&gt; will result in less competitionThe system working as intended.“Competition is for losers”
- Peter Thiel

Someone else will rise to compete.Then Google will buy them too.

&gt; In most cases an IPO isn&#x27;t worth it for founders because an IPO means you lose operational control.This is counterintuitive to me.If you’re acquired, you’re giving up ownership and you tend to lose operational control unless you have agreements in place that say otherwise.With an IPO it seems like you have a better chance to retain control: you can control the share allocations going into an IPO to give you solid voting power. While you’re accountable to a board of directors and theoretically accountable to stockholders, in reality management often runs the show, at least until the board runs out of patience with bad earnings.

&gt; Israeli VCs tend to be uninterested in IPOs in general - too much of an operational headache and it&#x27;s difficult to exit a position quickly.Interesting, why is this more true of Israeli VC&#x27;s as opposed to VC&#x27;s in other markets?

&gt; It&#x27;s a pity going public isn&#x27;t worth it anymore.Israeli VCs tend to be uninterested in IPOs in general - too much of an operational headache and it&#x27;s difficult to exit a position quickly.In most cases an IPO isn&#x27;t worth it for founders because an IPO means you lose operational control. It&#x27;s basically the &quot;Rich versus Kings&quot; dichotomy [0].Edit: can&#x27;t reply&gt; you can control the share allocations going into an IPO to give you solid voting powerInvestors do not like that - they want some degree of operational control in order to right the ship if needed.In the early 2010s, IPOs like Tesla and Facebook were on terms that gave outside investors little control on operations and that&#x27;s why Musk and even Zuckerberg to a certain extent can choose to reorient to a new boondoggle with little-to-no investor pushback.In 2026 if you want to IPO, it will be on the terms of JPMC, GS, etc who are underwriting the IPO.In a private company, it&#x27;s easier for an investor to offload or get bought out of their position if the founder wants to maintain operational control.&gt; While you’re accountable to a board of directors and theoretically accountable to stockholders, in reality management often runs the showIn publicly listed companies, it is magnitudes more difficult to build a board that is aligned with you at a personal level versus in a private company because both the board and strategic shareholders will act as checks against you.&gt; If you’re acquired, you’re giving up ownership and you tend to lose operational control unless you have agreements in place that say otherwiseAn acquisition happens when both the founders and investors want to exit, and has less operational overhead and due dilligence versus going thru the process of an IPO in the US.&gt; This is counterintuitive to meWell, that&#x27;s the reality. This is why Stripe, Databricks, and others have remained private for so long despite having hit IPO-level metrics years ago. If you&#x27;re already generating high 9 to low 10 figures a year in revenue, you can remain private indefinetly and as a founder you would be able to give yourself a compensation package comparable to a public company, but with much less oversight and stress.&gt; Interesting, why is this more true of Israeli VC&#x27;s as opposed to VC&#x27;s in other marketsSignificantly less capital.&quot;Big&quot; funds like YL Ventures, Cyberstarts, and JVP only have an AUM of $800M, $1.4B, and $1.9B respectively.And if you were going to IPO in the US anyhow, why would you even invest in an Israeli fund, which wouldn&#x27;t have enough people with experience for an IPO.And the handful of Israeli IPOs that happened like SentinelOne or CyberArk weren&#x27;t that successful.[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hbs.edu&#x2F;faculty&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;item.aspx?num=38550" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hbs.edu&#x2F;faculty&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;item.aspx?num=38550</a>

The lack of competition is at this point choice American politicians and the voters. They should be breaking up mega corporations or at least taxing them at really high rates.Instead, it looks like all the existing incumbents will just continue to rule over society. They have capital, monopolies, and the moats of distribution channels and contracts with their current customers. There is no fair competition - they’ll just replicate your clever product easily.

Congrats to to the Wiz team. Wiz is amazing. But, ugh, joining Google will result in less competition and all that entails. Not great for customers.It&#x27;s a pity going public isn&#x27;t worth it anymore.

This isn&#x27;t a new observation [0] but this means Google will now have two Wizes, since Wiz is also the name of their internal web framework [1].[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43399077">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43399077</a>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41092039">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41092039</a>

This is the announcement of the completion of an acquisition that began a year ago.

