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Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?
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Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?
#92Oracle acquiring Sun. I know there is a lot of Oracle hate but: MySQL, GraalVM (Java), Sun hardware (both Exa* and SPARC), VirtualBox and many more technologies are better today than prior. The challenge Sun would have had, regardless of Oracle or not, is that they were solidly in the On-Prem business ... and the market has moved to Cloud.
I wasn't at Sun but am on the Java team now at Oracle. I'm constantly amazed by the inventor culture that Sun had, the people who came from there, and the legacy it has produced, but we all know how the business ended. That's no environment for a world-changing development platform to thrive.
It took a few years to find its footing, but Oracle has really given Java the space and resources to thrive. The roadmap is fuller than it ever has been and the release cadence continues to deliver value. Check out projects Amber, Loom, Panama, Valhalla. Tap into the stream of Inside.java. Exciting times.
Point being, I believe Java is a datapoint for successful product acquisition.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?
#93Trello by Atlassian. They have tried to rollout some of the UX improvements from Trello into other products and kept the majority of the talent.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?
#94Booking.com was acquired by Priceline for 100M in 2005. Now it's >80% of value and revenue of the parent company. By that logic, booking's value peaked over 80b$.
I was there from 2010-2017. The philosophy of the holdings was to let its constituent companies execute independently and even compete (this included Priceline.com, Agoda, Kayak, rentalcars.com, OpenTable, etc). Therefore the culture of booking.com remained fairly intact for a very long time.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The crazy thing is that Disney -> Pixar was also pretty much a reverse acquisition, so Steve was involved in 2 of those. At the time of acquisition his wife was the largest Disney shareholder, so she had more shares than anyone in the Disney family Seems like Pixar is doing well and Disney is taking influence from them
Pixar movies had an artistic downfall after the Disney acquisition. But sure they are doing fine financially-wise and technology-wise.
That's a very subjective statement. It's difficult to find evidence for, let alone prove.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?
#96Zappos by Amazon. I've heard they gave them a fair amount of autonomy and have been supportive.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pixar movies had an artistic downfall after the Disney acquisition. But sure they are doing fine financially-wise and technology-wise.
That's a very subjective statement. It's difficult to find evidence for, let alone prove.
IMDB ratings, and even revenue from movies.
Pixar used to work on one movie at a time, and each one that came out was technologically ground breaking[1], a huge media event, and an instant classic beloved by adults and children.
Now days you have https://www.imdb.com/list/ls020738923/
Some of their movies are good, some are great, some aren't good, but now days they are willing to make cash grab sequels.
[1] Siggraph during Pixar release years turned into "what ground breaking tech did Pixar invent this time"
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?
#98VMware's acquisition by EMC went well for most of the employees (at least during the initial years). For all practical purposes, EMC left VMware alone.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an argument for the acquisition of YT by Google being net positive, but it doesn't answer the OP's question, which he specifically restricts to the "less tangible parts of the smaller company".
>but it doesn't answer the OP's question I think it does, otherwise OP's question is ill-posed. That is, if YouTube scaled independently from a scrappy startup to a $170billion behemoth, the changes in corporate governance and culture would have been equally as drastic as being acquired by Google.
Youtube, the product, maybe makes more money. However, Youtube, the community, was much better initially, which I suppose can be expected with most communities as they grow.
Bad actors creep in, which creates new rules, which negatively impacts the whole, which causes resentment, which causes more bad actors, which lead to more rules, and before you know it, review-girls don't seem so bad when your feed lands on terrorist-mickeymouse and the syringe babies.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?
#100Linkedin and Github acquisition by Microsoft.
Github and Linkedin both have their own culture, perks, and the companies are run independently. Infact, Linkedin pays better than Microsoft and are overall happier.