On the brand and acquisitions point, I had a big shift in perception in 2012 when Esri acquired both GeoIQ (now their DC R&D office), and Geoloqi (now their Portland R&D office). And I mean this in a good way!
Both offices continue to do good stuff, turn out open-source-compatible products like Esri-Leaflet, and connect with OpenStreetMap. The core Esri people showed their smarts by valuing what these competitors were doing, and the combined company is more active in the JavaScript + open source world.

The only sad thing was losing GeoCommons :(