There already is an integration with SecOps: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wiz.io&#x2F;integrations&#x2F;google-security-operations" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wiz.io&#x2F;integrations&#x2F;google-security-operations</a> and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.cloud.google.com&#x2F;chronicle&#x2F;docs&#x2F;soar&#x2F;marketplace-integrations&#x2F;wiz" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.cloud.google.com&#x2F;chronicle&#x2F;docs&#x2F;soar&#x2F;marketplac...</a>Is that the kind of integration you are refering to?

These offerings are to pull customers to GCP. That is what Google is paying for because they couldn&#x27;t get the traction organically.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47337644">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47337644</a>

Google SecOps (Chronicle) is becoming quite popular among the cybersec world. I think eventually there should be an integration play. It is also a way to create wedge into AWS and Azure customers.

The interesting part is that Wiz built its success largely on being cloud-agnostic. If Google keeps it that way, it becomes a strategic window into AWS and Azure workloads.If they don’t, they risk destroying the very advantage that made Wiz valuable in the first place.

Extra shade thrown at MoltBook (listed first) which was recently acq by Meta.

I thought it was WiZ of the lightbulbs fame. Figured they were going all in their smart home approach. But yeah, the other Wiz makes more sense.

Maybe someone typod in an email &quot;I want you to buy woz&quot; the i and o are next to each other on the keyboard. ;)

For a second I thought it was Woz who was joining Google…

Interesting fact regarding the sale. Because the founders are about to receive $2.4B US, Israeli tax authorities got involved, and the tax on the sale as exception will be paid in US dollars directly without converting to shekels due to concerns it might crash the US&#x2F;NIS exchange rate (with $US already historically low).

It was announced almost a year ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43398518">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43398518</a>But it was subject to regulatory approval, that&#x27;s been completed now.

Good time to remember that Wiz&#x27; VC was accused of paying bribes to CISOs to buy their portfolio&#x27;s software (of which Wiz is one).<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;iainmartin&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;28&#x2F;this-vc-built-a-cybersecurity-unicorn-machine-then-came-his-conflict-of-interest-mess&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;iainmartin&#x2F;2024&#x2F;10&#x2F;28&#x2F;this-vc-b...</a>&gt; Two security executives told Forbes they rejected overtures from Raanan’s team after hearing about the firm’s “menu” of compensation. “I was completely aghast. It was against my principles,” one said.

There aren&#x27;t that many Alphabet acquisitions[1] that start with &quot;W&quot;, compared to all the companies that start with &quot;A&quot;:<pre><code> 1 2
 1 6
 1 @
 28 A
 15 B
 8 C
 18 D
 6 E
 10 F
 10 G
 4 H
 9 I
 5 J
 5 K
 8 L
 14 M
 8 N
 10 O
 22 P
 4 Q
 13 R
 27 S
 12 T
 3 U
 5 V
 9 W
 1 Y
 8 Z
</code></pre>
Normalizing these counts with respect to English character frequencies that appear in text[2], the top three unexpected company initials appear to be &quot;Q&quot;, &quot;J&quot;, and &quot;P&quot;.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet#List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Letter_frequency" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Letter_frequency</a>

Wix too. Very interesting that founders of Waze and Wix have Unit 8200 pedigree and Wiz co-founder was part of an elite recruitment program in the IDF. On account of the mandatory draft, it was bound to happen but those three companies have very similar names as well.

Unlikely, since modern Hebrew doesn&#x27;t have a letter for &quot;w&quot;.

Wiz and Waze are both Israeli companies. Not that suspicious, I think it probably just sounds better in Hebrew.

They could put up a page for all three acquisitions, under &quot;www&quot;.

W = Winners, it&#x27;s just science ;)I bet someone has actually studied the effect of leading letters in startup names and funding &amp; acquisitions, I vaguely seem to remember a story about it in the past.

Wiz joins Waze &amp; Waymo.. there&#x27;s something suspicious with the letter W here :)

well if you are waiting for the monopolies to be broken don&#x27;t wait they will not be broken monopolies are here to stay, capitalistism for the rich and socialism also for the rich they best thing you can do is be rich yourself

No reactions beside: monopolies are bad for innovation and why we cannot have nice things. You might hear some people say &quot;but these big companies innovate&quot;. They were mostly done innovating two decades ago, now they just snuff out innovation and acquisition is one of their main tools.

