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The Summly deal makes no sense

philosophically.com

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Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#191

Post by vidarh »

easytiger wrote: post #70
mgkimsal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More to the point, I've no doubt that some Yahoo employees have likely investigated this sort of tech and built prototypes, only to get shot down by middle management. I've no special insight at Yahoo (had a couple friends work there) but for any sufficiently large company with employees as talented as Yahoo (YUI, YQL, etc) this has surely happened. So... to have your idea/prototype/demo shot down, then later $30m sp…

> investigated this sort of tech and built prototypes, only to get shot down by middle management. Bingo. in fairness the culture there prob prevented people from even feeling this innovative and self motivated. I've worked in a couple of large orgs where i've told management about great little cheap ideas that just get ummed and ahhed and then forgotten (despite in 2 instances using my own free time to make a protot…

Having been in the position of shooting down all to often, the challenge for managers here is that often we get 100 absolutely crap ideas for every gem, yet the developers who bring them to us often are totally blinkered about which ideas are a fit for the company and/or are remotely realistic.

That makes it very easy to make calls that in retrospect might seem extremely stupid. Even more so, many of the engineers who get shot down for truly bad ideas will still insist they are good.

Getting the balance right for what you spend time on is very hard.

(That said, I did work at Yahoo until 2005, and at least "my little corner" of Yahoo did feel very bureaucratic and not very conducive to innovation even then)

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#192

Post by vidarh »

vitalique wrote: post #186
vidarh wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every now and again, if I feel I need more money, I take a look at http://www.globalrichlist.com/ and plop in my current salary. Though the numbers are probably a bit dated by now, it's quite sobering.

Well, every now and again, I come across this type of salary comparison charts, and realize that out of context they make no sense at all. And with some context - hmmm.. Nope, not much sense either.

I don't know what you're trying to say. If you are trying to imply that someone on a developer salary in Europe or the US are not well off by global standards, you're out of your mind.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#194

Post by chime »

brvs wrote: post #137
chime wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get down about how unfair that is from time to time, but there's nothing you can really do about it, other than focus on your work. Fairness is a fictional manmade concept. That we expect some sort of fairness in life is solely due to our social contract. It's not fair to me that someone steals my car and thus we have systems in place to address that. However, nothing in our laws, norms, ethics, or philosophy say…

I think you meant "my concept of fairness". Because other peoples' concepts of fairness certainly do consider the ultra-rich.

That was my overall point. Fairness is manmade. We decide what's fair and not and certainly your concept is different from mine. Nature doesn't care. Markets don't care. Systems don't care. All we can do as humans is impose our view of fairness on others by legal means or social norms. Most of us agree killing is bad and unfair to the person who got killed and their family/friends, so we legislate against that.

While many might feel that kids of rich people have an unfair advantage, we haven't as a collective decided to do anything to put that to an end. We have made it a bit easier for non-rich kids to get some of the benefits that rich kids get like daily meals, access to education etc. but the gap is far too wide to bridge for everyone.

You can certainly try to design a social structure where nobody is rich or nobody gets preferential treatment but those haven't worked well so far for numerous other reasons. In a capitalistic, democratic/republic society, we haven't legislated the unfairness of being born rich, mostly because most of us don't think it is unfair enough to be illegal. In fact, most of us would think it is fair when looking at it from the parents' point of view. If you work hard and make a lot of money, why shouldn't your kids have it better than you did?

What I was trying to say to the parent was that fairness is not a concrete standard, especially when it comes to things many of us can disagree on.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#195

Post by nsxwolf »

phillmv wrote: post #185
kyro wrote: post #123

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 get down about how unfair that is from time to time, but there's nothing you can really do about it, other than focus on your work. I regret upvoting you prior to finishing your post. This is bullshit. Of course we can do something about it. We're members of a society, and if we collectively think something is bullshit, we can do something about it. I'm tired of people looking at these absurd inequities and shrugg…

I'm confused. Are you saying this kid should have his $30M (or whatever he gets out of the deal) taken away from him, because you perceive he didn't earn it?

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#196

Post by andreasvc »

Zimahl wrote: post #184
beachstartup wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good perspective and i think it's good to keep this in mind, but let's not forget the other end of the spectrum: Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born in a farm house with a dirt floor. That child will grow up to die in a civil war before age 14. Right now, somewhere in the world, there are people waiting in line to get food from a charity. Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is suff…

The bell curve is a harsh mistress.

Poverty is not normally distributed on a bell curve, more like a power law distribution; cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#197

Post by chime »

lilsunnybee wrote: post #180
chime wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get down about how unfair that is from time to time, but there's nothing you can really do about it, other than focus on your work. Fairness is a fictional manmade concept. That we expect some sort of fairness in life is solely due to our social contract. It's not fair to me that someone steals my car and thus we have systems in place to address that. However, nothing in our laws, norms, ethics, or philosophy say…

At the very least in the animal kingdom, monkeys have a concept of fairness: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1292337... So not entirely manmade.

You are right. I should have said constructed.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#198

Post by itsprofitbaron »

Evbn wrote: post #169
itsprofitbaron wrote: post #155

Normally whenever an acquisition happens, I avoid these types of posts on HN because there are often people in the comments (and even in the posts themselves) calling out the acquired company saying “I could have done this” or “Acquirer could have built Acquired Company in a day” but, this one deserves a reply. The reason why this deserves a reply is that the OP’s post does not really contain any facts rather, it con…

Most of your comment is reasonable, except for the part about a reasonable price for Yahoo. There is no evidence that Yahoo isn't suffering a costly mistake (or worse) from a small group of decision makers on this deal.

I said that the price is suitable for Yahoo because, if they did not believe that the price was acceptable to Yahoo and its shareholders then, they would not have sanctioned an acquisition for the company. Likewise, I think your comment about there being no evidence to support the acquisition etc is a valid one although, it could be applied to any M&A deal such as it could have been applied (at the time) to Google’s acquisition of YouTube (with regards to the lawsuits etc) - and whilst the Summly deal may or may not end up being successful for Yahoo, if the Summly Team provides Yahoo with value beyond their acquisition price then, it certain cannot be debated that it was anything but a successful one.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#199

Post by ojbyrne »

orangethirty wrote: post #148
larrik wrote: post #128

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.

According to Alexa, yahoo is the 4th most visited website in the world. They have innumerable ways to generate traffic. "Traction" implies a company that is not being visited at all trying to get a jump start, and is just not accurate.
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