Not exactly. Look at it this way: Some financial wonk inside Google did a bunch of the due diligence for the acquisition. Now suppose that wonk was a limited

Not exactly. Look at it this way: Some financial wonk inside Google did a bunch of the due diligence for the acquisition. Now suppose that wonk was a limited in Sequoia: He/She would stand to make a pile of money from the acquisition of a (then) profitless company. How would it affect the analysis? Now go back through acquisitions that made even less financial sense, like Ebay acquiring Skype for $2.6B. A valid question from the shareholders: Who in the decision-making tree held stock (via a venture fund) in Skype? I think a lot of the really dumb acquisitions start to make a lot more sense as to how they got completed.