Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business

#141

Post by rootsu » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:10 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #135

rootsu wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic question, Have you heard about Mediaocean? They are an old adtech company. I have an interview with them but I don't really understand what they do.

They make software to run advertising operations for big agencies and advertisers. It manages ad campaigns, audiences, billing and finances, workflows, optimization, comps, etc. It integrates with major ad platforms which run the actual ads, and collects performance data from APIs and reports, and puts it all together in a single place for analysis.

Any idea how they are as a company?

Re: Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business

#142

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:36 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #113

pjmlp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android and ChromeOS, Google got there first. Azure Sphere OS is also based on Linux kernel, not only cloud stuff. Another non Windows OS is Azure RTOS.

The whataboutism on Google is not really even worth responding to but pointing on another evil company is also abusing open source .... ok. Google has been openly hostile GPL for decades. As to the other 2 projects, I am not sure how this refutes my statements, which is Microsoft linux contributions are about making their commercial offerings better, and are not useful to anyone outside of those Commercial Offering (…

It doesn't refute the claim, only extends the space of non-Windows offerings from Microsoft.

The point about Google is that is already did to Linux what you are telling about Microsoft.

Google has crossed the Linux EEE finish line years ago, in fact the Linux kernel is the only GPL thing left on Android and ChromeOS.

As someone that was mostly a UNIX user I mostly don't care in what shape POSIX offerings end up in the market.

Linux today, XYZ tomorrow, whatever.

Re: Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business

#143

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:37 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #114

pjmlp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only those that never used UNIX commercial clones, which have deviated from System V long time ago.

What? Systemd, netplan, and many other things. I am not sure what UNIX clones have to do with this The latest version of Ubuntu you can not even set the IP with standard etc config, you have to use netplan YAML configuration systemd has replaced all kinds of things with non "grey beard" configurations, the list is pretty extensive

Solaris and AIX had systemd like features eons ago.

OS X configuration files (plists) can be XML based or binary, many are binary and managed via plist CLI or app.

Re: Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business

#144

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:39 AM UTC

clh1126 wrote: post #132

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising is becoming a bigger share of the global economy. At the same time, the big players are making up a bigger share of the ad market. It's not absurd to envision a world in the next 30 years in which advertising is >33% of global GDP - and maybe 2-5 companies control >50% of that market.

It's also not absurd to imagine a world where advertising is the next internet bubble.

It's not.

You can never say if something is a bubble until after it pops.

On the other hand, I think there's a convincing argument that people are having more and more of their needs and basic wants met. And if you're in the business of selling things - you need to synthesize wants in your customers.

Only 200 years ago, basically everyone on the planet was a peasant. Only 70 years ago, even middle class people in the US and Europe had a laughably low standard of living by today's measures.

Now, in ~60% of the world (the developed world incl. China) - only a couple percent of the population is a dirt poor.

In many ways, it takes more effort to sell people a seventh computer than their first. In other ways, repeat customers are your easiest sales. Still, you usually need to market even to your repeats...

Still, in order to grow - you can't just sell your existing customers the same thing every year. You need to constantly sell them more...

Re: Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business

#145

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:45 AM UTC

MarkSweep wrote: post #137

pjmlp wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least some sanity prevailed and the VS installer is now a WPF app. It is an Electron app, check its use of nodejs when running it.

Sorry I don't have a better source for this: https://twitter.com/mrhestew/status/1369356955009966080 And just looking at the installer in Process Explorer, it is now a single process that does not load any Chromium or Node DLLs.

I stand corrected.

I had just accepted the Electron rewrite as fact of life and never bothered again to check its process information.

I really missed that info, thanks.

Re: Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business

#146

Post by jfoster » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 9:12 AM UTC

How does this type of acquisition happen? How does the division of Microsoft that wanted this business determine that instead of trying to build it themselves, they should approach their potential competitor and ask to purchase it from them? I can understand most M&A, because at least one of the companies involved will be a whole organisation, but in this case a piece of Microsoft must have identified that they wanted to purchase a piece of AT&T. That seems really interesting.

