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Comment by nthitz | Hacker News Reader

When Google acquires a company, the company usually is open about it "Yay we were acquired by Google". When Apple acquires they announce they are shutting down. Interesting difference.

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Interestingly, Google usually shuts down the acquired companies anyway...

There are plenty of counter examples to your claim: YouTube, Google Maps, Picasa, various companies focused on voice recognition and Google Glass, etc...

Android, Google Analytics, etc etc etc

I’m not sure whether those are good examples. Android Inc wasn’t much of a company when they were bought by Google and the initial Google Analytics offering was very different from the service they bought (Urchin). Meanwhile, Google has killed over a hundred services in the last couple of years.

Apple has bought several companies that had shipping products and just like Google, Apple didn’t cancel those. Examples are FileMaker, Logic, and Final Cut Pro. After it bought PowerSchools, Shake and Astarte, it kept their products on for many years. Furthermore, it is often said that Apple’s acquisition of NeXT was a reverse takeover.

I can assure you any company anyone acquires will look very different 5 years from acquisition if its still alive.

Also, any startup not acquired should look very different 5 years from conception.

Google Glass? As far as I know, Google Glass is originally a Google X project ... they did not acquire a company if I know correctly. They hired some people from the wearable computing field.

"The company will not be shut down post-acquisition, though it did recently shut down its app."

Check out their website, sure looks like they're shutting down. http://cueup.com

I think the OP was referring to "shutting down" in the sense of stopping development on their consumer-facing app. The article likely meant that they weren't "shutting down" in the sense that the employees will still be working together in more-or-less the same organizational structure as pre-acquisition.

Apple is a better run and more profitable company than Google. Even though the optics may not look great to some Open Source nutjobs all in all Apple seem to absorb their acquisitions effectively.

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