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Is this a happy story? Having read it my takeaways are that they were immediately asked to rewrite their app in Google's way, then a separate research team went

Is this a happy story? Having read it my takeaways are that they were immediately asked to rewrite their app in Google's way, then a separate research team went off and wrote them a new API for their core functionality. And now given Socratic by Google on the Play Store was last updated on Oct 21, 2020, and is not available for my Android 13 device, so seems to have just died? Kind of seems like Google bought the company, mushed the team into the rest of Google and killed the app off.

JohnFen 3y ago
Was it an aquihire?
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  Aquire a company not for the product, but to hire specific people working there. Like experts in a field. For instance if you have a competing product and want to build something using expertise or if you think the technology can be applied elsewhere.
  - bennyg 3y ago
    I think the parent you’re replying to knows that, they were asking if this was an example of that.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I know almost nothing (I read the article but that's all) but my gut tells me it could have been a "scoop this potential competitor up early" as there was so much overlap between Socratic and what Google research is doing. Could also have been a "we need a product to justify this research work, and Socratic is a good one." Or it could just straight be an acquihire ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- gizmo 3y ago
  A 10 person startup without a business model? And all the tech got thrown out. Clearly an acquihire.
  - pbhjpbhj 3y ago
    How can you tell them difference between that and early removal of a competitor?
    - TremendousJudge 3y ago
      You often can't, which is why they can get away with these anti-competitive practices
    - Keyframe 3y ago
      Well google did buy photomath recently as well, which is basically the same thing so who knows.
    - screamingninja 3y ago
      What is the difference? If your competitor is competent, acqui-hire them. If they are not, there is no real competition.
- xeckr 3y ago
  That's an interesting word. I assume it's when a large company buys your startup just to have access to the talent, without much regard for the startup's product? What sorts of offers do they make to the founders?
  - beambot 3y ago
    Varies heavily depending on background labor market. In 2021: $1M+ per solid engineer. These days it's closer to $0 as they're not aggressively hiring and plenty of talent floating around.
- cj 3y ago
  An acquisition of a failed startup where the purchasing company is "buying" the team of people rather than the product they built.
- e_y_ 3y ago
  Normally I'd consider it an acquihire when a company acquires a startup / smaller company and immediately announces the discontinuation of the product. Less so if there's an attempt to continue developing the product, even if it eventually gets shut down.
mistrial9 3y ago
> they were immediately asked to rewrite their app in Google's way, then a separate research team went off and wrote them a new API for their core functionality waves to Matt Hancher
- zefron1209 3y ago
  [dead]
izacus 3y ago
I mean... it's both? It reads like real life - good things and bad. Which is why the insight is interesting.
- SilverBirch 3y ago
  To me it reads more like someone with a positive disposition (or someone who has founded a start up and doesn't want to burn bridges) laying out the problems without saying they are problems. I mean come on - the upsides: we "merged cultures", "our app lives on", "careers have bloomed" versus downsides "we quit", and "we don't think we actually delivered what we wanted to". But it's ok because after everyone who cared about the product quit, maybe someone else will might make it happen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You could change none of the facts of this blog and write it as an aggressive rant about how Google murdered their startup, forced them to re-write the entire thing, stopped them shipping by being a bureaucratic nightmare, and the big take away is you can succeed at google if you "play the right game" if you know what I mean. It's ... not positive.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Maybe it's ok for writing to not be so editorialized as what you're used to? To me this read like a trip report from which the reader can draw their own conclusions without the author telling them what to think. I wish more things I read on the internet were written in that style. I don't need to be told what conclusions to draw, I can figure it out myself.
    - ccb92 3y ago
      Agreed, very earnest style.
    - 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
      I think this has royally screwed up my emotional intelligence. American media always tells you how you should react. One of my cousins once told me they were having a baby. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it wasn't "congratulations, I'm so happy for you". It just didn't click with me that this was an exciting thing for them that they wanted to share with me and I kind of regret not responding better.
danans 3y ago
Code and infrastructure must evolve, and Google excels at building secure, scalable, performant, maintainable systems that squeeze every last bit of signal from noise. Startups don't have the resources to do that, and Google can't launch a product built in the startup way. For an example, anything/anyone that wants to access user data at Google faces an extremely high bar for access, with layers of access control, auditing, approvals, and enforcement, starting at the design phase through to implementation. At Google that's a good thing. However it would be pretty silly at a 10 person startup. What Google isn't great at is taking risks on new product ideas (for many good and bad reasons), and that's why they often acquire companies that do that sort of thing.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  Buying something, rewriting it, and abandoning it, is just squandering money. You can't change that reality by praising Google's way of doing things.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    It's worse than squandering money, it's squandering people's time, effort, their lives.
    - leoh 3y ago
      The counterpoint to this is that individuals can decide if they want their firm to be acquired or not or to stay around after it has been acquired. I don’t mean to put blame or shame on said folks, it requires a lot of careful thinking and self-inquiry and attention to one’s emotions and body to weigh said decisions well; which is hard for many reasons.
    - sumeno 3y ago
      Presumably they got well compensated for their time and effort. That's about the best you can expect at a large company. You're working on the company's products and priorities and getting paid to do so. What they choose to do with it is up to them.
underdeserver 3y ago
The founders got money, a line in their résumé (sold a startup to Google), and the experience of working at Google. They didn't stay very long. I'd be pretty happy.
andrewparker 3y ago
Socratic by Google still exists today and is a widely beloved app based on reviews. They had to rewrite the code and infrastructure, but "killing off the app" implies that they just shut things down. That never happened. As for "happy story", I think the founders of Socratic learned a lot. Shreyans is just trying to share his learnings here. Not celebrate or mourn.
- suprfsat 3y ago
  > This app isn't available for your device because it was made for an older version of Android. Not "killed off" exactly, no.
autokad 3y ago
its a PR piece IMO. The google way is terrible for producing products people want, which is why they always have to purchase their way into new products.
- zumu 3y ago
  After reading this, I was left with the impression Google is full of under-utilized talent, has poor product vision and has systems in place that discourage innovation and risk taking. So if this is a PR piece, then it is not a great one.
- gherkinnn 3y ago
  It is snark behind a thin veil of praise. The only way I can read it. It might by my confirmation bias talking.
- autokad 3y ago
  @gherkinnn @zumu yeah you are right, I didn't notice at first. Its almost like the Shakespeare Marc Anthony speech on JC.
BurningFrog 3y ago
When I was at Google 2006-2009, that was how all acquisitions except YouTube were handled. I've heard that's become better, but maybe not. Google's search & ads billions keep raining from the sky, so killing acquired product isn't a big problem.
- eitally 3y ago
  I was at Google from 2015-2023 and not really. Even large acquisitions like Apigee, Looker and Fitbit were multi-year "integrations" fraught with all sorts of pain & suffering. Smaller acquisitions like Stratozone, Orbitera, AppSheet, etc all follow the Socratic path: acquire, rewrite, halfassedly integrate, create confusion and anxiety.
Centigonal 3y ago
It sounds like some of the signals Socratic was detecting got rolled into Google's knowledge graph
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

