Do Acquisitions Always Kill Products? (blog.eladgil.com)

Most acquired products aren't dead if you use an specific definition of "alive": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_theseus

This is an interesting article and I like the author's characterizations of acquisitions, but I cannot imagine a worse way to present that data than this. Including a large spreadsheet via a tiny viewing portal in a narrow-format blog post.

I'm curious if there is a reason for including it this way as I don't see anything in the SS that could not presented in a simple list, like this:

  Acqui-hire
  Soft landing with small signing bonuses for the team. Usually the investors 
    get nothing and the common stock may more or less get wiped.
  Product survival: 0%
  % of Tech Acquisitions: 20%
  Founder retention after 2 years: Mixed, depending on how well the team integration 
    goes, and whether the founders are given real roles or sidelined. If founders 
    are exhausted they may enjoy the slower pace of a larger company.
  Examples: Most people don't want their acqui-hire to be characterized as such

To view the spreadsheet full screen

Right click - this frame - show only this frame.

Or just go to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AoNag2KcCMGvdGR...

The embedded Google Spreadsheet is proof that not all products are killed by acquisitions: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/its-nice-to-share.htm...