Here is a repost of some remarks I put on Facebook a few minutes ago.
I am a total outsider but when a big company like Boeing buys a successful, small company like Foreflight, they start changing everything to make it like the big company. They forget that the reason the small company is successful is that it had a company culture that favored innovation, rewarding and recognizing employee contributions, etc. Over the last 20 years I have watched many very good FBO's be bought by the large chains and then service went to pot. It will be interesting to see how this purchase affects Foreflight. I think the result will be good employees leaving to go to another small company that has the culture they like.
Several years ago I was at Oshkosh and went to the Foreflight booth. I talked with Tyson Wheils, the president of Foreflight. At the time I was a corporate pilot and we used Jepp charts and Foreflight, which only had the government charts. I suggested to Tyson that they make available the Jepp charts in their product for subscribers of Jepp charts. He said they had tried to do it, but Jepp wouldn't allow it. I ask him who at Jepp would not allow it and he gave me a name. I went directly to the Jepp booth and ask for that person (I don't remember the name). I told him I thought they should work with Foreflight so that their mutual customers could use the Jepp charts within Foreflight. He said they would not do that as their product was as good than Foreflight. He said they were doing further development on it and it would better. I told him he was shooting at a moving target as Foreflight was continuing to improve their product also. As we all know, a couple of years ago Jepp allowed Foreflight to display their charts.
But my point is that large companies usually think they know best. So when they buy a smaller company, they impose their ways of doing things on the small company and it usually stifles innovation. It will be interesting to watch this the next few years.
One more comment about the press release. I worked for a company that was bought by a larger company in the late 90's. For the six months that preceded the closing of the sale, we were told one story. The day after the closing, the story completely changed. I learned from that that during a purchase, you can't believe one word the buying company says. You have to wait and see after the deal is completed.
Tyson and his team did a wonderful job developing Foreflight. Hopefully they did as good job in negotiating the sale and have restrictions in the agreement to protect the product, employees, and their customers.