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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?

#121

Post by vosper »

Ancalagon wrote: post #120

Instagram, arguably

Agreed, and I also think Meta/Facebook's acquisition of Oculus was good for Oculus, too. Meta just reversed course on the requirement to have a Facebook account, which was the big thing people complained about. They're pouring enormous resources into VR with a long-term timeline. By some accounts it's less like Facebook took over Oculus, and more like Oculus took over Facebook.

I hope Valve sticks it out with VR, because though I do not like or use Facebook I think Zuckerberg could be right about VR, and someone needs to compete with Meta. I think for Valve it's potentially an existential threat.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#122

Post by lghh »

Noe2097 wrote: post #114
harel wrote: post #56

I think github got better after Microsoft bought them. They were in some stale rut for a long time before that.

I'm curious here: what got better in GitHub since the acquisition? It's a genuine question, I'm not being sarcastic, I really don't understand the statement (which seems to be shared by several people here). I honestly can't point out a single thing that was delivered that changed the game for like, 6 years from now if not more (copilot is a nice gadget IMHO but it's not really game changer, is it?). I was actually h…

I have enjoyed using Actions. The GitHub integration into VSCode has been a huge productivity boon for me as well.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#123

Post by gherkinnn »

Noe2097 wrote: post #114
harel wrote: post #56

I think github got better after Microsoft bought them. They were in some stale rut for a long time before that.

I'm curious here: what got better in GitHub since the acquisition? It's a genuine question, I'm not being sarcastic, I really don't understand the statement (which seems to be shared by several people here). I honestly can't point out a single thing that was delivered that changed the game for like, 6 years from now if not more (copilot is a nice gadget IMHO but it's not really game changer, is it?). I was actually h…

Off the top of my head: Tree view in PRs, the new projects board, code search, Mermaid and maths in markdown, the cmd+k action bar thing, Copilot, the best VS Code themes, lots of small changes like Readme TOC, and so on.

Maybe these changes are incremental, maybe you don’t cherish them as much as I do ,and some were very much over due. Regardless, I like them and am impressed by Github’s recent work.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#124

Post by smcleod »

harel wrote: post #56

I think github got better after Microsoft bought them. They were in some stale rut for a long time before that.

I couldn't disagree more, GitHub has had significantly more outages - especially transient ones and is now focused on smashing out sales driven features rather stability and core functionality.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#126

Post by Kye »

com2kid wrote: post #97
arbitrage wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Now it seems like Disney is doing the innovating with the way they film stuff for Disney+.

https://qz.com/1754288/disney-is-trying-to-revolutionize-fil...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bErPsq5kPzE

Though how much of that is Disney and how much is the companies they worked with is unknown to me.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#128

Post by harel »

Noe2097 wrote: post #114
harel wrote: post #56

I think github got better after Microsoft bought them. They were in some stale rut for a long time before that.

I'm curious here: what got better in GitHub since the acquisition? It's a genuine question, I'm not being sarcastic, I really don't understand the statement (which seems to be shared by several people here). I honestly can't point out a single thing that was delivered that changed the game for like, 6 years from now if not more (copilot is a nice gadget IMHO but it's not really game changer, is it?). I was actually h…

The app(!), the inline vscode INSIDE github (just press the . [dot] key when in the repo), actions, general interface, settings to name a few.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#129

Post by cleansingfire »

jessriedel wrote: post #51
RubberShoes wrote: post #23

Google acquiring YouTube "In the Plex" by Steven Levy goes into great detail on how YouTube could not survive its growth without the infrastructure and ad technologies Google brought to the platform.

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".

That sounds like the author is defining good as "what I like, and can't or won't tell you."

Re: Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company?

#130

Post by JeremyHerrman »

Noe2097 wrote: post #112

Dassault Systèmes acquiring Solidworks. Most users don't know that Solidworks, which is well know as a mid level solution for CAD, is actually owned by the French company developing CATIA, which is practically used by every single serious manufacturer in the world (from automotive to aircraft to ship to factory to you name it). The geometric kernel powering these two is now the same, but it wasn't for years. I guess…

Did Solidworks actually move away from Parasolid? I had thought that only some 3DEXPERIENCE cloud products were using CGM, but Solidworks on the desktop was still based on Parasolid.
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