Stack Overflow Acquired by Prosus
Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overflow is joining Prosus. Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now.
This is, in some ways, the best possible outcome. Stack Overflow stays independent. The company has plenty of cash on hand to expand and deliver more features and fix the old broken ones.
Prosus N.V. ("Prosus"), a global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world, announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Stack Overflow, a leading knowledge-sharing platform for the global community of developers and technologists, for approximately US$1.8 billion.
[…]
With expertise in scaling communities in high-growth markets globally, Prosus can help accelerate Stack Overflow’s growth ambitions, with a particular focus on reaching a wider international community, while also further scaling the company’s Teams product to position Stack Overflow at the center of product and technology development within major enterprises globally.
Previously:
Update (2021-06-04): Prashanth Chandrasekar (tweet):
Once this acquisition is complete, we will have more resources and support to grow our public platform and paid products, and we can accelerate our global impact tremendously. This might look like more rapid and robust international expansion, M&A opportunities, and deeper partnerships both on Stack Overflow and within Stack Overflow for Teams. Our intention is for our public platform to be an invaluable resource for developers and technologists everywhere and for our SaaS collaboration and knowledge management platform, Stack Overflow for Teams, to reach thousands more global enterprises, allowing them to accelerate product innovation and increase productivity by unlocking institutional knowledge.
Today’s sale of Stack Overflow, most importantly, lets Stack Overflow continue as an independent site -- and also mints 61 new millionaires.
any assurances that it’s “business as usual” are absolutely worthless, because the people making those assurances JUST ACCEPTED A CANVAS SACK WITH A DOLLAR SIGN ON IT IN EXCHANGE FOR ANY ABILITY THEY HAD TO MAKE THAT DECISION
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It's not like they haven't been making changes for years now that are either just useless or actively anti-user, not to mention the massive culture problems that they seem to not be at all interested in actually trying to fix. So I don't know that this really changes all that much, in that the site has already been on a long downward trajectory in terms of usefulness.
I'm sure that one of the ways in which this is the best possible outcome is that Spolsky now has f-u money.
