151–160 of 260 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the point was that Yahoo, a public company, was throwing away 30 million for no apparent gain.
The are buying traction. That's 30 million dollars worth of it. It could make them back that much money by getting people to start using Yahoo again.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the point was that Yahoo, a public company, was throwing away 30 million for no apparent gain.
That's the part I don't understand capitalism: on one hand, big corps try to save every dime by downsizing and outsourcing, and on the other hand, they pour money like this.
Any open source equivalents to Summly's "pure rocket science" summarization technology?
Good discussion on this subject here: https://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=131222&... And here http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-open-source-text-sum... The best candidate is MEAD http://www.summarization.com/mead/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read the entire thing as someone being jealous and trying to explain that away by picking at the deal.
Sometimes you just want to make sense of something that seems flabbergastingly stupid. Hell, it's Yahoo's money to burn, but it's not jealousy, it's confusion. It would be interesting to read any sort of explanation, not that we'll get one. But this acquisition is eerily reminiscent of about.me's and is getting a similar level of scorn from us. Big, dead, web 1.0 company purchases virtually worthless startup for no a…
You do realize, Yahoo remains one of the most-visited sites on the Internet? It drives an enormous amount of traffic.
By our standards, Yahoo may not be an exciting or innovative company. But it's in no way dead.
The reason why this deserves a reply is that the OP’s post does not really contain any facts rather, it contains assumptions (either the OP’s assumptions or others).
For instance:
“Yahoo screens the employees, and tells the founder that 2 of them passed” “Summly says dang, only 2 out of 5 passed?”
“In addition, only two of Summly’s employees will go to Yahoo with D’Aloisio”
Moreover, the OP calls out Yahoo for acquiring Summly for $30M and citing that,
“Summly says no, $50m is our minimum. We need to pay back our generous investors”
Likewise, the OP concludes with:
“The craziest thing is that there are a lot of really qualified, CS-beefy teams doing really amazing things in the mobile news/discovery space these days - and that would definitely take a $30m acquisition offer or less. I don't really understand why they picked this one”
However, what we do know is that Yahoo acquired Summly (which is shutting down although, some of it will be incorporated into Yahoo)[3] and regardless if you agree with it or not, they acquired them for a price which is suitable to Yahoo and Summly's investors/team.
Either way, I wish Nick D’Aloisio and the rest of the Summly team all the best and congratulations on your exit to Yahoo.
[1] http://allthingsd.com/20130325/yahoo-paid-30-million-in-cash...
[2] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/Turning_down_Zynga...
[3] http://ycorpblog.com/2013/03/25/yahoo-to-acquire-summly/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the point was that Yahoo, a public company, was throwing away 30 million for no apparent gain.
The are buying traction. That's 30 million dollars worth of it. It could make them back that much money by getting people to start using Yahoo again.
But:
1- Is the traction convertible to any Yahoo properties?
2- Are the 1 million "downloads" legitimate interested users? Do any of them still use the app?
3- Did the "traction" come from paying firms to get them to the top of app store(s)?
I assume Yahoo knows more about this stuff than I do, and I'm not a Yahoo shareholder. Still, I didn't get the impression that the article was just complaining about rich teenagers.
For some who need perspective: Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born into an uberly rich family. That child will grow up to inherit millions for absolutely no work. He'll live the good life full of yachts and private jets. Right now, somewhere in the world, there is a party happening full of gorgeous wealthy people who need not lift a finger to attain the luxuries that they have. Their success is o…
I thought the point was that Yahoo, a public company, was throwing away 30 million for no apparent gain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the point was that Yahoo, a public company, was throwing away 30 million for no apparent gain.
That's the part I don't understand capitalism: on one hand, big corps try to save every dime by downsizing and outsourcing, and on the other hand, they pour money like this.
It's also just kind of how people are. You can't reasonably expect a large corporation -- which is just a big group of people who are all trying to make decisions and getting in each other's way -- to be able to make logical choices when they're subject to every large stakeholder's whim and every bit of incompetence that happens everywhere along the line.
Is it happening in a capitalist setting here? Yes. But it happens in all settings all over the world, so to suggest it's unique to this system ignores the actual nature of the issue (which is the Human Condition).
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.
Not exactly the same storyline, but there's a very topical one from just 10 days ago. http://dilbert.com/2013-03-16/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the point was that Yahoo, a public company, was throwing away 30 million for no apparent gain.
Actually this is a very common scheme in Silicon Valley -- public companies "throwing away" money on relatively worthless startups. It is a good way to siphon money out of the stock market and into the pockets of VCs and founders -- and I would not be surprised if the person who pushes the acquisition gets a cut of the money too, or other "favors" in the future. The company knows its going to can the product and the…
It does not, however, mean shareholders can't/shouldn't complain about throwing money away, though.