A Google Blunder- the Sad Story of Urchin

Anenome writes "Google has a track record of buying startups and integrating them into its portfolio. But sometimes those acquisitions go terribly wrong, as Ars Technica argues has been the case with Google's 2005 purchase of web-analytics firm Urchin Software Corp. 'In the wake of Google's purchase of the company, inquiring customers (including Ars Technica) were told that support and updates would continue. Companies that had purchased support contracts were expecting version 6 any day, including Ars. What really happened is this: Google focused its attention on Google Analytics, put all updates to Urchin's other products on the back burner, and rolled out a skeleton support team. Everyone who forked over for upgrades via a support contract never got them, even though things weren't supposed to have changed. The support experience has been awful. Since the acquisition, we have had two major issues with Urchin, and neither issue was solved by Google's support team. In fact, with one issue, we were helped up until the point it got difficult, and then the help vanished. The support team literally just stopped responding.'"

Comments

Re:I blame Microsoft

[BlowHole666]

It is googles' own greed. They purchased this company in competition with M$ but it is Googles fuck up not M$. So by your Bad Analogy if Mandravia goes under it is some how M$ fault? Not that fact that Mandrake got bought out and the parent company fucked up? I think you need to pull your head out of the sand (or your ass) and realize that not everything is Microsofts fault.

Re:Two sides to every story

[pintpusher]

Are the people who made those promises to you still in charge of the product? In theory this is irrelevant. The other side of the "corporate" coin -- that is, the side that doesn't involved shielding everyone involved from being liable for being jerks -- is that it, the corporation, persists beyond the tenure of its employees, officers, etc. Promises made by people on behalf of the corporation (or other business structure) are still binding on that corporation after those people leave. At least that's the theory. Of course now-a-days corps can do whatever they "want" with little or no repercussion.

What it really shows

[porkThreeWays]

Is that choosing commercial or proprietary software based on the notion you get better support is a myth. I can't even tell you how many PHB's I know that are scared to do anything without a support contract. The moral of the story: Your people should be able to solve 99.9% of all software problems on their own and rely on support as little as possible. Most support contracts I've dealt with have been mostly useless and we've generally had to solve all the hard problems in house. I've pretty much lost faith in support contracts meaning anything other than "a company to sue when things go wrong". But suing a company doesn't bring back lost customers and it doesn't bring back a company that doesn't exist anymore. Blaming others is a great cop out, but I'd never base a business around the blame game.