> 4 people that started a company and was "acquired" by google less than a year later. The idea that something like this should be blocked by competition regulators is frankly, totally insane.
At the time, google was a $30B company, 10x smaller than Microsoft. Where 2 Technologies was a 1 year old company with 4 people, with 0 documented sales or market share that I can find. The only evidence I can find of the company actually doing anything is a picture of a whiteboard. I'm not dinging the company, just saying that it was very, very early in its life.
Suggesting that competition regulators should have blocked this is basically suggesting that the government has veto power over almost any hiring decision by any of the top ~1000 companies by market cap.
> Suggesting that competition regulators should have blocked this is basically suggesting that the government has veto power over almost any hiring decision by any of the top ~1000 companies by market cap.
Ok. I am not suggesting that. I do assert it is not "totally insane".
And it is not the "hiring decisions". It is the merger decisions.
So if you enter the top ~1000 company territory, you loose a few freedoms. Is that so bad?
You're not denying freedom to just those ~1000 companies, you're also denying freedoms from everyone they might "acquire". And if your definition of "acquisition" is 4 dudes with a source control repo and no market/sales, then you've denied a lot of freedom to a lot of people, not just some big corporates we all love to hate.
I personally know of probably a dozen cases of a small team of <10 people getting hired into various companies that all would be scrutinized under this reasoning, and yeah, I think that's totally insane.
Why?
FOMO? Or another reason?