Here's another way to look at it: not only do they get their employees to spend 20% of their time working on their own cool stuff for Google, they have ex-employees spending 100% of their time working on their own cool stuff for Google. :)

Yeah, but for what price?

>> Build start-up -> Cash in on nepotism?

Calling it as nepotism is quite unfair, dont you think ? Both are quite awesome products. Even if these acquisitions might be made for the talent, it might be worth it for Goog.

I was not making a value judgment on these acquisitions.

However as Google is a publicly traded company, if I were a shareholder I would want to know if my money is being paid to friends of decision makers.

It would be interesting to see how many of Google's acquisitions have involved ex-Googlers?

I would also like to know about the quality/valuation diffrence between ex goog startups and non ex goog startups. May be ex googlers build better startups? a lot of ex paypalers made solid new companies. Had paypal acquired them I don't think we'd be criticizing them.

There's got to be a premium though for knowing if the founders of a company are going to fit in and be productive.

They've been doing it on Wall St. forever..... why not?

I thought the same thing.