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Comment by throwawayfigs | Hacker News Reader

"I am thrilled to announce that the Fig team will be joining Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Amazon has acquired Fig's technology! "

That's possibly the most inefficient way of saying "AWS bought Fig" but I guess it makes some people happier to frame it that way

In any event, I'll pass on "the CLI with a subscription that sends telemetry".

Paying hard earned dollars every month for a terminal is something so out of the realm of the possible for me I'm honestly baffled to see this has any customers...

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We usually change such titles to something like "$Acquirer aquires $Acquiree" and I've done that above now.

That wording implies an asset sale which is for anyone involved in or doing business with Fig a big difference. In that case existing ownership and obligations stay with the original entity (probably something like Fig Inc, Delaware corp), the whole team gets hired on at Amazon, Amazon buys the tech they want for some payment the Fig board signs off on, and then someone goes in to clean up and wind down Fig Inc. It's common when big companies buy much smaller companies because doing a full purchase can be a lot more complicated.

... and ther's a big difference in taxation.

100% I would imagine there are big differences on both sides, and possibly some ways to exempt some of the payment for assets against the cost of building them. People don't usually write much about this level of detail but it would be interesting to see.

> That's possibly the most inefficient way of saying "AWS bought Fig" but I guess it makes some people happier to frame it that way

Often that kind of language is employed when the actual transaction was structured as an asset sale coupled with en-masse hiring of the team, rather than a true acquisition of the company as a complete entity, which is not an unusual scenario when a company is in distress.

This seem like perfect replacement of Amazon's cloud shell thing

If the arrangement involved both a tech purchase and a contractual obligation for employees to stay with AWS for a set period, simply saying "Fig was acquired" wouldn't be accurate. Given that Amazon is a publicly traded company, making such misleading statements is a no-go.

Amazon buying Fig doesn't imply the team joins AWS.

when a company buys another company it kinda does the opposite would be the outlier

Amazon isn't the same thing as AWS. Amazon might have bought Fig and kept the team separate, or they might've kept the tech and shortly after let the team go.

It's much more common for the acquired company to continue as an entity in its own right with only the board changing in the short term, and often continuing as a brand within the acquirer's business in the long term. Integrating a existing team into a company is hard. That said, Amazon has a lot of experience doing exactly that. I think they'll be fine.

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