Google was in the running to acquire GitHub, according to head of its cloud arm | Hacker News Reader

Google was in the running to acquire GitHub, according to head of its cloud arm

bloomberg.com

65 pointsantimora47 comments

Sensationalist title

> “I wouldn’t have minded buying them, but it’s OK,” Greene said at a Fortune Magazine event in San Francisco on Wednesday.

The whole article is really weird. It has the quote about it being "OK" that MS bought Github, followed by a non-sequitur article about Google employees protesting military contracts.

I don't see a connection between the two but I suppose the author is implying that Google didn't buy Github because it was distracted with its own internal turmoil around the protests?

I agree, this is a very weird article with very little information, and the headline oversells it.

Perhaps the only story here is that Google would have (or may have) bid on Github as well as Microsoft. But that isn't more than a headline so the the editor said "It needs to be 500 words or it isn't a story" and the reporter just added in bits until they hit the word threshold.

If that's the implication it's pretty much just crazy talk. I mean, is the suggestion the company actually stopped all work for a period of months? Obviously not, so it seems like a huge non-sequitur.

You can pretty much expect clickbait bordering on fake news from Bloomberg these days. There has been a pattern of it.

Google buying them would have been amazing, for about 2 years until Google closed them for not having enough users or they added ads to everything.

Sting! Just like code.Google.Com

It's hard to believe now, but it wasn't a very long time ago that Google was doing some very, very strange things trying to push Google+ down everyone's throats, especially on YouTube. I really have no idea of what they would use GitHub for. With MS it's more or less clear: they will put ads of Azure, Visual Studio and other dev-related products on GitHub; with time, they'll also use their front page to announce their dev conferences and so on. Eventually, as Nat said, their aim is to "earn the trust" of open source devs, so that they perceive MS in a positive way (they already succeeded partially, as many comments on HN demonstrate). With Google, I have no idea what would happen. It could be anything, really.

I'm surprised Amazon wasn't in the running, do they have their own VCS/Git yet?

VSTS has a git clone, so it's a little weird them buying github, I can see it for the community/open source promotions, etc... Amazon could've probably integrated it well with AWS.

Honestly, this gave me a push to look at other options, and I'm liking gitlab more and more for the way it's organized, it's integration w/ devops like kubernetes (don't use yet, but someday I might lol), and I really like the way you can create groups, and organize projects under different groups.

The free plan also has tons of bells and whistles, for a solo dev.

Microsoft is a heavy user of git internally (e.g. Windows is now developed in a git repo) and though they do also have their own source control as part of VSTS they've also had first class support for git there for a while too so it isn't really that surprising.

Amazon has an internal git which is pretty heavily modified for use at their scale. It combines Git and package/version control into one application that works pretty well.

FB could've been another buyer shudders, I'm surprised they haven't started moving into AWS/Cloud territory, they have a huge ecosystem around React/React Native, they have a huge place to advertise their cloud products if they launched them.

> I'm surprised Amazon wasn't in the running, do they have their own VCS/Git yet?

Amazon Code Commit, but you have to sign up for it to try it. Apparently it's a great tool if you want to build AMI's with it, because the AMI's can be built securely and completely inside AWS.

I am personally grateful to Microsoft for 1) saving github, because I love github 2) reducing the amount of private information that will go into Google database, because I fear Google.

Years ago, Google was about do no evil and Microsoft was the evil empire. It's funny how we've gone full 180.

Including "This web site works best on ...".

And google pestering me to install Chrome whenever I make the mistake of visiting google.com with Edge.

Sorry, but Edge is faster and more power efficient on my Windows Tablet. So please stop asking.

Actually, no. In fact, please keep asking google. It reminds me to fix my muscle memory and type duckduckgo.com when I'm not relying on the default search engine.

ddg.gg is shorter and redirects to the duckduckgo.com website.

Switch to DDG as your default, and you can search using Google semi-anonymously in even fewer keystrokes by just typing "g! <search query here>" (or just using DDG as-is).

!g, you mean.

Bangs are so nice. They're my primary method for searching various sites. I've actually never really looked at a list of them, they just feel intuitive and often exist for sites I want to look at. There are the big ones like !w for wikipedia, but there's also !aw for archwiki, !mal for myanimelist, and even !naruto for narutopedia. I've even used them to get around site issues. I recently had an issue with my browser where I couldn't search on MAL, but searching via bangs worked, so I just kept doing that.

And you think trusting MS is a better idea?

It may alleviate some cynicism to look at this as less a matter of implicit 'trust' and more a matter of 'best possible outcome'. At least IMO. As it is, Microsoft has been doing some pretty good, developer-centric work and I for one appreciate that. That isn't to say Google isn't, but again: best possible outcome?

Like someone else brought up: I feel more comfortable with a product being owned by Microsoft and maintained for longer than 18 months before the devs get bored with and put it in front of a firing squad so they can go create yet another messaging platform (only to later kill that too)

I don't feel comfortable with MS owning it at all. I wouldn't feel comfortable with Google owning it either really, but MS is IMHO worse, especially if you consider issues relevant to FOSS (which should be important for users of Github obviously).

Just see who was on what side in the dispute about copyrightability of APIs.

of course ! Who can afford to remember more than the last 3 minutes ?

It's funny, I find this attitude a lot with guys over 35.

A quick example: I was at a conference last year in a group. Two people mentioned they worked for google.

