<story><title>Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/01/google-to-acquire-fitbit-valuing-the-smartwatch-maker-at-about-2point1-billion.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>Oof. Goodbye Fitbit. Or, rather, welcome to the world where you&amp;#x27;re a pawn in internal politics.&lt;p&gt;You may think you have a product but you don&amp;#x27;t. If your product survives (as in, Google didn&amp;#x27;t buy you just for the team), your product schedule will have to survive the interests of every other PA&amp;#x2F;team in Google.&lt;p&gt;- You think you have software to run your products? Ha. The Android team will have a different opinion.&lt;p&gt;- Even if you survive Android, Fuchsia probably thinks you belong on their paltform.&lt;p&gt;- Oh and while we&amp;#x27;re at it, let&amp;#x27;s integrate with OAuth2.0 so your device now needs a Google account to even work (and stops working when refresh tokens can&amp;#x27;t be used as happened to many Google wireless routers).&lt;p&gt;- Your software development is now set in stone as various teams work out how to migrate it to Google infrastructure and rewrite it in [language&amp;#x2F;framework du jour].&lt;p&gt;I actually agree with other commenters: Google just doesn&amp;#x27;t know what it&amp;#x27;s about anymore. It has no overriding vision. Larry just isn&amp;#x27;t the leader Google needs to be, which would be fine, except that he clearly wants to be.&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: Xoogler.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>clairity</author><text>&amp;gt; “I actually agree with other commenters: Google just doesn&amp;#x27;t know what it&amp;#x27;s about anymore. It has no overriding vision.”&lt;p&gt;it’s pretty apparent to me that after google finally got over wanting to be facebook, google now wants to be apple. and they’re desperately trying not to be microsoft, even though that’s what they mostly are.&lt;p&gt;in the beginning, google had a unique identity (quirky &amp;amp; clever) and vision (organize the world’s information). now they look to others to figure out who to be. it’s like the small town high school football star who never moved on.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/01/google-to-acquire-fitbit-valuing-the-smartwatch-maker-at-about-2point1-billion.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>Oof. Goodbye Fitbit. Or, rather, welcome to the world where you&amp;#x27;re a pawn in internal politics.&lt;p&gt;You may think you have a product but you don&amp;#x27;t. If your product survives (as in, Google didn&amp;#x27;t buy you just for the team), your product schedule will have to survive the interests of every other PA&amp;#x2F;team in Google.&lt;p&gt;- You think you have software to run your products? Ha. The Android team will have a different opinion.&lt;p&gt;- Even if you survive Android, Fuchsia probably thinks you belong on their paltform.&lt;p&gt;- Oh and while we&amp;#x27;re at it, let&amp;#x27;s integrate with OAuth2.0 so your device now needs a Google account to even work (and stops working when refresh tokens can&amp;#x27;t be used as happened to many Google wireless routers).&lt;p&gt;- Your software development is now set in stone as various teams work out how to migrate it to Google infrastructure and rewrite it in [language&amp;#x2F;framework du jour].&lt;p&gt;I actually agree with other commenters: Google just doesn&amp;#x27;t know what it&amp;#x27;s about anymore. It has no overriding vision. Larry just isn&amp;#x27;t the leader Google needs to be, which would be fine, except that he clearly wants to be.&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: Xoogler.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>habitue</author><text>&amp;gt; as in, Google didn&amp;#x27;t buy you just for the team&lt;p&gt;2.1B isn&amp;#x27;t an acquihire. They want the customers, the team, and the manufacturing chain at the very least.</text></comment>