The part about the Icebergs acquisition is particularly depressing. We are losing the trust of consumers by constantly shutting down products. It's one thing if those products are failures, but these acquisitions demonstrate they are useful, successful products (perhaps just with a small to medium-sized potential market).
People always talk about this and that policy stifling innovation. This practice of shutting down products after a building a user base is just as bad. Consumers (I know I feel this way) are simply not going to trust products that aren't from the big guys. That hurts the small guys. "Early adopters" don't solve everything.
> It's one thing if those products are failures, but these acquisitions demonstrate they are useful, successful products (perhaps just with a small to medium-sized potential market)
Do they really, though? There's no shortage of acquisitions that are driven by motivations other than "these people built something useful." Such as:
"We want to hire these people whose startup is a clear failure, but they won't bite unless we give them a way to save face"
"Our VCs funded these people too, and we want to give them something resembling an exit on their terrible investment in order to keep them happy"
"Our CEO needs to demonstrate to Wall Street that he is a Dynamic Leader, which he does by buying startups more or less at random"
The part about the Icebergs acquisition is particularly depressing. We are losing the trust of consumers by constantly shutting down products. It's one thing if those products are failures, but these acquisitions demonstrate they are useful, successful products (perhaps just with a small to medium-sized potential market).
People always talk about this and that policy stifling innovation. This practice of shutting down products after a building a user base is just as bad. Consumers (I know I feel this way) are simply not going to trust products that aren't from the big guys. That hurts the small guys. "Early adopters" don't solve everything.