It's possible that Google simply couldn't afford them anymore. At these unicorns they are leading, their current and projected net worth is so huge that even a company like Google might not be able to justify paying it without serious disruption.
I always thought that's what Alphabet was for, to be honest. Trying to keep a sort of ecosystem of acquisitions and Google spin-off startups with direct Google investment.
There's the massive problem that none of Google's acquisitions were big when they were acquired. Google can at the very least be said to have very significantly contributed to the success of their acquisitions.
Google has a long and successful history of acquisitions, as also a long history of lack of direction and headless actions even in their youth days. It's probably just natural for a company with too much money to invest that way.
Well, they should not count on the founders "vision", as they tried to sell Google for $1 million, and after a little bargaining even went as low as $750,000...
when you have a cash cow you can either take the money and run, or reinvest and try to milk it for all it's worth. sometimes the former is the best idea, sometimes the latter works out well. MS, google, apple, facebook, etc. are all examples of the latter. which completely goes against the premise of the article -- google wouldn't be google if they didn't have a wide breadth of products and would have likely gotten bought out if their only concern was a quick return on investment money.
One could argue that Google's biggest mistake was not buying Facebook in the same way that Yahoo could have bought Google way back when.
Instead, Google now has to come up with a bunch of half baked social projects that are seen through the lens of search, which makes no sense to anyone outside of Google. Search is not a social endeavor unless you are a librarian and social has very little to do with search.
Google could have bought Sun, but most of what Sun did made no sense for Google while at the same time Google is doing a lot of the things Sun wanted to do, but could never execute. Sun made money on hardware, but that was a dead business. $7 billion just to own Java patents would have been great for Android, but as it stands Google will likely license them for a fraction of that.
In the end, Sun's big prize was Java and all the money in Java right now is in the enterprise software game. Google doesn't care about enabling enterprise software. Google doesn't care about enabling IBM and Oracle to write big software for big companies.
I think Google did the right thing by not buying Sun.
It's a little bit of a shame in my eyes. They could've built out a network and been bought for a lot by Amazon, Rakuten, eBay, Best Buy, etc or have built a big company. They obviously saw value in joining Google as they were still early on.
I think Google invests a lot. Look at CapitalG, GV etc. And now within Google itself, 2 projects which I think are aiming to become platforms: Stadia, Fuschia.
Personally, I have been disappointed with Google in the AR front. Haven't heard much about investments/ acquisitions. OTOH, Apple has been acquihiring small teams, investing in microLEDs etc. Though, overall Alphabet's investments are much diverse.
Meh, they could have bought one the monopolies if they wanted to, like they did with Motorola when it is was in their interest to do so.
It is a matter of will and persistence to run a this kind of business, Google does not have the DNA to run a serious enterprise business that needs decades of commitment to a product .
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