Comment by aprilthird2021 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aprilthird2021 | Hacker News Reader

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> Google's deal with Windsurf is structured that way because they likely could not directly acquire, or were not confident that it would have gotten past the antitrust. A signal for that is such deal increased in last few years after FTC refused to allow any deal over $100M or so.

Any proof of this? It's quite speculative. Also FTC scrutiny is not escaped if you only acquire a percentage of a company to avoid antitrust scrutiny (as you claim Meta did, speaking of which...)

> Meta would have acquired scale ai in older times

According to reporting, Meta was solely interested in Wang and his inner circle, and did not want to acquire a significant stake in the company. Wang negotiated them UP. It's not as if they wanted to buy the whole thing at its previous valuation, let alone a higher valuation. (source: https://archive.is/ZPoNJ)

This is speculated as the reason as blockbuster acquihires have risen:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-07-17/meta-g...

https://natlawreview.com/article/rise-acquihiring-post-layof...

https://bowoftheseus.substack.com/p/update-the-gut-and-licen...

Meta's case is interesting. In the past, for what they want, I still feel they would have just acquired the company and be done with it. Now, they explored more paths, and ended up negotiating for Scale AI's stake.

Did you read the articles you linked? Here's one except:

> The data shows that after four years of being frozen out of the acquihire market by former FTC chair Lina Khan, big tech companies are back with a vengeance

That (and the accompanying chart showing total acquihires over years) says acquihires existed before regulatory scrutiny, stopped while that scrutiny ramped up, and came back when the scrutiny went away. Not what you suggested, that it's a novel tool used to avoid scrutiny.

I appreciate how you feel, but it's based on ultimately, just a feeling, not any statistics (the stats in your linked articles paint another picture entirely about acquihires). Also, there is the basic fact that FTC scrutiny cannot be avoided by minority ownership or acquihiring alone. They have the right and ability to investigate even minority purchases of stake in a company. This is a good case study of that: https://www.faegredrinker.com/en/insights/publications/2018/...

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