I mentioned an anecdote - how I had migrated parts of a research project from google maps to bing maps, because of a much better pricing for the simple things we needed (yet in a large volume, millions of API requests).

They asked why, and I explained that besides the money saved, like a few friends, I tried to favor any credible alternative to google.

They laughed it out with some arrogance :-)

It's funny how the google of now reminds me of the Microsoft of the 1990s - a scary company I'd rather have nothing to do with.

One's an advertising company and the other is a software company. One is not seen as being reliable and ruthless in shutting down companies to harvest talent, whereas the other has a record of long-term support for its own products and appears to be putting forth a good faith effort in supporting FOSS.

I choose the latter of two evils, which is Microsoft. MS isn't stupid, and they know that futzing with Github would mean generations of developers never trusting them with anything again. That's not to say that Microsoft won't do the wrong thing, but a lot of people see them as less likely to do the wrong thing than Google, and I happen to agree with them.

EDIT: My first statement is oversimplistic. What I meant by that is Google is mostly interested in advertising and selling data, but Microsoft's business isn't build around advertising(i.e. Bing Ads doesn't appear to be critical to Microsoft's success). Granted, Microsoft is known for selling "data", but I don't see how much of that they would gain from GitHub.

MS have their own ad platform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Ads

Thanks for the correction! :) I wouldn't have known, but then again, I do block ads on my own computer. I've never knowingly seen Bing ads on other people's computers, though I must have seen them.

Looking up revenue pie charts suggests that the amount Microsoft makes from Bing ads is miniscule in contrast to Google and Adsense. In fact, it looks like Google would have serious trouble if Adsense became unprofitable, whereas Microsoft could probably walk away from Bing Ads.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-apple-and-google-whe... (note the date of this article is February 2, 2012)

> MS isn't stupid, and they know that futzing with Github would mean generations of developers never trusting them with anything again.

Have you forgotten about how Microsoft destroyed Nokia? MS bought Nokia in 2014, and then sold it in 2016 for pennies on the dollar for what it paid in 2014 [1] [2]. Meanwhile MS completely wiped out Nokia's brand and technology to push Windows Mobile down everyone's throat.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/18/nokia-phones-are-back-after-...

[2] 5 pennies on the dollar to be exact.

I'm not saying it never happens. Although Nokia doesn't surprise me because nobody has cared about Nokia for some time now. Microsoft was basically beating a dead horse. Yeah, they could have resurrected it, but Microsoft had less to lose by destroying Nokia than it does by destroying Github. (although this is really my gut talking without solid figures)

> Yeah, they could have resurrected it, but Microsoft had less to lose by destroying Nokia than it does by destroying Github.

I'm not sure that's true, since MS has already lost the developer space. Nokia was a play for revenue because MS's investment in Windows phone was in the billions already when MS bought Nokia, and that was back when people still actually liked Windows Phone.

It's possible that MS could have built a github clone, and that wouldn't have cost them $7.5B to build, but what MS really bought here is the brand, and the good will that comes with it. If github goes down the tubes, it will be like hotmail / nokia... etc.

> MS has already lost the developer space

What? There are many companies of 10 thousand employees and more that are built from the ground up on Microsoft developer products and services.

Personally, I loved Windows Mobile. I have a Lumia in my pocket right now. And before that, I had a 900.

Microsoft tried and failed to bring a credible 3rd alternative against Android/iOS duopoly. Could they have done differently? Yes. With the current leadership, I think they may have not hesitated to push meego, if only as a 4th alternative. But Windows Mobile was great software, Nokia had great hardware, and they still failed, so I'm not sure it would have changed much. (I know my opinion will is not popular here, but I just don't believe purchasing Nokia for billions just to kill one linux platform passes Occam's Razor)

I still hope Microsoft or someone else tries again to launch a 3rd platform, because I don't exactly feel comfortable with duopolies or monopolies.

Nokia's partnership with Microsoft for Windows Phone began 2 years before Microsoft bought them. If Windows Mobile is what destroyed Nokia, then Nokia had an active hand in that. Nokia isn't a victim, they chose their path.

In this particular case, yeah. It's not that I have zero concerns about Microsoft mining personal data. I just have even more concerns regarding Google. Google is, to an approximation, a personal data mining corporation. The rest is just ways of getting people to share that data.

As opposed to all that private information going into Microsoft's databases? Microsoft has similarly aggressive data mining projects and is always looking for large sets with which to train AI.

Wake me up when advertising is responsible for over 50% of Microsoft profits.

The only Microsoft AI product my data can improve is Cortana, which I'm happy to do.

Not that either is great, but I definitely still think Microsoft is more evil. At least Google contributes to Coreboot and puts it on all their Chromebooks.

they probably just would’ve made it another chat client

This gives some perspective. Google buying GitHub would’ve been a tragedy. In fact, I can’t think of a single megacorporation I’d rather have running GitHub than Microsoft in 2018.

Still a shame they couldn’t stay independent though.

Google would have stepped on Octocat's neck and blown its pretty little head off.

Microsoft will either low-key torture it to death or leave it alone. Who's to say?

The new model at Microsoft is to run these big acquisitions as separate companies with a lot of autonomy. I suspect Github will do very well from here.

Oh, you mean like

1) Skype: https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/17/12951996/skype-london-off...

2) Nokia: cruelly killed-off for no particular reason.

Wow, who writes that crap? Grammatical errors left and right. Let me guess, it's either a bot our a product of foreign outsourcing.

> Wow, who writes that crap?

Have you read your own comment?

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