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The companies have a choice; their users don't.

• tedunangst 12y ago
  Obvious solution: only use services that have public statements promising not to be acquired. From the sound of HN comments, that would be quite the market differentiator. The dearth of such companies perhaps reveals something about what all the world changing services you like are really about.
  • wwwwwwwwww 12y ago
    the problem with that is then people would have to build actually businesses rather than loss leader "startups" that are only around to break even and pray for an acquisition
  • barrkel 12y ago
    Are you familiar with the collective action problem? The inconvenience of filtering the services you use by the public statements of their provider companies makes it almost wholly unreasonable to expect market forces to fix moral failings in companies, unless they're egregious enough to get play in the mass media - which has its own problems of mob activism. Users don't have an effective choice. This isn't something markets can easily fix.