
Ask HN: Anyone been acquired by Google who can talk about it? - chuhnk
Has anyone here been acquired by google who can talk about their experiences after it was all said and done?<p>I am curious and I'm sure a lot of others are as to the experiences to a company merging into google's current work force vs joining as a single employee.
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rexreed
This is worth reading: "The Google Black Hole (Sergey and Larry just bought my
company. Uh oh.)": <http://www.slate.com/id/2197434/>

Details about the Dodgeball's teams experiences:
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10143824-36.html>

And from the Dodgeball folks themselves (but not too many details):
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/460987802/>

More from Techcrunch: <http://gigaom.com/2007/04/15/dodgeball-founder-quits-
google/>

~~~
brown9-2
The really amazing part about the Dodgeball story is that after leaving
Google, the ex-Dodgeball team went on to found Foursquare.

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dirtyaura
I was part of the Jaiku team acquired in 2007 by Google.

What do you want to know? Of course, I can't go to details of the acquisition
or work we did inside Google.

~~~
yoseph
Looking back, do you feel that selling to Google was a positive decision for
Jaiku?

~~~
dirtyaura
Note: I wasn't a founder, but one of the two first employees and a minor
shareholder. Internally, we called ourselves as a founding team as when we
joined, things really started to happen. Founders weren't devs themselves.

Given that we had worked on Jaiku just a bit over a year before the
acquisition, getting acquired by Google was a very pleasant surprise.

We were a talent acquisition like the most Google acquisitions are. Acquired
communities are rather tiny for Google and if there is important server-side
technology it usually has to be rewritten anyway for Google infra.

The toughest part was that we had to let go of the Jaiku service and
eventually the community as we couldn't develop Jaiku full-time anymore.

Although we were behind e.g. Twitter (we started before them) and Facebook (we
had the stream of posts before them) in users, our core users really really
loved Jaiku. It was the first web page they visited every day and many still
think that Jaiku's model was superior to both Twitter and Facebook.

This is the key: in talent acquisitions, it's probably best idea to
communicate that the service will be shut down eventually. This way the
community doesn't have false hopes. If it turns out that you can continue to
put enough effort to existing service, the old community will likely come
back.

Feel free to ask more. I can try to write a few key points to remember when
you get acquired by a large tech company, but I need to code a bit first ;-)

~~~
chuhnk
At jaiku I'm sure you had a lot of input in the direction of the product and
control over the technology. Moving into google I assume you had to give up a
lot of that. Was it worth it? Is there anything you miss from the jaiku days?

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kmfrk
You might (also) have some luck asking this question on quora.com.

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sjayman
Read about the experiences of Dodgeball founders, Dennis Crowley, of
Foursquare fame to get the not so good side of the experience.

~~~
thetylerhayes
Good place to start: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/460987802/>

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vital101
I'd be interested in hear stories about getting acquired by any large tech
company.

~~~
kmfrk
"Getting acquired by Google" is almost a dead metaphor in 2010. I don't know
if it's to be taken literally anymore, but Google are probably most known for
acquiring software companies.

What other big software company acquirers are there? (Not to be imply that
there aren't any.)

~~~
Br1c3
Google is still the goto name for tech acquisitions. Heck they have acquired
10 companies in the last 4 months alone.

~~~
palish
_"but Google are probably most known for acquiring software companies. What
other big software company acquirers are there? (Not to be imply that there
aren't any.)"_

 _"Google is still the goto name for tech acquisitions. Heck they have
acquired 10 companies in the last 4 months alone."_

You are both saying the exact same thing. Which is bizarre, because it
_sounds_ like you're in disagreement... But you're not.

The actual _sentences_ say exactly the same thing ("Google is currently the
biggest technology acquirer, by far").

~~~
Br1c3
You conveniently left out the part where he called it an "almost" dead
metaphor, which it isn't as evidence of their recent acquisition activity.
That's what I was addressing.

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charlief
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google>

~~~
phlux
That is just over 9.11 billion in acquisitions based on the listed numbers in
that table alone.

That is one hell of a lot of money spent to acquire companies.

I wonder what the most spent by a single co in M&A would be?

~~~
staunch
Cisco is a likely candidate in the tech world. If you think $9.11 billion is a
lot you need to remember that Yahoo spent $5.7 billion to buy a domain name
(broadcast.com).

~~~
rdl
Cisco is particularly interesting because most Cisco acquisitions are of
companies founded by or early-staffed-by former Cisco people -- an exec or top
techie leaves to start a company (perhaps built around a tech explored while
at Cisco), and if it's successful, Cisco buys the company and gets the team
back.

Cisco shareholders have explained that this effectively amounts to $50-500mm
bonuses for people who would otherwise have remained employees, and the whole
structure is self-reinforcing.

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trizk
I wonder if anyone who has ever been acquired has felt mistreated in a
possible effort to get them to leave and forgo shares before they vested, and
what they have done about it, if so?

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8ren
How much does Google pay for a talent acquisition?

(while acquirees can't disclose figures, can someone give an idea?)

~~~
3pt14159
I've _heard_ $500k to $2m per tech employee is fairly "normal" if it is _just_
a talent acquisition. Based on what one person told me drunk at a bar. Take it
with some salt.

~~~
skm
$1.5 million, according to Steve Newcomb (co-founder of Powerset):

"At that time we knew that a talented engineer in a tough to get tech was
worth about $1.5 million per head. Thus, I knew with relative assurance that
since we were going to hire at least 70 people with our Series A money, that
our worst case scenario was about a $100 million exit.

If anyone is paying attention, you are now saying, wait a minute! Didn't
Powerset sell for $100 million to MSFT? .... Yup, we nailed our worse case
scenario!" (from [http://blognewcomb.squarespace.com/essays/2010/10/14/cult-
cr...](http://blognewcomb.squarespace.com/essays/2010/10/14/cult-
creation.html))

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rexreed
This is a timely article: Google's AdMob, YouTube Chiefs Step Down

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230328460457558...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303284604575582740394620482.html)

