If your goal is to be acquired by Google, writing the app in Python won't hurt your chances as there is more resident knowledge of it (for front-end) than RoR in-house. This also has implications on the integration of the app with their product suite. On the flip side, depending on how complicated your app is, there is also a chance a Google engineer could reverse engineer and integrate it in their sleep (or 20% time) -- especially at the sensitive phase of growing the product.

Perhaps some alternate questions: Which will get you to create your app as close to your initial version 0.1 in the least amount of time so you can test your assumptions about the market?

Which community will you learn the most from and is the next logical step from where you are now as a developer?

Which will reinforce core computing concepts with a decent framework to resist the temptation to give up out of sheer frustration?

It probably can. I bet if you're using Python (well) the Google tech guy that reviews your tech and team is going to give a much more favorable review than if you were using PHP. So it probably can help a lot in talent acquisitions at least.

If you're a really successful company and the acquirer really wants to buy you it probably doesn't matter at all.

I certainly wouldn't choose a language based on acquisition hopes myself.

Use whichever you're most productive with. Worry about making a great product.

> Does the choice affect acquisition chances?

Yes, but not the way you think.

If you don't ship something that gets users, you won't be acquired.