[diggan]

> My history with email clients being acquired is not encouraging.

Ignoring the constraint of "email client", has there been any acquisitions where the acquired product got better post-acquisition?

I can think of countless examples where it got worse, but from the top of my head, I can only think of maybe YouTube, but then only in the initial post-purchase period, and same goes for a bunch of other examples. They seem to eventually always turn sour.

Maybe GitHub? But it traded "no new features - no downtime" for "some new features - a lot of downtime" after the Microsoft purchase, so I guess it's very subjective, probably at least some people like that tradeoff.

[gghffguhvc]

Arm

Diamond Aircraft

Volvo

Cirrus

All retained their culture and brand and the products keep improving incrementally. Parent companies keep a low profile wrt product.

[pickledoyster]

Volvo owners I know would disagree vehemently

[jjtheblunt]

barely off topic, but your comment reminds me of SAAB (which i had and loved) being acquired by GM (which phased it out, after making it bland).

[atlantacrackers]

Honestly...true. Even Rapportive (same founder) effectively died post acquisition by linkedin, no?

[hiddencost]

YouTube. Android. Google maps.