Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla Acquires Pocket

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 456 posts

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#311

Post by duckmuck »

dripton wrote: post #264
jventura wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a coworker that used to say that when you have more managers than toilets, something is clearly wrong. It was a rule of thumb in his experience..

That is beautiful, but I need more data. 1. Do project managers, product managers, etc. count, or only real managers with teams reporting to them? 2. Do urinals count, or only real sit-down toilets?

Urinals MUST count. Assuming that women's bathrooms have more sit-down toilets than men's, we are biased. It is unfair and sexist to allow female dominated companies more than their fair share of project managers!

/s

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#312

Post by ksec »

zobzu wrote: post #66
anexprogrammer wrote: post #48

Mozilla is growing, experimenting more, and can acquire startups. Mozilla doesn't have the resources to continue with Thunderbird. I am increasingly baffled by their decisions and how they relate to the strategic plans [0] they've been producing for a while. Despite the worthy words in their plan they seem to have no sense of direction. That saddens me. That said I'm happier having Pocket as an open source part of Mo…

Thunderbird doesn't make money. Pocket makes money. That Mozilla is a Corp owned by a not-for-profit isn't the real thing anymore (ie not what people may believe, not that they have any obligation beside following the rule of law) - it just frees the Corp from having to report to random share holders - instead, the Corp and the Org self-select a Board of directors that they report to. At the end of the day, it's othe…

Just a question on top of my head, could Mozilla make a SaaS, like a email services ( example only ), and have those money go into continuing develop Firefox.

And as a non-profit entity, could they retain some profit they have as investment or cash somewhere. In case some day they run into negatives they could use those as reserves?

But at the end of the day, Mozilla need some very serious management restructuring, starting from the very top end. Having been a Netscape user from over two decade ago, I finally left Firefox. And if you follow their decision, mailing list etc, you can feel how bureaucratic they are. Slow response to market changes, completely lack of ( actionable )vision, often having completely unrealistic target. Extreme inefficiency in development of its product. And these aren't my thoughts or comment only, their are many ex mozillian employees who felt the same. We all thought Mozilla should have been a great company achieving far then then they are today.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#313

Post by 1wheel »

I hope they'll remove some of the "growth-hacker" stuff from the chrome extension. Modifying the new tab page and injecting links on pages by default is super annoying.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#314

Post by jrwiegand »

ksec wrote: post #312
zobzu wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thunderbird doesn't make money. Pocket makes money. That Mozilla is a Corp owned by a not-for-profit isn't the real thing anymore (ie not what people may believe, not that they have any obligation beside following the rule of law) - it just frees the Corp from having to report to random share holders - instead, the Corp and the Org self-select a Board of directors that they report to. At the end of the day, it's othe…

Just a question on top of my head, could Mozilla make a SaaS, like a email services ( example only ), and have those money go into continuing develop Firefox. And as a non-profit entity, could they retain some profit they have as investment or cash somewhere. In case some day they run into negatives they could use those as reserves? But at the end of the day, Mozilla need some very serious management restructuring, s…

If the NFL can call themselves a nonprofit then anyone else should be able to do the same.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#316

Post by M_- »

kibwen wrote: post #302
M_- wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not convinced that Electron today is any more popular than XUL was back then comex already named two highly popular ones (slack in particular can't be overlooked) but there are more. https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-electron https://electron.atom.io/apps/ Outside of Slack, WhatsApp and Discord (see a pattern? pretty much all new chat apps are using it), I'm not sure if there's any other truly popular (am…

> Outside of Slack Slack has a standalone app? I've only ever used the web version. What more does it do? > Discord Likewise, I never even realized Discord had a non-browser implementation. > WhatsApp I never even realized that WhatsApp had a non-mobile implementation. > they definitely need native access to local APIs Which ones? > And now they are arguably failing to push it to themselves Er, the whole point of Moz…

> Likewise, I never even realized Discord had a non-browser implementation.

Can't give an answer on slack, as it's not something I use (and I wouldn't use any of the three services if I had a choice, but you don't get to make choices for entire communities as an individual and chat apps are about communities..), but I can say something about discord.

Custom keybindings, ability to do things like push to talk while you're in game, general integration with your OS desktop features (systemtray, native OS notifications), GUI that can overlay over your full-screen window ( like this: https://youtu.be/aVQyk_GX7aE?t=98 ) and probably other features I haven't paid attention to.

