11–20 of 28 posts
In the article it says this move by Google is worse than Amazon investing in businesses and stealing info. How is this worse? Google bought the whole company, didn't make partial investment. They can do whatever they want with the company.
In the article it says this move by Google is worse than Amazon investing in businesses and stealing info. How is this worse? Google bought the whole company, didn't make partial investment. They can do whatever they want with the company.
"Worse" doesn't just mean "worse for the companies involved", it can also mean "worse for society". The net result of Google continually buying startups and shutting down the projects is that fewer products receive long-term support, receive any iterative improvements, or can be relied upon to exist later.
How is buying a company that clearly was not doing well financially (acquisition price at $150m, ~$200m raised with the last $40m being a debt financing, so it is a bail out), in what is clearly messaged as an acqui-hire for talent, in any way comparable to Amazon using its investment arm to acquire confidential information and replicate company products?
Respectfully, the author doesn't seem to understand what's actually going on here, this seems like a standard acqui-hire for future work on a smart glass product within Google. I highly doubt North didn't know they were going to be discontinuing the Focus before the acquisition closed.
What would have actually been unethical is waiting for North to run out of money and then try to hire their people at lower salaries or something.
What? This article makes absolutely no sense. How is buying a company that clearly was not doing well financially (acquisition price at $150m, ~$200m raised with the last $40m being a debt financing, so it is a bail out), in what is clearly messaged as an acqui-hire for talent, in any way comparable to Amazon using its investment arm to acquire confidential information and replicate company products? Respectfully, th…
Why? It would have been riskier. With aqui-hire they get everyone and someone else could scoop them. But at the end of the day the North team failed to make a product that sold.
In the article it says this move by Google is worse than Amazon investing in businesses and stealing info. How is this worse? Google bought the whole company, didn't make partial investment. They can do whatever they want with the company.
"Worse" doesn't just mean "worse for the companies involved", it can also mean "worse for society". The net result of Google continually buying startups and shutting down the projects is that fewer products receive long-term support, receive any iterative improvements, or can be relied upon to exist later.
What? This article makes absolutely no sense. How is buying a company that clearly was not doing well financially (acquisition price at $150m, ~$200m raised with the last $40m being a debt financing, so it is a bail out), in what is clearly messaged as an acqui-hire for talent, in any way comparable to Amazon using its investment arm to acquire confidential information and replicate company products? Respectfully, th…
> What would have actually been unethical is waiting for North to run out of money and then try to hire their people at lower salaries Why? It would have been riskier. With aqui-hire they get everyone and someone else could scoop them. But at the end of the day the North team failed to make a product that sold.
Would it be worse if they didn’t acquire it, but crushed it in the market? Obviously we won’t know.