I kind of don't get it. Why do big companies buy other successful companies just to shut it down? Can't they just rebrand it or something? If they can't why even buy? Just for acquiring the technical talent?
That, and heading off future competition. If Google were planning, for example, on releasing a multi-protocol web chat application of their own in the next few weeks, this would be a well-timed move.
Using Meebo's code base to make their own application might have been preferable to rebranding it in this case.