JohnFen 3y ago

Was it an aquihire?

johannes1234321 3y ago
Aquire a company not for the product, but to hire specific people working there. Like experts in a field. For instance if you have a competing product and want to build something using expertise or if you think the technology can be applied elsewhere.
- bennyg 3y ago
  I think the parent you’re replying to knows that, they were asking if this was an example of that.
freedomben 3y ago
I know almost nothing (I read the article but that's all) but my gut tells me it could have been a "scoop this potential competitor up early" as there was so much overlap between Socratic and what Google research is doing. Could also have been a "we need a product to justify this research work, and Socratic is a good one." Or it could just straight be an acquihire ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
gizmo 3y ago
A 10 person startup without a business model? And all the tech got thrown out. Clearly an acquihire.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  How can you tell them difference between that and early removal of a competitor?
  - TremendousJudge 3y ago
    You often can't, which is why they can get away with these anti-competitive practices
  - Keyframe 3y ago
    Well google did buy photomath recently as well, which is basically the same thing so who knows.
  - screamingninja 3y ago
    What is the difference? If your competitor is competent, acqui-hire them. If they are not, there is no real competition.
xeckr 3y ago
That's an interesting word. I assume it's when a large company buys your startup just to have access to the talent, without much regard for the startup's product? What sorts of offers do they make to the founders?
- beambot 3y ago
  Varies heavily depending on background labor market. In 2021: $1M+ per solid engineer. These days it's closer to $0 as they're not aggressively hiring and plenty of talent floating around.
cj 3y ago
An acquisition of a failed startup where the purchasing company is "buying" the team of people rather than the product they built.
e_y_ 3y ago
Normally I'd consider it an acquihire when a company acquires a startup / smaller company and immediately announces the discontinuation of the product. Less so if there's an attempt to continue developing the product, even if it eventually gets shut down.

mistrial9 3y ago

> they were immediately asked to rewrite their app in Google's way, then a separate research team went off and wrote them a new API for their core functionality waves to Matt Hancher

zefron1209 3y ago
[dead]

izacus 3y ago

I mean... it's both? It reads like real life - good things and bad. Which is why the insight is interesting.

