> Is there any large acquisition that succeeded in the last 10 years?
Yes, many. Think of the Lenovo-IBM deal -- massive success. The Facebook-Whatsapp deal is 2.5x bigger than this acquisition, we'll see how that works out (financially).
Google-Youtube is a big one that can be considered as a big success as well. Ebay-Paypal. FB-Instagram.
It does seem less likely for an acquisition of a large company to be successful than a small one.
The last three you mentioned are all tiny companies acquired for huge amounts of money.
YouTube had something like 60 people at acquisition -- definitely under 100. Instgram had under 20 I believe. Not sure about Paypal but I'm sure it was dwarfed by Ebay.
There is something to that. I think a smaller number of people can be integrated into a larger one, but when two massive companies like Microsoft and Nokia come together, there is bound to be friction.
Not sure what happened with Google and Motorola, but the companies were I think wisely kept separate, whereas it sounds like Nadella wants more "integration synergies".
I don't think madengr is saying that the thinkpad line is not successful. Rather, I bet he means that the modern thinkpads do not fit in with the "thinkpad spirit".
New thinkpads are just like every other manufacturer's laptops, even the X line.
Many of your examples are super-valued acquisitions, paid mostly with stock funny-money, and that employ a few hundred employees at best, which makes them irrelevant to the case here, where Microsoft got 30,000 employees from Nokia.
Yes, many. Think of the Lenovo-IBM deal -- massive success. The Facebook-Whatsapp deal is 2.5x bigger than this acquisition, we'll see how that works out (financially). Google-Youtube is a big one that can be considered as a big success as well. Ebay-Paypal. FB-Instagram.