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Has "acquired" become a dirty word lately? I read the announcements on both the Firebase and Google Cloud pages, and it wasn't even clear to me that Google had

Has "acquired" become a dirty word lately? I read the announcements on both the Firebase and Google Cloud pages, and it wasn't even clear to me that Google had purchased the company (or a controlling interest, or whatever has happened). The message is simply that Firebase "joined the Google Cloud platform". Lately, Google has been rolling out one-click installs for Redis, Cassandra, RabbitMQ, etc. I had to read comments on HN to understand that this is a financial integration rather than merely a technical one. What strange and evasive messaging... why not just announce that the company has been purchased?

KobaQ 12y ago
Well, you know ... Mr. Brin and Mr. Page recently succeeded in persuading me to activly support Google's business ... that's the style how some collegue told me about his new job :-). Yes, it's a bit tiring and part of the whole "we want to make the world a better place" marketing bullshit of the tech giants. At this scale, it's brutal business, nothing else. So, it would have been refreshing to read in the blog post: "We just took the heaps of money." Which is perfectly fine.
nlh 12y ago
I have zero connection to the deal so this is entirely speculation, but in short, no, "acquired" has not become a dirty word. When a company is purchased - it's usually described as such. (In fact, I think for a public company, it's actually legally required that it be disclosed to shareholders in accurate terms, though the exact level of detail -- i.e. $$ -- is dependent on the "materiality" of the transaction.) I noticed the exact same thing when I read the announcement(s) -- both Firebase and Google were very specific in saying that "Firebase has joined Google", not "Firebase has been acquired by Google". So I'm guessing it means exactly what it says -- the Firebase team has been hired by Google and the product is now a part of Google Cloud Platform.

KobaQ 12y ago

Well, you know ... Mr. Brin and Mr. Page recently succeeded in persuading me to activly support Google's business ... that's the style how some collegue told me about his new job :-). Yes, it's a bit tiring and part of the whole "we want to make the world a better place" marketing bullshit of the tech giants. At this scale, it's brutal business, nothing else. So, it would have been refreshing to read in the blog post: "We just took the heaps of money." Which is perfectly fine.

nlh 12y ago

I have zero connection to the deal so this is entirely speculation, but in short, no, "acquired" has not become a dirty word. When a company is purchased - it's usually described as such. (In fact, I think for a public company, it's actually legally required that it be disclosed to shareholders in accurate terms, though the exact level of detail -- i.e. $$ -- is dependent on the "materiality" of the transaction.) I noticed the exact same thing when I read the announcement(s) -- both Firebase and Google were very specific in saying that "Firebase has joined Google", not "Firebase has been acquired by Google". So I'm guessing it means exactly what it says -- the Firebase team has been hired by Google and the product is now a part of Google Cloud Platform.