Is this like Darktrace?Apparently the cybersec bigwigs at our company love it, but for me I have to write a detailed explaination why another &#x27;incident report&#x27; the clueless cybersecurity guys keep bothering me with is actually nonsense.

&gt;&gt;It&#x27;s effectively x-ray vision into some huge workloads running on their competitors.I wonder if there are antitrust lawyers watching this closely. Would be really interesting to get their perspective on this.

Wiz customer here, when fully implemented it provides an incredibly detailed and comprehensive view of your infrastructure.I&#x27;m curious how much of that information is going to pass between Wiz and Google Cloud product&#x2F;sales. It&#x27;s effectively x-ray vision into some huge workloads running on their competitors.

Google has really been expanding into DoD lately. I think they&#x27;re realizing it&#x27;s a large part of why AWS is so big and Azure is still alive.

Probably a diversification play and a play to see out bigger contracts. If you&#x27;ve worked in the FEDRamp space, you may be aware that Wiz (last a checked, a year or so ago) is one of the few and possibly ownly player certified to operate in FedRAMP Medium&#x2F;High deployments operating with the technology it does (eBPF instrumentation).

Thats the entire purpose, the reality is that large corporations are increasingly “multi cloud” and Google wants to have an offering for them and for companies that are on AWS and Azure to be able to move some of their workloads to GCP.AWS and GCP also made a joint announcement about multi cloud networking for a similar reason<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aws.amazon.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;networking-and-content-delivery&#x2F;aws-and-google-cloud-collaborate-to-simplify-multicloud-networking&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aws.amazon.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;networking-and-content-delivery...</a>

&gt;or they will keep it cloud agnostic?They grossly overpaid if they aren&#x27;t keeping it cloud agnostic. It&#x27;s impressive software, but if it&#x27;s only compatible with GCP it will not survive in this space.

you mean there will now be three products instead of twoGoogle Security Center
Wiz
Google Agentic Wiz Security

I&#x27;m really hoping this means GCP Security Command Center quickly gets subsumed by Wiz

Make it easy to use google cloud and plug into google ai

&gt; goal with Google M&amp;A remains the same as always. Take competition off the board. I don&#x27;t know this company or how they compete with Google, but 80% chance that&#x27;s the playI don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s true here (what is the competing google product exactly?) or generally in cloud acquisitions, that generally buy into their platform missing features

If you think Google is capable of making a singular coherent decision on a topic like this, you&#x27;re dreaming. There&#x27;s likely multiple competing visions.That said: the goal with Google M&amp;A remains the same as always. Take competition off the board. I don&#x27;t know this company or how they compete with Google, but 80% chance that&#x27;s the play.They are culturally incapable of merging other people&#x27;s tech into their own stack and have both the tendency to rewrite everything from scratch on their own bespoke technologies and also internal engineering teams that will bristle at having a foreign body invade their cathedral.You could say it would be talent acquisition but most everyone who comes from a startup walks as soon as their golden handcuffs loosen and they can find something else to do. Going from startup to Google is usually torturous.Been through this 15 years ago. I don&#x27;t think anything has changed.

I don&#x27;t understand Google&#x27;s play here. Does it want Wiz to be a unique offer for GCP customers? or they will keep it cloud agnostic?

Wasn&#x27;t this acquisition just a bit money laundering operation from Israel?

Or the GP2X Wiz handheld (which will be forever what comes to mind first for me )<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;GP2X_Wiz" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;GP2X_Wiz</a>

I thought so too at first, which would make sense as Nest does everything except lighting...

Or the Wiz IoT company, which seems like something Google might assimilate into Nest, but they didn&#x27;t.

I&#x27;d argue an internal framework isn&#x27;t a &quot;product&quot;, but the confusion is real.

Not to be confused with Google’s existing product called Wiz.

Did you read the article? First line: &quot;Nearly a year ago, we shared that Wiz would be joining Google.&quot;

Didn&#x27;t this happen a year ago? [0] Or did this deal just take a year?[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43398518">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43398518</a>

Same--I was worried my lightbulbs might be deprecated!

I thought it was about home automation at first <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wizconnected.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wizconnected.com&#x2F;</a>

Not related to my <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uxwizz.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uxwizz.com</a> xD

Wiz joins Google