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The Google black hole: What happens to startups when they're bought by Google?
- micah63 18y agoI think the google + youtube worked out because they let the community continue unhampered. Even today you can get a youtube account without a google account. That is smart.... We can't pretend to know google's intentions with some aquisitions though, ie measure map getting blended into google analytics.
- fallentimes 18y agoAnd Youtube has a separate office and culture. Hopefully, Google learns their lesson quickly.
- jonknee 18y agoIronically I bet a lot of that is because of all the illegal content on YouTube. They needed it to remain pretty separate for their lawsuit defenses.
- tonystubblebine 18y agoEveryone I know at measure map talked like they were happy about the deal and getting incorporated into Google Analytics was completely above board.
- josefresco 18y agoExcellent article, I didn't know that so many startups went to Google just to rot away under mountains of management and infrastructure/policy hell. If you have any chance of making it on your own, I'd turn down Google money in an instant after reading this.
- drewcrawford 18y agoThe thing about Google money is that a dollar Google gives you is worth one dollar. Personally, I would evaluate "Google" money based on the numbers.
- ajross 18y agoIndeed. From the perspective of a developer, I can see not wanting your baby to be ignored in a corporate bureaucracy. But investors don't normally think that way. I don't know what founders are "supposed" to think here, but if it were me I'd take the money and find a new baby if I had to.
- andreyf 18y agoI don't know what founders are "supposed" to think here Founders are supposed to take into consideration their product's role after acquisition when they're talking about getting bought out? This isn't rocket science - once you sell your company to Google (or whomever), you don't own it anymore. That's why you get all those shiny coins.
- jlogic77 18y agoI wonder what types of questions the founders are asking of Google pre-aquisition? As a founder, I would think you are concerned with what is Google's "vision" for your product/company. I could also see just the shiny things being enough to make me not worry about the vision. Also, there are successes. Writely - > Google Docs seemed to be a pretty big success. I'm sure there are others.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- Timothee 18y agoKeyhole -> Google Earth was a big success too. The thing is that we tend to forget the successes a little bit because they got to merge so well with Google. Looking at the list of acquisitions on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_acquisitions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_acquisitions), I can only think about Blogger but I have no experience on if it changed for the best. As far as I can tell, it looks like it's still working fine.
- mariorz 18y ago
- andreyf 18y agoto rot away under mountains of management and infrastructure/policy hell. I missed where exactly the article said this. I imagine if you're looking at a Google acquisition and you care about your service, nobody is stopping you from asking "how will this integrate into Google's MapReduce/BigTable? Where will I be in the Google corp. structure? Will I get engineers working with me on my product, or will I be farmed off to other products?" Weigh the answers to this as part of yoru consideration about whether this acquisition is good or not. I think the founders are more to blame for not understanding what an acquisition by Google involved, not whoever@Google they were dealing with for not spoon-feeding them.
- josefresco 18y agoI'm sure Google promised these founders all sorts of things once their application was assimilated into the borg that is Google. And with lots of money on the table I'm sure the founders grinned and asked where to sign. Closing your doors to new signups is practically like suicide. As a founder I would never agree to that if I was taking a smaller buyout in exchange for continuing to work on my application as an employee of Goog. Now if they backed up the money dump truck and sent me on my way I wouldn't care so much (although I'd probably have thousands of users who'd hate me but probably also wouldn't blame me)
- arockwell 18y agoIt seems like this type of article shows up at least once a month recently. There's nothing really new here. I have to ask though, given that most M&A's don't end up working out is google's failure rate really any worse than anyone else's?
- trickjarrett 18y agoI remember reading about the infrastructure hell with both Google and Yahoo. I think I've read stories from founders of companies acquired by each. It seems to me Ev (of Blogger.com and now twitter) wrote or spoke about these same issues.
- vaksel 18y agoYeah you would think Google would learn its lesson by now.
- gaius 18y agoArguably that's what AppEngine is for.
- vaksel 18y agonot really, its just another case of Google getting into an industry because they see someone else have success in it. If it works? Good. If it doesn't? No biggie, they only lost 2 days of revenue in the investment.
- prospero 18y agoBut if someone is wildly successful with an AppEngine site, it's a much simpler acquisition because it already sits on top of the Google infrastructure. Conversely, it's much less appealing to any competitors for the same reason.
- cstejerean 18y agoI hope it's not "getting into an industry because they see someone else have success in it" because that reminds me of Microsoft and I don't think it's worked out well for them.
- jm4 18y agoAre you crazy? How has it not worked out for Microsoft? As of 2000 it was estimated that Microsoft had produced 10,000 millionaires. Sure, they've produced tons of crappy software too, but as long as we're measuring success in terms of money then I'd say the strategy has worked perfectly. They've been by far the most successful software company to date. They could care less about the quality of software as long as it's the best selling software. Google is no different. They see a revenue opportunity and they grab it.
- andreyf 18y agoI'm not sure if it's fair to pick out specific cases with the number of acquisitions Google does ... sure, some aren't going to be perfect - some founders won't understand Google infrastructure, others will lose interest in their products, etc.
- fleaflicker 18y agoIt's interesting--Google has the best reputation among techies and AOL probably has the worst reputation. But so far my experience has been very positive. I still have near-absolute control over the development and creative direction of the site.
- biohacker42 18y agoMaybe Google think they know everything and AOL just feels lucky to have found such a beautiful jewel?
- fleaflicker 18y agoThat's somewhat true--I've noticed that AOL is very aware of their uncool image and they don't overtly brand their properties with the AOL name (e.g., TMZ, MapQuest, Moviefone, ...).
