> To be clear, these things happened together, one doesn't exist without the other.
Buying 14.5% of a company does not come with an automatic collaboration agreement nor would a collaboration agreement come with 14.5% of a company's stock unless there is specific terms for that in some contract which establishes both. And there very well may have been - but both a collaboration agreement and 14.5% ownership can exists without such a contract.
> I'm still not clear on how GSK's purchase of 14.5% of 23andMe along with the exclusive agreement that came with it is the same as buying a single share of Amazon stock.
The argument that was made and that I was responding to was that GSK is 23andMe's parent firm and therefore not legally a 3rd party ... and I'm not sure how I much clearer I can say a shareholder is a shareholder.
If you want to argue that the exclusive collaboration agreement (which is not the same thing as 14.5% ownership) somehow defeats 23andMe's privacy policy then please, argue for it. Maybe it does - but you have not done anything more than allude to it doing so.
> You would need to spend about $44 billion to own 5%, or 24.8 million shares, of Amazon.
And spending that much will not entitle me to an exclusive collaboration agreement with Amazon nor will it make me somehow not a 3rd party of Amazon and therefore allow Amazon to give me all their client data without violating any privacy policies as the person I was responding to claimed.
> Without knowing who owns the other 85.5% of 23andMe (or visibility into their board and voting structure), we have no idea who controls the company.
We don't - but board members and owners are not the same as parent companies and I don't see how that somehow defeats their privacy policy either but if you think it can please clarify.