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Vinay Hegde
Vinay Hegde

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Acquisitions - [May 2020]

I'm sure most of you might be already aware by now, but I recently read about a few articles on investments/mergers/partnerships across the technology world.

  1. Facebook invests $5.7B in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms

  2. Facebook to Acquire Giphy in a $400 million deal

  3. Intel is buying urban mobility platform Moovit in a $900M deal

  4. Intel also investing $132 million in 11 startups

This is now becoming a routine trend but it'd be noteworthy to observe how these acquisitions pan out in a world that has been shaken to its very foundations. To understand more about this, I have the following questions for the Dev.to community:


  • Which of these 2 sides would benefit from such acquisitions & why?
  • How is it sustainable in a post-Covid era full of drastic changes?

Top comments (9)

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leob profile image
leob • Edited

Yeah the purchase of Giphy by FB that sure came as a bit of a shock ... another one is the recent acquisition of Keybase by Zoom ... people with a love for small independent companies must be feeling the hurt these days.

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vinayhegde1990 profile image
Vinay Hegde

I agree, the takeover of Keybase by Zoom & Giphy by Facebook are classic examples of "big fish gobble up small ones".

As an end-user aware of developments like these, would you still continue using those products or look for alternatives?

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leob profile image
leob • Edited

I'll keep using it as long as it works and as long as they don't mess it up ... regarding Keybase, I was just an occasional user anyway, as for Giphy, well there are alternatives, but none of these apps are critical for me, as long as it works and they don't make it annoying to use I'll just keep using it.

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vinayhegde1990 profile image
Vinay Hegde

Unless they crash & burn like Wunderlist being acquired by Microsoft, this is valid reasoning as any

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projectescape profile image
Aniket

Are you going to convert this into a series?
Cause that'll be really great!

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vinayhegde1990 profile image
Vinay Hegde

Yes Aniket if I get a favorable response to this, I'd surely consider making a series.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

moovit

I wonder if we're inching ever closer to legit self-driving, and maybe we see some movement, consolidation in the space.

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vinayhegde1990 profile image
Vinay Hegde

while self-driving sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie & very much possible soon, wouldn't it completely shatter the ride-hailing industry (i.e: Uber, Lyft, Ola etc) by rendering all of their drivers unemployed?

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akshaymadhan_99 profile image
Akshay Madhan

super