What Happens After Google Buys A Company?

Many people have posed the question: why does Google seem to often fail to efficiently integrate or develop companies and properties it has acquired? Early mobile social network DodgeBall is the most obvious example of a promising startup acquired by Google that has languished. But as TechCrunchIT points out, there are others and, more specifically, often a long delay between the time of a company’s acquisition and its “re-emergence” with a Google identity.

Citing YouTube as an exception to such integration delays, the TechCrunch post speculates that it’s because the acquired company’s engineers and developers have to learn Google’s proprietary software stack and that can take months:

One of the first main challenges for a company that has been acquired by Google is adopting the proprietary technology stack used within the company. Google does use Linux and open source, but their core technologies are all internal to the company. I have heard that it can take a new engineer at Google anywhere from 3-6 months to become accustomed to using these tools and services.

I’m sure that’s not the full story in every case, but it’s an interesting insight.

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