In the internet world, if a rumor about a pending acquisition is aired, it usually comes to pass within days if not hours. The rumored acquisition of StumbleUpon by eBay has been flitting around the internet for some six weeks now, so it was somewhat anticlimatic to finally read the StumbleUpon announcement on the S.U. blog as posted on May 30th.

StumbleUponPerhaps the most significant thing associated with this deal are the comments from many stumblers (mostly negative) including accusations of “corporate whores” and “does eBay, Google, and Yahoo! have to own everything?” and the like. I am not too surprised by these passionate reactions as many stumblers perceive StumbleUpon as the unique, community driven network that it is. All of this kind of reminds me of the hippie movement gone corporate — Woodstock ‘69 was considered to be people-driven while Woodstock ‘94 was all about the corporation. Cries of “selling out” were common then as they are with this deal.

StumbleUpon’s Statement Concerning the eBay Acquisition

Lost or ignored by many people is the last paragraph of the S.U. announcement which reads:

We also want you to know that not much will change around here. We’ll be running StumbleUpon separately within eBay Inc., and we’ll still be focused on developing features based on your feedback.

I’m inclined to agree that eBay will pretty much leave StumbleUpon alone. Yes, much of notable sites on the internet are being snapped up by the largest search engines, eBay, MySpace, and Amazon, but must we automatically assume the worst case scenario with every acquisition?