3 ms·
Would agree in large part. I think the ones that were successful, they're successful enough that you forget it was an acquisition. One off the top my head is G
by jaxrtech 4y ago
Would agree in large part. I think the ones that were successful, they're successful enough that you forget it was an acquisition.
One off the top my head is Google Docs[1] which, for the longest time, I was pretty sure it was in-house tech. It's actually a number of acquisitions for the collaborative editor tech and then MS Office support.
It seems now that most incumbents have enough cash to not care about being that strategic about acquisitions.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs#History
- epolanski 4y agoI have not implied that all acquisitions are bad, but acquisitions to kill do not necessarily breed more better competition.
- boltzmann-brain 4y agoThis acquisition sounds like the start of a twitch streamer joke. "Have you heard about Figma?"
- nindalf 4y agoHow about Android? The original team joined Google and pivoted their product once the iPhone was demoed.
- KptMarchewa 4y agoGoogle Maps, Google Earth, Youtube, Android - all acquisitions.
- flir 4y agoIt's the outsourcing of R&D. Behemoths used to have huge R&D budgets, now they let the market decide and harvest the successful solutions. It's a market efficiency, I guess, otherwise they'd stick with the R&D approach.
- kjellsbells 4y agoThe "used to" is a long long time ago. Before FAANG there was, for example Intel, Microsoft and Cisco, and they were very happy to vacuum up companies instead of holding a big r&d bag. Cisco got to be very good at it, in particular. And of course this is very much standard practice in pharma drug discovery. I think the Golden Age of internal R&D was probably 1960-1980 at Bell Labs, IBM and the really large engineering cos like Boeing?
- flir 4y agoBell is what I was thinking of, too.
- thewileyone 4y agoReally depends on the management of the acquiring company. Adobe acquired Aldus and didn't help the Aldus market.