NYU professor calls Tumblr the worst acquisition of the decade

The worst acquisition of the decade was arguably Nest Labs, bought for $3,200,000,000 in January 2014; rather than Tumblr, bought for $1,100,000,000 in June 2013.

Both acquisitions failed to meet the expectations of their new owners. In the case of Tumblr, Yahoo bought it for its community in an attempt to gain/regain relevance with the 16-25 demographic. In the case of Nest, Google wanted a piece of the 'connected home' pie.

Tumblr is a community and it may disappear over time as alternatives emerge; it's a nature of the game. Meanwhile, Nest replaces hardware in your house that used to work fine with cloud-connected versions that have issues when you lose connectivity.