It makes a lot of sense. Goog has been using Juniper for a while, so goog really understand the problem domain and what % of that problem is solved by Juniper's products.
They would also know what they like & dis-like in terms of features their product should have vs. juniper which probably address a wider customer wish list; maybe & I am speculating here, Juniper takes a long time to turn around on features or some features are custom to goog and Juniper doesn't want to build them.
So goog gets to design a product that fits their needs for the next few years. If the product turns out well there might even be tremendous competitive advantage since googs competitors can't buy it.
Worst case things don't work out and they go back to buying Juniper.
The odds that Google has the best whatever engineers in the world diminishes as whatever gets further and further from search and advertising. Are they going to be designing their own processors? Fabbing them? DEC is the last company I can think of that was fully vertically integrated, even Apple isn't.
Vint Cerf is already under Google's patronage. I am pretty sure TCP/IP is not exactly Google's "core" business! No matter how far the "whatever" is, it is clearly helping and supporting search and advertising.
They would also know what they like & dis-like in terms of features their product should have vs. juniper which probably address a wider customer wish list; maybe & I am speculating here, Juniper takes a long time to turn around on features or some features are custom to goog and Juniper doesn't want to build them.
So goog gets to design a product that fits their needs for the next few years. If the product turns out well there might even be tremendous competitive advantage since googs competitors can't buy it.
Worst case things don't work out and they go back to buying Juniper.