In general, an acquired company initially became successful by bringing value to consumers. When that company is acquired, it gets more resources to bring more value to customers.
Don't forget Translate. It actually early on was an out-of-house service, but they kept buying companies and hiring people to work on it, and it got massively better. (So a lot like Keyhole/Maps: they took something it would cost you thousands of dollars a month for (literally, for Keyhole access), made it free, and made it better.)
Except for one feature that users have been screaming for, since near day one: MMS support.
And not in a hacked "if you're with TMo/Sprint, you -might- be able to get an email with the MMS in a format that's not reply-able" (and even that, only recently).
> Google Voice is effectively a dead product, isn't it?
Voice might be dead as a brand; Google's unification of communications trend might mean that the technology and functionality will eventually be merged into Hangouts.
Yes, Google Voice as a separate product is definitely going away. Its functionality will be subsumed by Hangouts, but nothing about that transition is clear to users.
Grand Central's acquisition was great for Americans and the few of us Canadians who were grandfathered in, but outside of the US (and Alberta for some reason), we lost a great service.
I would say it's debatable as to whether YouTube has been harmful. I think many aren't a fan of the licensing changes and other experience elements, but maybe those would have happened anyway.
I agree w/ Pixar to some extent, but it seems they have seen a slight decline in quality recently (Cars 2, Monsters University, Brave). I think particularly, they may be looking for more opportunities to exploit previous franchises vs. making quality films. Cars 2 was the best example of this, as was evident by the mounds of merchandise on store shelves following the release.
Again, both of these are debatable, but I still don't think you can say in either case that the acquisition was favorable to the consumer.
I think youtube wouldn't have managed to continue operations without a company like google stepping in. It was running massive bandwidth costs and did not have the ad network in place to monetize.
I think what helps explain this image is that it's likely everything before Cars 2 was already in development prior to the acquisition. Pixar seems to have lost some of their magic, however Disney is certainly stepping up their game.
The aesthetic divide between them is shrinking. I did not like Wreck It Ralph though. Not at all.
The comparison isn't between "what Android could be under Google" and "what Android is under Google".
The comparison is between "what Android could be as an independent company" and "what Android is under Google".
I think ultimately Android is doing a lot better for a lot more people than it would have had it remained independent. I'm also having a hard time imagining anyone else that could've acquired them and achieved substantially better results (see: Microsoft's handling of the Danger acquisition).
I would argue Hotmail — Microsoft brought scaling and maturity, and kept a stronghold on the net long enough to actually threaten and push Google further. I doubt Gmail would have appeared without that acquisition.
But then again: the dozen other examples cited above are certainly better.
Which means I don't see them anymore, which means I don't cringe at the filter abuse... Wait, actually, this HAS improved things for my particular tastes. :) But yeah, this is a pretty good example because the link between the acquisition and the damage to the product / end user is very obvious.
It seems like tech (maybe all) acquisitions almost always favor the buyer and not the consumer.
Does anybody have any good examples?