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Wait, so Google picks up the talent, and Devin picks up the brand/product? This is so confusing!
I think it's safe to say don't use Windsurf. There are so many other options.
I wonder if we'll ever stop to ask ourselves if faster and faster output of software is actually a good thing for the world. Or will we just continue because it's just what we do nowadays in civilization to get ahead?
See, most closed source software really just pisses me off of ideological reasons, I just like to tinker with things and just having the possibility to do so by being provided the source code really helps my mind feel happy I guess.
So I "vibe coded" a game that I used to play and some projects that I was curious about and I just wanted to tinker too. sure the game and code have bugs.
Also with the help of AI, I feel like I can tinker about things that I don't know too much about and get a decent distance ahead. You might think that I am an AI advocate by reading this comment, but quite the contrary, I personally think that this is the only positive quality that AI helped in quite substantially.
But at what cost? The job market has sunk a large hole and nobody's hiring the junior devs because everybody feels better doing some AI deals than hiring junior devs.
My hunch is that senior devs are extremely in demand and are paid decently and so will retire on average early too. Then, there would be a huge gap b/w senior and juniors, because nobody's hiring the junior engineers now, so who will become the senior engineers if nobody got hired in the first place. I really hope that most companies actually realize that the AI game is quite a funny game really, most companies are too invested into it to realize that really, open source AI will catch up and there is just no moat with AI and building with AI or just doing stuff with AI isn't that meaningfully significant as they think it is as shown by recent studies.
Edit: nvm, see replies
Let this be a learning lesson in judging these deals based on partial information. Kudos to the Google, Windsurf, and Cognition teams for keeping all of these deals under wraps until announcement (OpenAI could learn something...), but even so it's likely that we the public will never learn every detail of what transpired. I've seen a lot of harsh, misguided takes over the past few days, like that the Windsurf founder…
There is no evidence at all in the announcement that is the case. It just says "100% of Windsurf employees will participate financially in this deal". What "participate financially" looks like is not elaborated upon.
It is possible you're right. It's also equally possible that the founders have still screwed over their employees, we just don't know. Nothing in this post supports either position.
Let this be a learning lesson in judging these deals based on partial information. Kudos to the Google, Windsurf, and Cognition teams for keeping all of these deals under wraps until announcement (OpenAI could learn something...), but even so it's likely that we the public will never learn every detail of what transpired. I've seen a lot of harsh, misguided takes over the past few days, like that the Windsurf founder…
Presumably the "payout" from Cognition is at a lower nominal value and in illiquid (and IMO overvalued) shares in Cognition rather than cash.
I wonder if we'll ever stop to ask ourselves if faster and faster output of software is actually a good thing for the world. Or will we just continue because it's just what we do nowadays in civilization to get ahead?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well Google did also just pay $2.5B to license Windsurf in perpetuity. Cognition is probably spending a lot less than that for just whatever it left after that type of a deal. Remaining team members, etc.
> The acquisition includes Windsurf’s IP, product, trademark and brand, and strong business. So, Google will be paying $2.5B to Devin guys?
Basically, Google bought the top talent from the company. This cash was used (according to articles I read this morning) in part to pay directly out to shareholders, and in exchange Google got the top talent from the company and a license for the software (probably mostly so their new talent didn't have to worry about NDA, non-compete, and patent challenges).
Since this money went to shareholders, not to the company bank, and since top talent fleeing the company reduces the value of the company the overall value of Windsurf likely went down as part of the Google deal. This in turn likely made it cheap enough for the remainder to be purchased by Cognition.
I hit myself in the head as hard as I could without causing permanent damage
I’m really confused now. Also, is there really that much of a transformative difference between Windsurf and say OpenAI/Claude etc to warrant this crazy valuations?
I'm also confused why Devin is worth billions