[dhuck]

I think one line of thinking in acquisitions is not just to get control of a product, but rather to take that startup team under the Google wing.

I am a firm believer in the idea that the most important asset that a company can have is its employees - even Google. Granted - acquiring a company and forcing the employees to work within the Google system is a piss-poor way of getting someone to work for you, but ultimately, how else can you get those crazy entrepreneaurs to work for you?

This acquire-to-hire plan backfires all the time - under performance, stagnation of the acquired product, etc etc, but I can see the appeal to it. At least, in theory.