> When a company uses acquisition as a strategy to develop features, it is stagnating. At least it's past it's peak.
I feel like you might just be ignoring tons of acquisitions... back in 2004, Goole went on a spree and acquired a bunch of companies. I happen to know the founders of what later became Google Photos, but I think Google Maps was even more important... was it already past its peak?
Microsoft acquired Powerpoint in 1987. I don't think they peaked until long after that, but, hell: Microsoft acquired DOS in 1981, and there is no way in hell they had peaked before that point, lol.
I mean, you comment even talks about Siri... do you know that Apple bought that one in 2010? (They also bought the Shortcuts feature, acquiring a company called Workflow... which happens to be made by the same team as Sky ;P. But, I totally appreciate that 2017 might be considered after Apple "peaked", though I imagine most people would disagree, as Apple Silicon has been a massive market disruption... though, arguably, they bought PA Semi to pull off that project, lol.)
I think Siri is a bad example, apple was around long before 2010. But you have a good point and I mostly concede. The only counterargument I have is that I don't think the culture of acquisition was the same pre '08 (just spitballing there)? Or maybe I'm just unaware. But these days I hear about companies acquired by capital-heavy bigcorps and just fizzle out, the company acquiring them being profitable but stagnant in terms of new innovations.
Look at Apple, their software game is mediocre now because of that culture, but they're at the top of their hardware game because instead of outsourcing and acquiring, they built in-house.
Others said this is an acquihire, and that might be the case, but are the new hires going to easily follow OpenAI's vision or try to interpret things according to what they're used to? If OpenAI is trying to do something major in the Apple world, why are they not building in-house? They can attract the talent and have the capital and the undertaking does not seem relatively big. OpenAI is also over-hyped, so it needs to show that it can churn out value on its own much more than Google in '04 or Microsoft in '81.
I'll conclude with this: so long as this is a tactical decision, you/others are 100% and I'm wrong. But if it is a strategic decision, then I'm bearish on the count of their strategy being flawed and timed poorly.
> Look at Apple, their software game is mediocre now because of that culture, but they're at the top of their hardware game because instead of outsourcing and acquiring, they built in-house.
Apple acquired Touch ID (AuthenTec) in 2012 and Face ID (PrimeSense) in 2013. They acquired most of the depth mapping tech for Portrait Mode (LinX Imaging) in 2015. They purchased a ton of companies on the road to making their chips, including PA Semi, Intrinsity, and Dialog Semiconductor. It seems like they acquired their flash memory controller (Anobit Technologies) in 2011?
I totally agree that Apple improves the stuff in house--or even kind of throws it away and starts over to achieve better verticality--after integrating the teams, but so do all of these companies if they aren't making some grave mistake (as was seemingly the case with pretty much everything that Twitter bought, lol). Like, AFAIK, it isn't actually that rare that companies successfully pull that off? WhatsApp didn't even have end-to-end encryption before Facebook bought them!
> Others said this is an acquihire, and that might be the case, but are the new hires going to easily follow OpenAI's vision or try to interpret things according to what they're used to?
FWIW, I honestly don't know how this is being characterized on either side, but a lot of times this is just how people are hired: the way you build something "in house" by "attracting the talent" (from your next paragraph) is to give them the moral equivalent of a big signing bonus from the "capital" you mention they have by acquiring a company someone started that is effectively the resume of not just one person but an entire team of people who are able to become a turn-key department.
This strategy has the fascinating benefit that often the money that is then paid for the company and earned by the various players (such as the founders) gets taxed at a long term capital gains rate rather than as income (as we'd expect a normal signing bonus), and if the turnaround is short enough and a lot of the original money came from angel investors or friends and family rather than venture capital, you don't need all that much of a multiple to make it worth everyone's involvement.
I'll only say that touch id and faceid isn't what comes to mind when I think about apple doing great in terms of hardware (I loathe those features myself, so I'm biased). When people say apple has better build quality, the m-series chips and now the wireless chips, that's what I meant.
I feel like you might just be ignoring tons of acquisitions... back in 2004, Goole went on a spree and acquired a bunch of companies. I happen to know the founders of what later became Google Photos, but I think Google Maps was even more important... was it already past its peak?
Microsoft acquired Powerpoint in 1987. I don't think they peaked until long after that, but, hell: Microsoft acquired DOS in 1981, and there is no way in hell they had peaked before that point, lol.
I mean, you comment even talks about Siri... do you know that Apple bought that one in 2010? (They also bought the Shortcuts feature, acquiring a company called Workflow... which happens to be made by the same team as Sky ;P. But, I totally appreciate that 2017 might be considered after Apple "peaked", though I imagine most people would disagree, as Apple Silicon has been a massive market disruption... though, arguably, they bought PA Semi to pull off that project, lol.)
This is just how companies work.