HACKER Q&A
📣 tomrod

Like GitHub and Azure DevOps, what other companies cannibalize?


As both are owned by Microsoft, why do both Github and Azure Devops exist?

Are there other prominent examples you can think of where two virtually similar products exist from the same company? Google's myriad chat products come to mind, but I'm curious if there are others.

  👤 codingdave Accepted Answer ✓
Having multiple parallel products is common after an acquisition. The challenge then lies in bringing the two together without alienating either customer base. There are inherent difficulties there - before the acquisition, customers made a choice to use one product and reject the other. Determining why those choices were made, what the underlying needs are, and designing a bridge between the products that keeps X% of the customer base happy enough to accept a product merge is a challenge and takes time. It isn't even all tech problems - someone needs to define what that X% is, and exactly how pissed off the people who fall outside that X% can be before it is an unacceptable hit on the company's reputation.

I would be surprised if there is not a team looking at how to merge at least some pieces of Github in the Azure structure and branding. But I wouldn't hold my breath for any announcements on progress either.

👤 mikece
Does “ 17 Ways to Run Containers on AWS” count?

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/the-17-ways-to-run-contai...

👤 tra3
Didn’t they exist before Microsoft acquired GitHub?
👤 altdataseller
Atlassian Jira and Trello.