

4 Reasons On Why Google Buys Companies - alaskamiller
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-02-25-n19.html

======
tim2
I'd add one more and split "product" out from "technology." For example,
youtube was simply a better product for the market than google video -- even
though the back-end technology was supposedly worse.

Perhaps there is the assumption that the product can easily change once
google, with its massive resources, acquires the company. Evidence though,
shows that buyouts and success tend more to feature-freeze products.

Oh, one more: legal protection. Again refer to youtube and the liability of
some court ruling against the legal protections that online video sites
currently use.

~~~
mixmax
"For example, youtube was simply a better product for the market than google
video -- even though the back-end technology was supposedly worse."

I know I'm going to get hammered for saying this - but I don't think back-end
code is as important as a good user interface, a well designed site, and a
clear vision. Your users don't get to see the back-end code, and they don't
really care how it works. And servers and bandwidth are cheap, so it doesn't
matter much that your code isn't well optimised.

What does matter though is that you have a clear value proposition to you
users, and that they will understand this within 5 seconds of arriving to your
site. This is much more important than nice and clean back-end code.

I have a bit of experience with this - I started thinking about doing a web
based project management tool around a year ago, and since I didn't know any
good hackers that weren't already occupied with something else I thought I
would learn how to code and just do it myself. And interestingly I found that
the hard part was not the coding, but the usability and flow of the site. The
coding part is basically just getting stuff in and out of a database. But the
flow is really hard to get just right.

------
ALee
The 4th reason es muy importante. So instead of working at Google, get Larry
and Sergey to respect you in the morning when they buy you.

"Buying startups also solves another problem afflicting big companies: they
can't do product development. Big companies are good at extracting the value
from existing products, but bad at creating new ones."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html>

