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0 pointspavon2y ago0 comments

Broadcom didn't originate at HP, it was an early 90's startup. What happened is that a private equity firm bought some parts of HP that had been spun off and then that company later bought Broadcom.

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dredmorbius2y ago· 2 in thread

Wikipedia (with cites to a Google Books link):

The company that would later become Broadcom Inc. was established in 1961 as HP Associates, a semiconductor products division of Hewlett-Packard.[12]

The division separated from Hewlett-Packard as part of the Agilent Technologies spinoff in 1999.[8][13]

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcom>

Citing: <https://books.google.com/books?id=WAW5DwAAQBAJ&q=1961+broadc...>

pavonOP2y ago

Yeah, that wiki article is confusing. Broadcom Inc is the new company formed when Avago purchased Broadcom Corp, and Avago got it's start as a spin off of HP (by way of Agilent). However, the original Broadcom Corp is older than that and was unrelated to HP:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcom_Corporation

dredmorbius2y ago

It took me a couple of readings to get that right. Yes, it is confusing.

Part of me thinks that corporate acquisitions and mergers should not be permitted to use prior names, and especially not to adopt the name of an earlier, non-ancestor parent.

See AT&T and Lufthansa for a couple of examples.

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