5 ms·

> Is there any large acquisition that succeeded in the last 10 years? Yes, many. Think of the Lenovo-IBM deal -- massive success. The Facebook-Whatsapp deal i

> Is there any large acquisition that succeeded in the last 10 years? Yes, many. Think of the Lenovo-IBM deal -- massive success. The Facebook-Whatsapp deal is 2.5x bigger than this acquisition, we'll see how that works out (financially). Google-Youtube is a big one that can be considered as a big success as well. Ebay-Paypal. FB-Instagram.

madengr 12y ago
Bigger in terms of inflated stock prices, but not by head count. Lenovo has taken the Thinkpad line down the toilet, not that IBM wouldn't have.
- vgharl 12y ago
  > Lenovo has taken the Thinkpad line down the toilet I think you're overstating things tremendously here. ThinkPad is alive, and from the reviews I've seen, doing well. http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/28/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-review-2014/ http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/28/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon.... Many buyouts end with entire products being canned. I still have an IBM ThinkPad. They were good quality back then, but I really think the standard-bearer today is MacBook.
  - philsnow 12y ago
    I don't think madengr is saying that the thinkpad line is not successful. Rather, I bet he means that the modern thinkpads do not fit in with the "thinkpad spirit". New thinkpads are just like every other manufacturer's laptops, even the X line.
Thaxll 12y ago
Facebook-Whatsapp are you serious?
- nkozyra 12y ago
  One of these things is not like the others.
apalmer 12y ago
the Google-Youtube, FB-Instagram and FB-Whatsapp are clearly not in the same category of merger & aquisition as MS & Nokia.
walshemj 12y ago
That wasn't a merger that was IBM dumping a low margin business unit. These Uber mergers never seem to create any lasting value
chubot 12y ago
It does seem less likely for an acquisition of a large company to be successful than a small one. The last three you mentioned are all tiny companies acquired for huge amounts of money. YouTube had something like 60 people at acquisition -- definitely under 100. Instgram had under 20 I believe. Not sure about Paypal but I'm sure it was dwarfed by Ebay. There is something to that. I think a smaller number of people can be integrated into a larger one, but when two massive companies like Microsoft and Nokia come together, there is bound to be friction. Not sure what happened with Google and Motorola, but the companies were I think wisely kept separate, whereas it sounds like Nadella wants more "integration synergies".
higherpurpose 12y ago
Many of your examples are super-valued acquisitions, paid mostly with stock funny-money, and that employ a few hundred employees at best, which makes them irrelevant to the case here, where Microsoft got 30,000 employees from Nokia.
snowwrestler 12y ago
Google bought DoubleClick in 2008 for $3 billion.

madengr 12y ago

Bigger in terms of inflated stock prices, but not by head count. Lenovo has taken the Thinkpad line down the toilet, not that IBM wouldn't have.

vgharl 12y ago
> Lenovo has taken the Thinkpad line down the toilet I think you're overstating things tremendously here. ThinkPad is alive, and from the reviews I've seen, doing well. http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/28/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-review-2014/ http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/28/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon.... Many buyouts end with entire products being canned. I still have an IBM ThinkPad. They were good quality back then, but I really think the standard-bearer today is MacBook.
- philsnow 12y ago
  I don't think madengr is saying that the thinkpad line is not successful. Rather, I bet he means that the modern thinkpads do not fit in with the "thinkpad spirit". New thinkpads are just like every other manufacturer's laptops, even the X line.

Thaxll 12y ago

Facebook-Whatsapp are you serious?

nkozyra 12y ago
One of these things is not like the others.

apalmer 12y ago

the Google-Youtube, FB-Instagram and FB-Whatsapp are clearly not in the same category of merger & aquisition as MS & Nokia.

walshemj 12y ago

That wasn't a merger that was IBM dumping a low margin business unit. These Uber mergers never seem to create any lasting value

chubot 12y ago

It does seem less likely for an acquisition of a large company to be successful than a small one. The last three you mentioned are all tiny companies acquired for huge amounts of money. YouTube had something like 60 people at acquisition -- definitely under 100. Instgram had under 20 I believe. Not sure about Paypal but I'm sure it was dwarfed by Ebay. There is something to that. I think a smaller number of people can be integrated into a larger one, but when two massive companies like Microsoft and Nokia come together, there is bound to be friction. Not sure what happened with Google and Motorola, but the companies were I think wisely kept separate, whereas it sounds like Nadella wants more "integration synergies".

higherpurpose 12y ago

Many of your examples are super-valued acquisitions, paid mostly with stock funny-money, and that employ a few hundred employees at best, which makes them irrelevant to the case here, where Microsoft got 30,000 employees from Nokia.

snowwrestler 12y ago

Google bought DoubleClick in 2008 for $3 billion.