On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 11:55:40AM -0500, John Hasler wrote:
Michael Stone writes:...HP bought Compaq.Compaq bought HP and then renamed themselves HP. The name was all they really wanted, of course.
That's a strange way to position it, since HP gave Compaq shareholders HP shares (leading to 36% ownership by Compaq shareholders and 64% ownership by HP shareholders), HP's management was in charge of the resulting company, HP's employees got the lion's share of retention bonuses, and Compaq's (DEC's) legacy products were the ones that were quickly killed off. The entire deal was focused on the (dead-end) PC businesses, and the legacy architectures of both companies weren't given much attention. HP eventually spun off enterprise systems into its own company; maybe if they'd done that with both HPs and DECs assets back in 2002 (or if Compaq had left DEC alone) and Carly Fiorina had just kept the PC sales she was distracted by, the HP/DEC legacy lines could have done better. Or they might have still died--but they were certainly never going to succeed when owned by people who didn't care about them.