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Acquisition Change Promises

We Promise We Won't Change Anything

This whole post is probably overly negative but I keep noticing when companies make billion dollar investments/purchases and then promise not to change anything. And then we forget the PR promise as years go by. Talk is cheap, money is not cheap. What company would not want to exert influence or rake in returns? How would you even justify this to your shareholders (or boss) as a passive appendage? No, it's much more tempting to exert will and screw things up with your (maybe) larger or different culture that was not involved in the original success.

This is really, really, really not about the individual companies or data points. Rather, business mechanics.

Examples

Facebook Buys Oculus

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/oculus-rift-creator-we-promise-we-won-t-change-following-facebook-buyout/1100-6418562/

March 26 2014 You won't need to log into Facebook to use Oculus Rift: "I guarantee that you won't need to log into your Facebook account every time you wanna use the Oculus Rift."

This changed.

Facebook adding ads in game just like on web. Data and identity.

Resolution Games won’t test Facebook ads in Blaston anymore

Oracle Buys Sun for Java

Mostly to sue Google probably but starts charging for the JDK. Adoptopendjk has to be created.

Activision Buys Blizzard

"Nothing to fear" https://www.wired.com/2008/07/blizzard-presid/ Forces original people to form new studios (this is current news afaik, idk)

Simple Bank

https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/20/simple-acquired-for-117m-will-continue-to-operate-separately-under-its-own-brand/ I have no idea what root cause really was. There's a blurb in here about independence.

IBM Buys Redhat

CentOS is cancelled.

CoreOS is gone.

On May 26, 2020, CoreOS Container Linux reached its end of life and will no longer receive updates.

Linux Journal Closed

London Trust Media rescues and then shuts down the magazine.

Keybase bought by Zoom

After security problems during pandemic. I would bet big changes will come later or it'll be shut off. This would be a great service to clone if so. Acquisition ruins service or something, idk.

Trello bought by Atlassian

A great and lightweight kanban app becomes heavyweight.

Heroku bought by Salesforce

Acquisition was in 2010. 2022 the free tier is cancelled.

Snap Shuts Down Zenly

~40 MAUs and still shut down. Good article from Gergely Orosz.

Counter Examples

Microsoft Buys Github

So far, a fine steward of this and Minecraft.

Slack Bought by Salesforce

No changes yet.

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