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> Adobe is where software goes to die. After EA acquiring Westwood, Macromedia is the second biggest let-down of a sale in the software industry in my book. Pe
by egeozcan 4y ago
> Adobe is where software goes to die.
After EA acquiring Westwood, Macromedia is the second biggest let-down of a sale in the software industry in my book. Perhaps Skype comes close.
- qwerty456127 4y agoAre there any examples when an acquisition actually led to improved value for the users rather than ruined or straight killed the product?
- madeofpalk 4y agoGithub. Apple buying Workflow to build it into the OS as Shortcuts.
- dvfjsdhgfv 4y agoWhy should they? Acquisition today means: you have managed to become a threat to us, so we buy you so that this threat disappears. I just hope Adobe doesn't buy Affinity.
- esskay 4y agoBuying Afilinity would 100% lead to antitrust.
- infinityplus1 4y agoGithub gained actions, sponsors etc. and keeps getting more new features. Whatsapp got E2E chats and group video calls and handles communications for a huge amount of people.
- d3nj4l 4y agoWhatsApp also got significantly worse over time: copycat features like stories which add bloat in an effort to boost "engagement", businesses using WhatsApp for the thing we all knew was eventually going to happen i.e. ads over WhatsApp, and the new privacy policy and deeper integration with facebook nobody asked for.
- infinityplus1 4y agoStories is in a separate tab. I just ignore it most of the time and never post anything myself. Accessing businesses on Whatsapp is kinda nice and convenient. I can enter a restaurant's phone number and see their menu easily. I also use Whatsapp to access bank statements which is super fast and easy compared to the bank's own app. As for the privacy policy, it's like WinRAR. You just close the popup and forget about it. I've been closing the policy popup since months and don't even notice it much.
- d3nj4l 4y agoYou're just lucky that business haven't started using WhatsApp to send you unsolicited ads. This is becoming more and more common in India - I received no less than three messages this month from businesses I've never used.
- sph 4y agoLOL I use WhatsApp daily and I completely forgot about Stories. I just checked, just one of my hundred contacts on there had a recent story update. What a load of nonsense. Then Facebook tried to do the same with Instagram.
- njovin 4y agoI think Github has held up pretty well.
- creshal 4y agoCompared to anything bought by Adobe, sure, but it's not really doing all that impressive compared to Gitlab.
- sofixa 4y agoI disagree. GitLab is a lot better and has many more features, but GitHub has managed to close the gap significantly. Before MS bought them they weren't even close to being close and had stagnated for years, and now there's a bunch of major new features (mostly playing catch-up, the only differentiator they have is Copilot), at the expense of stability.
- javajosh 4y agoMS's acquisition of Github seems to be going okay, and has arguably increased user value. It's hard to say what MS is getting out of the deal, though; the mistrust of MS runs deeply given its history, so the biggest strikes in this deal are speculation about what MS is doing with the massive trove of Github developer and code-over-time data. IMHO the longer MS owns Github without hurting or exploiting its users, they are restoring lost trust with devs, but there are lots of devs who can/will never really trust MS or anything it touches (which TBH is a pretty safe bet).
- dagw 4y agoPowerpoint, Google Earth and Android are three that I use all the time and instantly spring to mind. edit: Hotmail can arguably be on that list. Revit should probably also qualify
- DoctorOW 4y agoDoes YouTube count? I know it's had it's controversy but it's still miles better than if it hadn't been acquired.
- missedthecue 4y agoMinecraft. Ring doorbells.
- mckirk 4y agoAnd here I was, having a good day, when you had to remind me of EA's atrocities... Kane Lives!
- egeozcan 4y agoNot many people can believe this (How many C&C gamers are on HN after all?) but I'm still pissed about it to this day. I could replace even the Google Reader, but not the fun I had playing the games from Westwood Studios.
- mckirk 4y agoI completely understand; C&C and Need for Speed were an important part of my youth and to see them treated so badly has left me with quite the poor opinion of EA. But for some reason, their shitty way of running the game business seems to work out, and they just keep going. I just hope they won't kill Battlefield as well, though with recent installments they certainly seem to be trying.
- creshal 4y agoIMO, Skype was on the way out either way. The P2P model it used only really made sense on desktop computers running most of the day with unmetered cable broadband, which is a very limited market, vs. the increasing percentage of mobile (and laptop, and desktop-but-4G/5G-connected) users that were a net negative on Skype's resources. So Skype was looking at a major rewrite, and building up massive server infrastructure, both of which needed lots and lots of cashflow that Skype's business model just couldn't generate. I doubt any other company taking over Skype could've avoided ruining it.
- egeozcan 4y agoThey could have kept the UI the same, also the device ecosystem. Why does software industry feel a heavy need to update the front-end when the back-end changes? That defeats the purpose of separating them!
- hn2017 4y agoSkype was already dying. Are you remembering correctly?