One thing to keep in mind - all companies at this size have a corp dev function. Over the past decade, they've likely spoken to several hundred companies and patrick has probably personally spoken to over 100 about an acquisition and looked at some of their data. Anyone who looks seriously at 100 potential acquisitions, while trying to run a company, will drop the ball somewhere on maybe 10 and screw a few up kinda badly. It happens even if you have good intent and try to do the right thing. A number of people on the team will be working on the deal and interacting with the target founders/execs etc and things slip. It happens everywhere, it's a messy process.
Many/most VCs have a policy of not funding competitors. If I had an investor fund a competitor I'd be wary - are they going to share private data? I doubt anyone ever sat on the board of both pepsi and coke simultaneously etc.I get that not all investors are on the board - but they will all get information that isn't in the public domain.