Re:Google killed a small smart glass maker after acquiring it
by JumpCrisscross on Sunday August 02, 2020 @01:20PM
(#24029987)
> What would have actually been unethical is waiting for North to run out of money and then try to hire their people at lower salaries
Why? It would have been riskier. With aqui-hire they get everyone and someone else could scoop them. But at the end of the day the North team failed to make a product that sold.
Re:Google killed a small smart glass maker after acquiring it
by carlosdp on Sunday August 02, 2020 @01:29PM
(#24030034)
I didn't say it would be a good business decision =P
Re:Google killed a small smart glass maker after acquiring it
by Nasrudith on Sunday August 02, 2020 @02:19PM
(#24030370)
Personally I don't see a lack of ethics - the people aren't owned by the company. They have no obligation to the shareholders. Now any IP the shareholders do own and they would have an obligation towads if they want to use it as an IP holder in the system.
(Hypothetical Alpha Centuarians observing and pirating the tech would have no ethical issues at all, there is no social contract, they aren't even accessible and couldn't pay even if they wanted to being lightyears away but that is a silly tangent.)
How is buying a company that clearly was not doing well financially (acquisition price at $150m, ~$200m raised with the last $40m being a debt financing, so it is a bail out), in what is clearly messaged as an acqui-hire for talent, in any way comparable to Amazon using its investment arm to acquire confidential information and replicate company products?
Respectfully, the author doesn't seem to understand what's actually going on here, this seems like a standard acqui-hire for future work on a smart glass product within Google. I highly doubt North didn't know they were going to be discontinuing the Focus before the acquisition closed.
What would have actually been unethical is waiting for North to run out of money and then try to hire their people at lower salaries or something.