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The Summly deal makes no sense

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Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#21

Post by hdra »

alex1 wrote: post #3
nicholassmith wrote: post #2

It makes perfect sense, they've got some technology out of it, some people who understand mobile, and a nice big headline. Worth $30m of my money? Probably not. Worth $30m of Yahoo's money? Maybe, they're not likely to have decided to spend that much on an acquihire without board approval really are they. Unless they Zuckerberg'd it and thought it was better to seek forgiveness.

The summarization tech isn't owned by Summly. It's owned by SRI International and was licensed to Summly. Maybe a large chunk of the reported $30 million was actually used to acquire that technology from SRI?

I actually didn't know about this before. I think one of the first article I read about the product was the story when the product was called TrimIt, and the company just received some investment from Li Ka Shing. For some reason, the articles[1][2][3] gave me the impression that the technology was developed by the founder (or did they switched the algorithms?)

[1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/12/13/teenage-pr... [2]: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/15/trimit-summarizes-emails-bl... [3]: http://gigaom.com/2011/12/13/meet-the-internets-newest-boy-g...

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#22

Post by arunoda »

alex1 wrote: post #3
nicholassmith wrote: post #2

It makes perfect sense, they've got some technology out of it, some people who understand mobile, and a nice big headline. Worth $30m of my money? Probably not. Worth $30m of Yahoo's money? Maybe, they're not likely to have decided to spend that much on an acquihire without board approval really are they. Unless they Zuckerberg'd it and thought it was better to seek forgiveness.

The summarization tech isn't owned by Summly. It's owned by SRI International and was licensed to Summly. Maybe a large chunk of the reported $30 million was actually used to acquire that technology from SRI?

A good answer.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#23

Post by justanother »

jval wrote: post #18

I feel this would be an appropriate subject for a Dilbert comic. Storyline is that someone accidentally left the dot out of $300000.00 to make it $30000000 and then everyone else went along with it for fear of looking stupid.

A decimal point? I always mess up some mundane detail!

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#24

Post by danso »

Can someone comment on whether this is a reasonable amount of money to pay for talented engineers and some patents? As a service, the deal doesn't make much sense...it doesn't seem that the world is hungry for ways to simplify web content, even if the technology actually worked. The most popular articles on most news sites are popular because of their in depth content or because they are slideshows of arousing photos. Summly would appear to not really affect either of those trends

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#25

Post by pisarzp »

I kind of agree with the author. Have I been engineer in Yahoo, I would ask myself question "Why is he paid so much, where we could do it in house better and spend this money on bonuses for employees?". Especially given that fact, that Summly doesn't even own this technology just licences it from SRI.

The only explanation I see, is that what Yahoo actually really bought is the great licensing deal (flat fee? exclusivity?).

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#27

Post by orta »

ecspike wrote: post #19
sdfjkl wrote: post #11

Good point about "ignore the hurt feelings that our employees will have". Now a bunch of Yahoo(er?)s have this kid sitting in their Soho office with a £17m price tag on his sleeve - that's got to be a little awkward for everyone involved.

It's only awkward if you are carrying around a big ego. I've joined places just after acquisition and had co-workers who were worth millions as well. It's really not a big deal.

He's not got a good reputation for communication: http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-deve...

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#28

Post by smackay »

danso wrote: post #24

Can someone comment on whether this is a reasonable amount of money to pay for talented engineers and some patents? As a service, the deal doesn't make much sense...it doesn't seem that the world is hungry for ways to simplify web content, even if the technology actually worked. The most popular articles on most news sites are popular because of their in depth content or because they are slideshows of arousing photos…

Perhaps it is a signal to the marketplace, either to other startups or to investors that Yahoo! is rejuvenating itself (or at least is trying to), moreso since it is an acquisition outside of Silicon Valley.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#29

Post by marknutter »

Summly has had a ton of buzz since it was first announced and that's saying more than, oh, every single product Yahoo has come out with in the last 5 years. I think Yahoo wants to inject some of that young and naive but optimistic joojoo that the Summly founder embodies into the company. Maybe this will light a fire under some of the old guard's asses and get them to work on Yahoo side projects in their spare time.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#30

Post by zenocon »

chuhnk wrote: post #26

Where is this information coming from? Is this back and forth a fictional tale or actually what happened?

Same question -- how does this individual know that their team only passed 2/5 interviews, and what the back and forth negotiations were. It seems to me they're either making this up, or they are sharing info that I'd guess is going to make Yahoo fairly annoyed.
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