I’m no Zuck fan, but he’s done much more than keep them successful, they have grown a lot.
I remember everyone making fun of him for overpaying for IG and WA. Now both in hindsight look like amazing acquisitions.
Google bought Android before it had released products.
Google Maps was purchased, but was Where 2 actually a successful product prior to that?
But just wanted to correct for the historical record:
> Where 2 had a successful product, it just wasn't web based (nor do I think free), so didn't have anywhere near the distribution that Google enabled once the team ported it to run in a browser.
Where 2 did not have a product, successful or not. They were an unreleased demo looking for investors and luckily got into a room with Larry Page of 2004.
Meta has not shown the second part.
You said
> buying a successful business and keeping it successful for over a decade.
Meta bought already successful companies.
Google has purchased successful businesses, but they also purchased companies that weren't and managed to get them into massive money makers.