SilverBirch 3y ago
To me it reads more like someone with a positive disposition (or someone who has founded a start up and doesn't want to burn bridges) laying out the problems without saying they are problems. I mean come on - the upsides: we "merged cultures", "our app lives on", "careers have bloomed" versus downsides "we quit", and "we don't think we actually delivered what we wanted to". But it's ok because after everyone who cared about the product quit, maybe someone else will might make it happen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You could change none of the facts of this blog and write it as an aggressive rant about how Google murdered their startup, forced them to re-write the entire thing, stopped them shipping by being a bureaucratic nightmare, and the big take away is you can succeed at google if you "play the right game" if you know what I mean. It's ... not positive.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Maybe it's ok for writing to not be so editorialized as what you're used to? To me this read like a trip report from which the reader can draw their own conclusions without the author telling them what to think. I wish more things I read on the internet were written in that style. I don't need to be told what conclusions to draw, I can figure it out myself.
  - ccb92 3y ago
    Agreed, very earnest style.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
    I think this has royally screwed up my emotional intelligence. American media always tells you how you should react. One of my cousins once told me they were having a baby. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it wasn't "congratulations, I'm so happy for you". It just didn't click with me that this was an exciting thing for them that they wanted to share with me and I kind of regret not responding better.

danans 3y ago

Code and infrastructure must evolve, and Google excels at building secure, scalable, performant, maintainable systems that squeeze every last bit of signal from noise. Startups don't have the resources to do that, and Google can't launch a product built in the startup way. For an example, anything/anyone that wants to access user data at Google faces an extremely high bar for access, with layers of access control, auditing, approvals, and enforcement, starting at the design phase through to implementation. At Google that's a good thing. However it would be pretty silly at a 10 person startup. What Google isn't great at is taking risks on new product ideas (for many good and bad reasons), and that's why they often acquire companies that do that sort of thing.

nitwit005 3y ago
Buying something, rewriting it, and abandoning it, is just squandering money. You can't change that reality by praising Google's way of doing things.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  It's worse than squandering money, it's squandering people's time, effort, their lives.
  - leoh 3y ago
    The counterpoint to this is that individuals can decide if they want their firm to be acquired or not or to stay around after it has been acquired. I don’t mean to put blame or shame on said folks, it requires a lot of careful thinking and self-inquiry and attention to one’s emotions and body to weigh said decisions well; which is hard for many reasons.
  - sumeno 3y ago
    Presumably they got well compensated for their time and effort. That's about the best you can expect at a large company. You're working on the company's products and priorities and getting paid to do so. What they choose to do with it is up to them.

underdeserver 3y ago

The founders got money, a line in their résumé (sold a startup to Google), and the experience of working at Google. They didn't stay very long. I'd be pretty happy.

andrewparker 3y ago

Socratic by Google still exists today and is a widely beloved app based on reviews. They had to rewrite the code and infrastructure, but "killing off the app" implies that they just shut things down. That never happened. As for "happy story", I think the founders of Socratic learned a lot. Shreyans is just trying to share his learnings here. Not celebrate or mourn.

suprfsat 3y ago
> This app isn't available for your device because it was made for an older version of Android. Not "killed off" exactly, no.

autokad 3y ago

its a PR piece IMO. The google way is terrible for producing products people want, which is why they always have to purchase their way into new products.

zumu 3y ago
After reading this, I was left with the impression Google is full of under-utilized talent, has poor product vision and has systems in place that discourage innovation and risk taking. So if this is a PR piece, then it is not a great one.
gherkinnn 3y ago
It is snark behind a thin veil of praise. The only way I can read it. It might by my confirmation bias talking.
autokad 3y ago
@gherkinnn @zumu yeah you are right, I didn't notice at first. Its almost like the Shakespeare Marc Anthony speech on JC.

BurningFrog 3y ago

When I was at Google 2006-2009, that was how all acquisitions except YouTube were handled. I've heard that's become better, but maybe not. Google's search & ads billions keep raining from the sky, so killing acquired product isn't a big problem.

eitally 3y ago
I was at Google from 2015-2023 and not really. Even large acquisitions like Apigee, Looker and Fitbit were multi-year "integrations" fraught with all sorts of pain & suffering. Smaller acquisitions like Stratozone, Orbitera, AppSheet, etc all follow the Socratic path: acquire, rewrite, halfassedly integrate, create confusion and anxiety.

Centigonal 3y ago

It sounds like some of the signals Socratic was detecting got rolled into Google's knowledge graph

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]