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Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

cnbc.com

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Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#391

Post by jszymborski »

peonicles wrote: post #369
braythwayt wrote: post #126

John Gruber^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Dan Lyons^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Steve Ballmer had another colourful analogy, he used it in response to companies claiming that a merger would create a powerhouse to challenge the market leader: "It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster." (Thanks to "raldi" f…

I had to google for what "^H" meant. Found an interesting answer and backstory: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/386870.html

TIL Google had a Yahoo Answers clone...

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#392

Post by xyst »

Fitbit was absolute trash before the buyout. Garbage in, garbage out.

My previous company provided one of those Fitbit bracelets and it just stopped working one day after a month of usage. While it did work, step tracking was spotty, at best.

Haven’t looked back at wearables since then but I’m leaning towards the Apple Watch series. Maybe on the next refresh though.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#393

Post by sixstringtheory »

gniv wrote: post #364
braythwayt wrote: post #126

John Gruber^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Dan Lyons^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Steve Ballmer had another colourful analogy, he used it in response to companies claiming that a merger would create a powerhouse to challenge the market leader: "It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster." (Thanks to "raldi" f…

I don't see how this analogy is apropos. Here's another analogy that works the other way: Adding an extra tube to a single-tube tunnel improves the efficiency of the tunnel greatly. Why is the runner analogy better than this one?

Tunnels are passive, people are creative. Adding a second tunnel doesn’t require interplay from the first. Adding a company of people is subject to whatever the sociological equivalent is of Amdahl’s law, whereby there is extra overhead to coordinating their work with your current employees, and don’t forget cultural integration.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#394

Post by braythwayt »

peonicles wrote: post #369
braythwayt wrote: post #126

John Gruber^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Dan Lyons^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Steve Ballmer had another colourful analogy, he used it in response to companies claiming that a merger would create a powerhouse to challenge the market leader: "It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster." (Thanks to "raldi" f…

I had to google for what "^H" meant. Found an interesting answer and backstory: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/386870.html

Correct!

^G^G^G We have a winner, folks.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#395

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

cdnsteve wrote: post #339

Google makes 80% of revenue from ads. It covers the entire web with adsense/adwords, records anything you search, has users login to chrome, scans gmail for purchase history, tracks your gps location and where you live and work with your commute + waze.. plus much more through android. It has microphones in homes and knows about all your iot devices with nest, it knows about any other online accounts you have because…

As someone who works at Google and who used to think these things were true, I can say that most of this is simply not true. We store hardly any data about users. Far from everything we get. Of the things we store, hardly anything gets stored longer than 30 days.

So, no, we do not store a constant audio stream from everything in your house for all of eternity. We don't store every website you visit in chrome for all of eternity. We don't analyze your face as you browse Hacker News from Chrome in your cellphone using your front facing camera, and store how the different parts of every page influence your emotions.

I'm sure SOME company is doing all of these things. But Google is not.

You need to jump through a million hoops to get permission to store anything at all! And unless there's a very clear reason why our service won't function without the data we're collecting (note this is completely different than the data potentially being valuable for something in the future, or possibly being able to add revenue) there's basically a ~0% it gets stored for longer than 30 days.

Maybe some of the older products like Doubleclick and Google Web Search are grandfathered in and storing lots of questionable data. I don't know. But I doubt it. Anything built in the last few years -- again I don't really know -- but I'm pretty sure shouldn't be considered a monster data vacuum.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#396

Post by BenoitEssiambre »

auiya wrote: post #366
kerng wrote: post #46

Vic Gundotra (VP Google) said back when Microsoft bought Nokia that "two turkeys don't make an eagle". Google officially has become the Microosft of the mid 2000s. Lack of direction and innovation, buying up companies just for the sake of it. Here is a link to Google's anology: https://www.techspot.com/news/42338-google-attacks-nokia-and...

Vic headed up the Google+ effort, killed Reader, and probably isn't the best example of Google leadership to quote.

I still have PTSD from that murder. It really launched a new google era as the company that tries to hurt internet users as much as possible.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#397

Post by [deleted] »

qubex wrote: post #328
braythwayt wrote: post #126

John Gruber^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Dan Lyons^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Steve Ballmer had another colourful analogy, he used it in response to companies claiming that a merger would create a powerhouse to challenge the market leader: "It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster." (Thanks to "raldi" f…

“Argument by analogy is very powerful and utterly fallacious” — my high-school Theory Of Knowledge teacher (Mr Dawson you’re the best) That said, I’m really not enthused by this under either the business (relevant case history: Nest) or privacy perspective.

[deleted]

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#398

Post by inawarminister »

me_me_me wrote: post #54

And here I was considering getting fitbit... Could anyone suggest an alternative? I really have no trust that google will keep promise not to use the data. edit: thanks all, I have too look into it all back home.

PineTime, an open source $20 activity tracker, is going to be sold in the next few months. The dev kits are already in the wild.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#399

Post by sixstringtheory »

braythwayt wrote: post #377
qubex wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Argument by analogy is very powerful and utterly fallacious” — my high-school Theory Of Knowledge teacher (Mr Dawson you’re the best) That said, I’m really not enthused by this under either the business (relevant case history: Nest) or privacy perspective.

I agree with Mr. Dawson. Argument by analogy is weak. Communication containing analogies is powerful. I do not find it useful to say "If A is like B, then all the things about B must apply to A." This forces us to find perfect analogies, and encourages too much bickering over how well the analogy applies. But I do find it useful to use an imperfect analogy to illustrate something that you have already established dir…

This is what I always try to tell people but I like the way you worded it: analogies are for communicative understanding, not argumentation.

All analogies are approximations. Even though they may not be argumentative, picking out flaws in analogies often presents as attacking a strawman.

Re: Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1B

#400

Post by erikpukinskis »

CydeWeys wrote: post #367
qubex wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Argument by analogy is very powerful and utterly fallacious” — my high-school Theory Of Knowledge teacher (Mr Dawson you’re the best) That said, I’m really not enthused by this under either the business (relevant case history: Nest) or privacy perspective.

A common antipattern here in HN comments is someone using an analogy (which is almost always bad), and then the responses devolving into arguing over how the analogy isn't correct. I honestly think a "no analogies" rule for commenting would do more to facilitate good discussion than the existing "no jokes" rule. Analogies are almost never useful. Even the ancient Greeks realized this.

> Analogies are almost never useful

That statement is too broad to possibly be true.

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