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Still not sure how I feel about tech giants acquiring startups like Parse and Firebase. Is there some market explanation for why this tends to happen?

by gailees 12y ago

ceejayoz 12y ago
Sometimes, talent acquisition. Sometimes, killing a competitor. Sometimes, getting technology to roll into their services.
ZitchDog 12y ago
They can use the platform internally and make money off of it, all while gaining access to a wealth of data about potential competitors and acquisition targets.
JeremyMorgan 12y ago
The market explanation is simple, if you can't beat em, join em. Firebase has a unique and well developed product, a growing following and good momentum. It makes sense for companies like Google to pull this talent into their portfolio. The tough part for companies like Google is maintaining that momentum by letting the founders of the project maintain control and move forward without marketing or bureaucratic red tape killing it, something Google has been really good about in the past.
eldavido 12y ago
Google has only two billion-dollar businesses: Adwords and Adsense. They've been trying for the past 2-4 years to grow Apps/Docs/Drive platform into a third one, and have had reasonable success getting into some larger organizations like Motorola and some universities (Indiana U being one). Even so, it's no secret how conflicted they are about "Docs". It's gone through what, 3 major rebrandings in the last five years ("Drive"? "Docs"? "Apps"?), plus it's more of a traditional, old-school enterprise sale, which means salespeople, budgets, big complicated custom integrations, security policy, etc., all things I don't see as Google's core strengths vs. traditional enterprise vendors like Oracle, Microsoft, etc. Google's big recent push has been getting more companies onto their cloud infrastructure, which when you think about it, it's kind of nuts how they let Amazon eat their lunch in this area. It's GOOGLE: these guys invent filesystems (GFS/CFS), create their own Javascript compiler (V8), hell they've even created two programming languages (Dart, golang) and a database (spanner) -- how Amazon got ahead in cloud hosting really gives me pause. In any case, "GCE" as they're calling it (Google Compute Engine) might be Google's fourth billion-dollar business. Mobile is a huge thing: there are tons of phones sold every day, developers love it, but it's still too hard. I imagine the GCE execs faced a build vs. buy decision for "the thing that'll make mobile development easier", push notifications, and a handful of other use cases Firebase has really nailed. So given the choice between (1) building something in-house, which means they're years behind, have to build a brand from scratch, understand the problem space, and recruit the right team vs. (2) write a big check, it's not a very hard choice IMO. Source: I lived with a firebase employee, I work in a company that GCE's sales team has visited, I spoke at AWS reinvent last year, and I built a venture-funded company on Google Apps. EDIT: I guess it's not correct to say it's just Adwords and Adsense anymore, but it's still 90%+ advertising, and having some diversity there would go a long way (see child comment)
- umeshunni 12y ago
  >> Google has only two billion-dollar businesses: Adwords and Adsense. Even a cursory reading of any of Google's earnings statements disproves your first sentence.
  - eldavido 12y ago
    "We generated 91% of Google revenues from our advertisers in 2013." https://investor.google.com/pdf/20131231_google_10K.pdf https://investor.google.com/pdf/20131231_google_10K.pdf
    - umeshunni 12y ago
      1. "revenues from our advertisers" is not just Adwords and Adsense - e.g. YouTube, AdMob, DCLK 2. The remaining 9% of ~60B is 5.4B
- ky3 12y ago
  it's kind of nuts how they let Amazon eat their lunch in this area. It's GOOGLE: these guys invent filesystems (GFS/CFS), create their own Javascript compiler (V8), hell they've even created two programming languages (Dart, golang) and a database (spanner) -- how Amazon got ahead in cloud hosting really gives me pause. Totally opposed to Amazon's, GOOG's DNA has never been about serving customers directly. I foresee their cloud offerings, including Firebase -- to the extent they'll let it run, to continue being tolerated stepchildren.
  - vgt 12y ago
    Urs Holzle announced in January publically that Google's TI and Google Cloud will merge... thoughts?
- wmil 12y ago
  > how Amazon got ahead in cloud hosting really gives me pause. I think EC2 happened because Amazon expanded by building data centers. Whenever they finished a new one they found they had a lot of surplus hosting capacity that they couldn't monetize. So EC2 was useful because the capacity was just sitting there. Google always had ideas for new services. So they saved any extra capacity for experimental products or tried to sell it through Google App Engine.

