[jmull]

Casting Wordle as a NYT competitor squashed by acquisition is pretty stupid.

Wordle hadn't even been turned into an on-going business, and Wardle apparently had no interest in doing so. There wasn't even a squint-and-imagine-the-future potential competitor here, even just considering NYTs game business.

Yes, at some point you're going to have to pay for Wordle, through a subscription and/or viewing ads or make do with a crappy knockoff. Like everything else. This isn't anyone's first day on the internet, is it? If so, sorry to break it to you.

[ChrisLTD]

I think that's part of the author's point. These acquisitions happen early enough that it's not clear whether or not Instagram, Wordle, etc. would be competitive businesses.

However, I don't want to work in a regulatory environment that says I can't sell my small business to some larger company on the off chance it might some day be significant on its own.

[jmull]

Yeah that’s the author’s argument. That’s why I called it stupid.

The idea of forestalling competition by buying non-competitors doesn’t make any sense at all. NYT would have to buy all kinds of things, spending orders of magnitudes more money than they have.

I have a non-business game… is there any question why the NYT isn’t offerings me low-seven figures for it?

[ghayes]

Also, NYTimes could have cloned Wordle without paying Wardle, and that probably would have been worse for everyone involved.

[runako]

Instagram had raised nearly $60mm* and had 13 employees when it was sold. Wordle was a single person, part-time. They are not remotely similar for the purposes of antitrust discussion.

*Do people still know that this is a lot of money, and that most companies are not able to raise this much capital?

[paulryanrogers]

Perhaps there is a company size which is just too big to make acquisitions because the risk of stifling competition is too great. Or make any purchases of companies in markets that don't have enough competition.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

It's almost certainly not about the absolute size of the company, but its relative position in whatever niche(s) it operates in.

[lotsofpulp]

What is the size of a company? Net income? Market cap? Number of employees?

[jmull]

By the way, the NYT is big, but not that big… ~$2B yearly revenue.

[IanCal]

The creator didn't want to monetise it themselves, and wasn't really intended as a global phenomenon so this seems like a great option for them.

Also I wouldn't be shocked if NYT keep it free. They have some free word games, and encourage you to sign up for the rest of them - having a huge audience that come and play word games every single day seems like a great opportunity for upselling.

edit - a quick search suggests it's millions of people per day. At £25/year for a subscription, you'd probably not need a huge conversion rate for it to pay off quickly.