20
votes
Stack Overflow has been acquired by Prosus for $1.8 billion
Link information
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- Title
- Prosus's Acquisition of Stack Overflow: Our Exciting Next Chapter - Stack Overflow Blog
- Authors
- Prashanth Chandrasekar, Stack Overflow Announcements, Teresa Dietrich
- Published
- Jun 2 2021
- Word count
- 522 words
This doesn't give me warm feelings. I used to love StackOverflow. I contributed regularly and have something like 23,000 rep. But shortly after Joel left, they started slandering their mods, and I just quit posting or visiting on any regular basis. I still go to get the occasional answer, but I rarely log in or contribute anymore. This will probably make me less likely to do so. (And now I have to worry about whether the new owner is going to sell all of our email addresses so we can be spammed on top of it.) Am I overreacting? Anyone see this as a good thing?
I don’t see this as a particularly good or bad thing. Prosus is best known for having an early successful bet on Tencent but otherwise have not done much.
It wasn’t an LBO or anything either. I feel like the modal outcome is that very little changes for better or for worse.
StackOverflow is a tremendously useful resource, it's chock full of knowledge and wisdom. Like everybody else in tech I find myself scouring answers on there several times a day in the normal course of my work.
But I don't think there's anything particularly unique to SO that can't be replicated in other places. If it gets rendered utterly useless by acquisitions, abuse, and bad leadership... well, I'm sure there are dozens of worthy successors to the throne just waiting for their moment.
I’m not as sure, maybe because I’m not aware of them today?
Besides, as you noted: is the wealth of quality answers that give SO it’s value, and that’s not an easy thing to spin up.
If the “how to put a legend outside of a plot” answer for MPL ever went away, I would cry :p