- kajecounterhack 18y agoWow I had no idea Mapquest was owned by AOL. I'm sure there are alternatives but usually thats the service I use...I don't think I'm so shallow as to switch services just because its AOL though. A good service is a good service.
- josefresco 18y agoHearing your story brings back painful memories of when AOL bought Winamp and drove that wonderful software into obscurity (and forced guy like Justin Franke to skedaddle)
- goodkarma 18y agoWhen Google hands over six or seven or eight figures for something, they obviously have a plan for how the technology and team fits into their "master plan". Why is it surprising that, at least some of the time, they aren't actually interested in the original web site?
- webwright 18y ago"When Google hands over six or seven or eight figures for something, they obviously have a plan for how the technology and team fits into their "master plan"." I have heard that Google will pay $1m+ per engineer if they like the team and what they've pulled off, even if they are going to dump the technology (or want it rebuilt from the ground up). I think once you get into eight figures, though-- you're probably right.
- netcan 18y agoIt's interesting to consider employee acquisition as a motivator. As far as I could guess there are a few motivations: 1 the technology 2 the product/userbase 3 the employees 4 kill competition 1 & 2 could be 'masterplan' motivations. 3 has a maximum dollar value. 4 is rarely admitted. It's hard to judge if they messed up without knowing which one it is.
- neilk 18y agothey obviously have a plan That's not actually true. The thing about giants that acquire startups, is that a) they had the resources to build this thing themselves; b) they didn't. So ask yourself why didn't they build this thing. It wasn't lack of resources. It wasn't lack of intelligence; they keep tabs on everyone and they go to SXSW too. There were forces that stopped the giant from innovating in this direction. Some of them are technological, but the real issues are usually cultural and political. Once acquired, the startup is now exposed to all these forces -- with double intensity, since it is an outsider and has few friends in the organization. Unless it's already profitable, has a large userbase, or has big fans among the top execs, it has very little power. I think these recent articles about how giants "ruin" acquisitions do not take culture and politics into account. The technical issues are not the problem.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- aditya 18y agoInterestingly, they don't mention Blogger (which is how the Twitter co-founder went into and came out of Google). Which seems to be doing just fine. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/blogger.com+livejournal.com/?metric=uv http://siteanalytics.compete.com/blogger.com+livejournal.com... I don't see the problem, if you start a startup to make a shitload of money and you do make a shitload of money, then, mission accomplished right? (or, as DHH would say: Profit!) There will always be companies that get screwed up in the acquisition process, just like there will always be companies that don't. But, let's fuel the rumor that Google kills all that it consumes, why not?
- josefresco 18y agoI think the article states that it isn't always a shitload of money. Sure it beats your part-time gig at Starbucks but why sell your app for 5-6 figures when it could be worth 7-8? If Google is interested in your application now, why wouldn't someone else snatch it up 6 months later when you have more users for a higher price? Sometimes winning the buyout lottery is selling yourself short.
- litewulf 18y agoAnd sometimes your hot company flames out and you'll regret not taking the money and running for the rest of your life. This is what managing risk is all about isn't it? You just plain don't know!
- netcan 18y agoWell it may not be an immediate problem for founders (so long as they have no sentimental attachment to the company), because they've been paid. But it is a problem for acquirers & by extension a problem for future founders. If acquisitions fail to meet goals, they'll dry up.
- rams 18y agoActually Blogger met with pretty much the same fate as other companies. Check out Evan's blog post about freeing blogger from Google at evhead.com - it must be in the archives.
- gregwebs 18y agoThere is some prior art on this concept. http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html Speaking of cool places to work, there is of course Google. But I notice something slightly frightening about Google: zero startups come out of there. In that respect it's a black hole. People seem to like working at Google too much to leave. So if you hope to start a startup one day, the evidence so far suggests you shouldn't work there.
- Raphael 18y agoFriendfeed came from former Google employees.
- josefresco 18y agoKey word being 'former'. Seems the brilliant work comes either from people who aren't yet an employee, or already were and left. Is Google just a giant Y Combinator?
- neilk 18y agoNo, what you are seeing is that individually creditable work occurs in the pre- and post-corporate employment stage. Which is practically a tautology. There are plenty of epic technical achievements within Google. In fact, it's practically expected. The rest of the world just hears about these innovations, on average, three years after they happen. If they ever hear about them.
- webwright 18y agoHuh? Lots of startups come out of there. http://www.google.com/search?q=ex-googlers http://www.google.com/search?q=ex-googlers I think two founders in our YC class were Googlers.
- ashleyw 18y agoThe problem with Google is it has very, very little focus as a whole. This is a good thing internally, they seem to develop and release so much stuff without much bother, but in my opinion, joining Google would FEEL like a black hole. Your working on your own project but also have to concern Google about everything, as well as moving your app to Google technologies (in most cases). How can you continue to innovate in that situation? The same goes for Delicious too I think, they were doing fine, brought by Yahoo, and then went back to being a stealth app while they rewrote everything in C++/PHP. Would they have done that without Yahoo input? Nope, I dont think so...
- wmeredith 18y agoI still use Feedburner. I love it.
- snprbob86 18y ago"shut down to new users" just means "taking their sweet time porting to a google backend" When things are Google products, there is a certain level of reliability, security, and performance that is expect. Google tries harder than anyone to avoid the Fail Whale. It takes a long time for large software systems to be ported, security reviewed, integrated, and tested with Google's custom stuff. From what I have seen, being acquired by Google means that you go dark for 18 months and then emerge as a Google product.
- kul 18y agoseems like this guy hasn't heard of talent acquisitions, which is what Jaiku was.
- fmanjoo 18y agoIf it was a "talent acquisition," why'd they pledge to limit the service only for a limited time, and to add a slew of wonderful features?