Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple buys a company every three to four weeks

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 156 posts

Re: Apple buys a company every three to four weeks

#31

Post by TaylorAlexander »

gibolt wrote: post #26
jariel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is not the money - it's the ability to integrate. M&A and cooltech is by far the easiest part. Making use of the tech, the talent, operational integration, re-writes vs. integration, product alignment, etc. it's very hard on every level. What do you do with the VP of a 50 person company, now they are managers in a little team, the software might be discarded, or just a few ideas used from it etc. etc..

You only need 1 to pay off for it to be worth it. The rest can be deprecated and team reallocated. Not saying it is right, but makes sense for a business of that scale.

Maybe... Google seems to be taking that strategy but it feels like it leads to some kind of flaw in their thinking around product support.

Re: Apple buys a company every three to four weeks

#32

Post by threeseed »

veenusav wrote: post #17
zepto wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it embarrassing? They obviously did well enough to be worth acquiring.

See the example of Tesla 2013. Apple is not hiring to keep the startup or the innovation. But for the up or even worst:for the talent. Its like selling your house to the scrap guy

It entirely depends on the company.

- Turi became TuriCreate/CoreML

- Faceshift became Memoji

- Workflow became Shortcuts

- FoundationDB is unchanged and underpins iCloud

- Shazam is unchanged

Many of the acquired companies can be directly seen in shipping products (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...)

Re: Apple buys a company every three to four weeks

#33

Post by jacobolus »

conception wrote: post #12
SllX wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because right now price is about the only criteria really considered today. You can stifle innovation and competition as long as the prices stay low.

> price [for consumers] is about the only criteria really considered today.

Blame the past 50 years of GOP-dominated Supreme Court jurisprudence, which has steadily eroded antitrust enforcement. Vote for the Democratic party in Senate and Presidential races, and something might happen to fix this in about 30–40 years when the Court turns over enough to give Democrat-appointed Justices a majority.

Re: Apple buys a company every three to four weeks

#34

Post by Judgmentality »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #31
gibolt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need 1 to pay off for it to be worth it. The rest can be deprecated and team reallocated. Not saying it is right, but makes sense for a business of that scale.

Maybe... Google seems to be taking that strategy but it feels like it leads to some kind of flaw in their thinking around product support.

How long has it been since Google had a notable successful acquisition? I'm asking because I can't think of anything recent.

Re: Apple buys a company every three to four weeks

#35

Post by yanslookup »

zepto wrote: post #25
veenusav wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See the example of Tesla 2013. Apple is not hiring to keep the startup or the innovation. But for the up or even worst:for the talent. Its like selling your house to the scrap guy

Yeah - I mean I guess you can make it sound bad. But a ‘pivot’ is essentially the same thing - in terms of what gets scrapped. I see an acquihire as the market actually validating your company value even if you haven’t pivoted into a hockey stick product.

How is it validating? In an acquihire situation the company gets bought and then everything but the people is flushed down the toilet.

You used to be working on AI powered eye glasses that could tell when fruit is perfectly ripe but now you work on an in house travel expense system the Apple sales people use to log their Uber bills.

Re: Apple buys a company every three to four weeks

#39

Post by paulryanrogers »

sircastor wrote: post #18
conception wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because right now price is about the only criteria really considered today. You can stifle innovation and competition as long as the prices stay low.

It seems to me that Apple buys companies because they want to research and build a technology into their products, rather than eliminate competitors. It seems to me they’re more interested in the talent than the market. That kind of behavior I attribute to Facebook.

And yet I still couldn't use the fingerprint reader in one of my laptops because Apple bought the supplier. Driver updates stopped soon thereafter, sadly right around the time of a major Windows release and my reader was SOL.

Re: Apple buys a company every three to four weeks

#40

Post by bordercases »

gibolt wrote: post #26
jariel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is not the money - it's the ability to integrate. M&A and cooltech is by far the easiest part. Making use of the tech, the talent, operational integration, re-writes vs. integration, product alignment, etc. it's very hard on every level. What do you do with the VP of a 50 person company, now they are managers in a little team, the software might be discarded, or just a few ideas used from it etc. etc..

You only need 1 to pay off for it to be worth it. The rest can be deprecated and team reallocated. Not saying it is right, but makes sense for a business of that scale.

There is a hidden principle-agent problem where the original company's intent gets distorted to align with broader corporate objectives.

The total market the acquired company could have penetrated never gets developed and fundamentally they decide to take an exit now for less risk and more cash early for what could have been a stronger contribution for the economy on the whole via a well-exploited niche.

A mundane example would be how the developers behind Firewatch were acqui-hired by Valve. They had a well-developed following and a hotly anticipated second product, an original single-player IP, somewhat rare nowadays. Half the team dissolved to work on Steam and the rest funneled themselves into Half-Life: Alyx. The new game was delisted from development.

Post reply on HN