> keeping it successful
replyI’m no Zuck fan, but he’s done much more than keep them successful, they have grown a lot.
I remember everyone making fun of him for overpaying for IG and WA. Now both in hindsight look like amazing acquisitions.
Only The Zuck saw the value though. Why didn't MS, Amazon or Google buy insta? Or some Softbank vehicle?
replyI’m sure the others saw the value too. It just wasn’t worth as much to them as Zuckerberg was prepared to pay. Not surprising given it’s a service that directly competed with FB in the social space.
replyProbably because Instagram wasn't a direct competitor to any of those other companies (except maybe Google+, which wasn't even a year old at the time that FB bought Instagram). I don't know why softbank didn't get them.
replyThis is the case with most tech companies. Google bought Android, YouTube, DoubleClick, Maps, etc. etc.
replyAlthough in this case Meta bought companies that were already established and successful.
replyGoogle bought Android before it had released products.
Google Maps was purchased, but was Where 2 actually a successful product prior to that?
I feel like you just cherry picked from my examples. YouTube was certainly successful - Google bought them because their own Google Video competitor was a flop. DoubleClick was also obviously huge. Where 2 had a successful product, it just wasn't web based (nor do I think free), so didn't have anywhere near the distribution that Google enabled once the team ported it to run in a browser.
replyInstagram had around 10mn users at acquisition, so they might not have gotten to where they are without FB. Whatsapp was a successful product that didn't make any money.
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