Government could buy it out and sell shares back to the public, sort of like an IPO, but with some conditions attached, so that it ensures the company remains independent for a specified number of years post IPO.

How would the price be determined?

Maybe that model doesn't work, but I wish there was some government oversight preventing huge companies from buying out small competitors just to shut them down entirely. Like Apple did with Dark Sky, Microsoft did with Wunderlist, and Twitter did with Vine. It's really unfortunate that we can't have much small tech.

It seems like that wouldn’t solve the problem, because it would take away some of the incentive to create small tech in the first place!

Dark Sky got shut down? It works for me, or do you mean something different?

Android app was pulled. API service stopped accepting new applicants. API is scheduled to shut down. (iOS app continues to be updated, but API/functionality maybe rolled into iOS in a future version.)