Still not sure how I feel about tech giants acquiring startups like Parse and Firebase. Is there some market explanation for why this tends to happen?

by gailees 12y ago

Still not sure how I feel about tech giants acquiring startups like Parse and Firebase. Is there some market explanation for why this tends to happen?

ceejayoz 12y ago

Sometimes, talent acquisition. Sometimes, killing a competitor. Sometimes, getting technology to roll into their services.

ZitchDog 12y ago

They can use the platform internally and make money off of it, all while gaining access to a wealth of data about potential competitors and acquisition targets.

JeremyMorgan 12y ago

The market explanation is simple, if you can't beat em, join em. Firebase has a unique and well developed product, a growing following and good momentum. It makes sense for companies like Google to pull this talent into their portfolio. The tough part for companies like Google is maintaining that momentum by letting the founders of the project maintain control and move forward without marketing or bureaucratic red tape killing it, something Google has been really good about in the past.

eldavido 12y ago

Google has only two billion-dollar businesses: Adwords and Adsense. They've been trying for the past 2-4 years to grow Apps/Docs/Drive platform into a third one, and have had reasonable success getting into some larger organizations like Motorola and some universities (Indiana U being one). Even so, it's no secret how conflicted they are about "Docs". It's gone through what, 3 major rebrandings in the last five years ("Drive"? "Docs"? "Apps"?), plus it's more of a traditional, old-school enterprise sale, which means salespeople, budgets, big complicated custom integrations, security policy, etc., all things I don't see as Google's core strengths vs. traditional enterprise vendors like Oracle, Microsoft, etc. Google's big recent push has been getting more companies onto their cloud infrastructure, which when you think about it, it's kind of nuts how they let Amazon eat their lunch in this area. It's GOOGLE: these guys invent filesystems (GFS/CFS), create their own Javascript compiler (V8), hell they've even created two programming languages (Dart, golang) and a database (spanner) -- how Amazon got ahead in cloud hosting really gives me pause. In any case, "GCE" as they're calling it (Google Compute Engine) might be Google's fourth billion-dollar business. Mobile is a huge thing: there are tons of phones sold every day, developers love it, but it's still too hard. I imagine the GCE execs faced a build vs. buy decision for "the thing that'll make mobile development easier", push notifications, and a handful of other use cases Firebase has really nailed. So given the choice between (1) building something in-house, which means they're years behind, have to build a brand from scratch, understand the problem space, and recruit the right team vs. (2) write a big check, it's not a very hard choice IMO. Source: I lived with a firebase employee, I work in a company that GCE's sales team has visited, I spoke at AWS reinvent last year, and I built a venture-funded company on Google Apps. EDIT: I guess it's not correct to say it's just Adwords and Adsense anymore, but it's still 90%+ advertising, and having some diversity there would go a long way (see child comment)

umeshunni 12y ago
>> Google has only two billion-dollar businesses: Adwords and Adsense. Even a cursory reading of any of Google's earnings statements disproves your first sentence.
- eldavido 12y ago
  "We generated 91% of Google revenues from our advertisers in 2013." https://investor.google.com/pdf/20131231_google_10K.pdf https://investor.google.com/pdf/20131231_google_10K.pdf
  - umeshunni 12y ago
    1. "revenues from our advertisers" is not just Adwords and Adsense - e.g. YouTube, AdMob, DCLK 2. The remaining 9% of ~60B is 5.4B
ky3 12y ago
it's kind of nuts how they let Amazon eat their lunch in this area. It's GOOGLE: these guys invent filesystems (GFS/CFS), create their own Javascript compiler (V8), hell they've even created two programming languages (Dart, golang) and a database (spanner) -- how Amazon got ahead in cloud hosting really gives me pause. Totally opposed to Amazon's, GOOG's DNA has never been about serving customers directly. I foresee their cloud offerings, including Firebase -- to the extent they'll let it run, to continue being tolerated stepchildren.
- vgt 12y ago
  Urs Holzle announced in January publically that Google's TI and Google Cloud will merge... thoughts?
wmil 12y ago
> how Amazon got ahead in cloud hosting really gives me pause. I think EC2 happened because Amazon expanded by building data centers. Whenever they finished a new one they found they had a lot of surplus hosting capacity that they couldn't monetize. So EC2 was useful because the capacity was just sitting there. Google always had ideas for new services. So they saved any extra capacity for experimental products or tried to sell it through Google App Engine.