Ia that the case? AFAIK WhatsApp gained proper end to end encryption after being bought by Facebook and pushes for backups to Google (and maybe iCloud?) servers.
Wikipedia writes:
> WhatsApp was initially criticized for its lack of encryption, sending information as plaintext. Encryption was first added in May 2012. In 2016, WhatsApp was widely praised for the addition of end-to-end encryption
Long term it ended up pretty good, with Koum and Acton taking their acquisition money bags and pouring them into FOSS projects like FreeBSD and the Signal Foundation. Maybe malgorithms will do the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_WhatsApp
> pushes for backups to Google (and maybe iCloud?) servers.
Yeah, I was incorrect. They backup to Google servers. Not sure if that's better or worse. :)
Since then, FB has offered willingness to cooperate with foreign governments to break encryption. I guess we will see what happens with the EARN IT Act.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-28/facebook-...
RHL might be a bad example too, since Fedora is still pretty prominent, even if not often used compared to debian or debian-based distros these days.
I can't think of a single instance where acquisition of a smaller company like this resulted in an improved version of the original product. How many of us are running RHL? Skype is now close to Microsoft spyware that's impossible to remove from a Windows installation. Facebook purchasing Whatsapp, another service that formerly stressed encryption, resulted in things like plaintext backups of your texts on Facebook servers being aggressively promoted as soon as you loaded the app.
It's pretty much always cheaper to gut the original product, ignore the problems with your software, and enjoy the enhanced price of your shares while effectively spending no more money than you had for the original acquisition. As far as I can tell, Keybase has never had a business model or constant source of revenue.