom feed aggregator. It was over 7 years old.
These are the ones that feel like they hurt the internet. That was seven critical years for RSS/Atom. Investing time/money in building feed aggregators/readers meant competing against the might of Google and a $0 price point.
- jypepin 8y agoLots of acquihire indeed. And in the case of sparrow and a lot of others, it was a secret. So one could wonder who is to blame; Google for acquihiring companies to fulfil hiring needs, or those companies that accept to get acquihired depiste having a (sometime) successful product that people are paying for.
- jypepin 8y agoI can't edit. I meant "it was NOT a secret".
- hyperpallium 8y ago"Dumping" is illegal for physical products (https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy), but that's usually for under-cost pricing in foreign markets, not for killing a market.