> I never even realized that WhatsApp had a non-mobile implementation.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/10/11653606/whatsapp-mac-wind...

Released in May, 2016.. and the webapp launched in 2015.

> Which ones?

Are you seriously asking that of terminal emulators that are supposed to be drop-in replacement for iTerm or Gnome Terminal and whatever else? how do you think your bash scripts can operate without breaking on your local data in a webapp without added native calls? I feel like I'm getting trolled here.

> Er, the whole point of Mozilla is to champion standards-based web tech. They're rewriting their UI using CSS/HTML/JS because this is feasible today, whereas it wasn't in 2005. So I ask again, why would Mozilla want to retain XUL instead of making web technologies more powerful?

So a great deal of selective quoting up till here while acting sassy and not paying attention to what was quoted to support the point yet still asking the question?

Why would they retain a competitive edge when other platforms like electron are attracting all the developers to enhance their application with native access goodness, why indeed.

I'll quote it again.

> Whether you need to migrate an existing web application to the desktop [...] or want to integrate your own cool features into the browser, XUL warrants serious consideration.

Is what Electron and Chrome actually do for people now, successfully, in droves and was an aspiration they had before. As for what is feasible now that wasn't before.. electron is not going away any time soon and webapps haven't replaced native. Even more so on mobile platforms, as 90% websites are begging you to install the app with full screen popups.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#317

Post by aarontyree »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #48

Mozilla is growing, experimenting more, and can acquire startups. Mozilla doesn't have the resources to continue with Thunderbird. I am increasingly baffled by their decisions and how they relate to the strategic plans [0] they've been producing for a while. Despite the worthy words in their plan they seem to have no sense of direction. That saddens me. That said I'm happier having Pocket as an open source part of Mo…

Ive thought the same thing. This is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if they...how do you say this nicely...I wonder if they are holding on to what they were? In their approach I mean. Like they think they are still fighting with Google? So they make decisions trying to get back to that "leader position" rather than really focusing on who and what they are...which is an awesome, creative, international open-source community with great ideas...that can out maneuver any large corporation because they are smaller and faster. And cooler. Then again, maybe this rebranding is evidence of exactly that realization.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#318

Post by just_testing »

callahad wrote: post #296
ttam wrote: post #239

Dear Mozilla, I'd love to help out with Pocket. As a concerned user, I even wrote this a few months ago http://constantbetasoftware.com/2016/09/02/pocket.html How can I apply?

Pocket is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Corporation, so Pocket retains a great deal of autonomy within their organization. Since Mozilla acquired the entire team, I'd start by reaching out to the individuals listed on https://getpocket.com/about/ . Longer term, my understanding is that we want to use Pocket's expertise and data to help build a recommendation engine for the open Web (Context Graph: https://…

Thanks, I'll try to get in touch with them.

I'd love to help on the recommendation engine. I'm (for two years now) at the top 1% of users.

I also happen to live in Brazil, to be a native portuguese speaker and the recommendation system absolutely sucks. I get a lot of articles regarding startups and Trump, but absolutely nothing in portuguese and/or about Brazil.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#319

Post by tedmiston »

hkmurakami wrote: post #51

I was shocked to read the news since afaik Mozilla had never made acquisitions like this in the past (which they mention in the post). I'm excited though, since the reason I hadn't used Pocket in the past was because I didn't want to be part of yet another walled garden (YAWG?). A quick look at Crunchbase shows that they'd raised $14.5M from investors. Given Mozilla's ~$300M of annual revenue, I wonder whether this l…

My general rule of thumb is that if they don't announce a price it's an acquihire.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#320

Post by yla92 »

djhworld wrote: post #133

I use Instapaper on a daily basis, how does Pocket compare?

Nowadays, I add an article to both Instapaper and Pocket. I used to use Pocket a lot but sticking on Instapaper more.

Things I love about Pocket are

- Curated (and from other people I followed) "recommendations",

- tags "Best Of", "Quick Reads".

- beautiful android app

Instapaper has less features than Pocket but I find that

- Instapaper article parser is better,

- UI is cleaner, highlights ( I love these!),

- ability to switch style (type faces, article background)

- speed read

- they also have "Browse" (something similar to Pocket's recommendation?) but in Android app, it's a bit hidden in the drawer menu so I don't use it often.

Post reply on HN