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I'll bite. The first statement may be factually correct, but I disagree with this take.
Half of Google's fortress ecosystem was built or accelerated via M&A.
Home run deals:
DoubleClick/Semantic Labs/AdMob, Keyhole/Where2, Postini, Android, YouTube, Waze https://twitter.com/PythiaR/status/1247680244896526337
Half of Google's fortress ecosystem was built or accelerated via M&A.
Home run deals:
DoubleClick/Semantic Labs/AdMob, Keyhole/Where2, Postini, Android, YouTube, Waze https://twitter.com/PythiaR/status/1247680244896526337
Much of its ad tech that allows it to monetize unlike any other, AdSense, AdWords, DoubleClick, were acquired.
Gmail's spam filtering, powered by Postini, was one of main reasons ppl signed up.
Keyhole was the foundation of Maps.
YouTube, Waze, Android, need no explaining.
Gmail's spam filtering, powered by Postini, was one of main reasons ppl signed up.
Keyhole was the foundation of Maps.
YouTube, Waze, Android, need no explaining.
GV/GC have also had many successes (Uber, Stripe, Slack, Snap, Zscaler, DocuSign, Cloudera, FanDuel, Glassdoor, SpaceX *ducks* etc.) It's not really M&A, and they're able to capitalize on the Google name so success is a bit self-selecting there.
The worst deal has been Motorola, which they bought for $12B, but even that wasn't as bad as ppl make it.
Let's break that down though:
Motorola had $3.2B of net cash
$2.4B of NOLs
They sold the STB biz to Arris for $2.3B
Sold the phone biz to Lenovo for $2.9B
Let's break that down though:
Motorola had $3.2B of net cash
$2.4B of NOLs
They sold the STB biz to Arris for $2.3B
Sold the phone biz to Lenovo for $2.9B
So net net, they paid about $2B and kept all the patents. What are those worth? I have no idea but consensus at the time was it was a superior portfolio to Nortel's patents that Apple/Microsoft bought for $4B.
Yes, there are a lot of science experiments like Google Glass, Project Loon, Google Fiber, but every now and then you also get a Chrome, Android, Photos, Waymo or Verily. Fast iteration is what you want or else you end up owning something that looks like IBM or Intel.