Re: Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business

#147

Post by andrekandre » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #131

_ktx2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft's evolution into adtech is the natural evolution of industrial capitalism. How is advertising synonymous with capitalism? If it were communism or socialism we'd likely just call advertising propaganda, but is there a real difference? To be clear, even if Microsoft was born in a reality where America was Democratic Socialist, wouldn't they be doing the same thing just a slightly different purpose?

Advertising is becoming a bigger share of the global economy. At the same time, the big players are making up a bigger share of the ad market. It's not absurd to envision a world in the next 30 years in which advertising is >33% of global GDP - and maybe 2-5 companies control >50% of that market.

sometimes i wonder if we would ever get to a point where we trade, buy and sell in ads

like if i go to a grocery store and forget my wallet, then i can pay for it by watching 10 mins of ads or something...

Re: Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business

#148

Post by smichel17 » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

philjohn wrote: post #66

capableweb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So how can it be remotely plausible that Linux will become a mainstream desktop/laptop OS? Because of time and inevitable changes happening to everything over time. Remember when Windows was nothing and everyone was using something else? Remember when macOS was nothing and everyone was using something else? Same thing can happen with Linux, or some other operating system. Sure, might take 10, 50, 100 years, but eve…

It's still a long way off - have a look at the recent Linus Tech Tips challenge where he and Luke had to daily drive Linux for a month. They're technical people, and yes, LTT is hammed up a bit (I call it the Top Gear of Tech), but the number of issues they ran into that you just don't on Windows (in most cases) was illuminating. I have no troubles running a Linux home server, but I don't have time to fiddle around s…

In my experience, Linux, Windows, and MacOS all have their own separate warts. When switching between desktops, you will be supremely frustrated dealing with issues you Just Didn't Have™ on your old OS. Stick with it for long enough before switching back, and you'll be just as frustrated with the annoyances you'd gotten used to working around and forgotten about in your old system.

Re: Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business

#149

Post by Jwarder » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

FearlessNebula wrote: post #19

echelon wrote: post #11

Damn it all to hell. I swore that since Nadella took over the helm that Microsoft was becoming a good force for the industry. There were so many positive moves. Linux, open source, Github improvements. Now I can see that it's all still classic "evil Microsoft" under the hood. They're taking over our industry with Github/VSCode in the cloud. Microsoft payments injection in Edge taxes web commerce, and with their defau…

Wait what’s this about monitoring and record By files and secrets? Also I think you might be mistaken about the Xbox DRM, they mentioned they’d be requiring always online prior to the launch of the Xbox one but as far as I know they never followed through after all the backlash they received.

I think echelon is referring to the "Automatic Sample Submission" option that is enabled by default in Windows Defender. It will upload exes and dlls without asking. It can also upload documents, but it should prompt the user first.

Windows telemetry is also a black box, but they admit to collecting some browsing history.

Re: Microsoft buys Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business

#150

Post by charles_f » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #4

Why? Windows 11 as an advertising business wasn't nasty enough for Microsoft? I installed it on one of my sparingly used machines and it's as blatant as it gets. The Edge push, all the installed crapware, the telemetry and God knows what else - either way it didn't feel like I was running my own OS - instead it felt like I was running a rented one at a Kinkos.

Seems like the current trend in software. We used to have a perpetual licensing system as the dominant way of buying software, with some upgrades / unlimited upgrades, somewhat like a warranty system. Then lots of online services started on the subscription model, justifiably because they were providing online services. Everyone got jealous and greedy, and seeing that sweet sweet recurring revenue that others were making, switched to that model that actually doesn't make much sense, even for software that you're installing on your computer, adding marginal online services like storage you don't care about as a justification. Now that everything is subscription based and market is saturated, the only ways to increase revenue are either to upsell existing subscriptions, or add new revenue streams.

Ads seems like an obvious one. Future is grim.