What surprises me is that the same people who complain about patents and intellectual property are often the first to bring up the discussion of how market tends to undervalue fundamental research. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
81–90 of 288 posts
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
In terms of the first three, a lot of the value is in what economists call "positive network externalities", or "network effects". If you walked out the door of Apple with source code and "source code" for their hardware, you could replicate a lot of their value for the immediate future, until they had time to cook up new stuff.
" If you walked out the door of Apple with source code and "source code" for their hardware, you could replicate a lot of their value for the immediate future, until they had time to cook up new stuff. " You are correct in that more of Facebook or Craigslist's values are comprised by network effects, but I still believe more of Apple is network effect than not. Consider the walking-out-of-the-door-with-the-blueprints…
> Consider the walking-out-of-the-door-with-the-blueprints hypothetical. You would still need to cobble together a supply chain, i.e. glue together a string of "doers" and make sure the glue is strong enough so the whole thing doesn't fly apart like a 787.
Maybe a more interesting hypothetical is "what could the 2nd place competitor do if they got blueprints and source code, and could use it freely?". In terms of Facebook and Craigslist, nothing much. In terms of Apple, Samsung could probably go to town with it, although I suppose you could also argue that "the right to use it freely" is in some ways the most important bit, as Samsung can probably replicate the hardware, and has good enough software at this point.
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#83Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#84Overpaying for apps is the new overpaying for social networks for that vague master bullshit artistry of "reaching" users. Yahoo irrationally overpays for tons of stuff, AOL irrationally overpaid for Bebo, there was that high school girl that made a social network and makes millions of dollars so she bought her mom a house, there are plenty of other data points I filed away in my head over the years. Tons of things h…
> Your brain hurts from trying to neatly organize this particular liquidity event as fair?
Like much of the commentary in the other story, you're projecting. The article is a discussion of why this deal is stupid, not bellyaching about it being unfair.
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#85Yahoo is a media not a technology company. Can you recall something Yahoo has done innovative?
The fact is that technology is in almost every facet of the world. However we view Yahoo!, they must know that technology is foundational relationship to cultivate and enhance.
idk, their core asset may not be their technologies. Their asset maybe the ad space they sell and the properteis they own. I think of Yahoo in as in the buisness of owning things so they can sell adds. I don't think they care about the technology of this app (which is less then a masters thesis) compared to its user base.
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#86I like his point about how trivial "tl;dr" summaries often don't get at the core idea of an essay, but they still work for news formats which are kinda "tl;dr" already.
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
" If you walked out the door of Apple with source code and "source code" for their hardware, you could replicate a lot of their value for the immediate future, until they had time to cook up new stuff. " You are correct in that more of Facebook or Craigslist's values are comprised by network effects, but I still believe more of Apple is network effect than not. Consider the walking-out-of-the-door-with-the-blueprints…
> Consider the walking-out-of-the-door-with-the-blueprints hypothetical. You would still need to cobble together a supply chain, i.e. glue together a string of "doers" and make sure the glue is strong enough so the whole thing doesn't fly apart like a 787. Maybe a more interesting hypothetical is "what could the 2nd place competitor do if they got blueprints and source code, and could use it freely?". In terms of Fac…
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Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#88A point or question missing from the article (i think):
So, downloads for a free app are essentially a competely empty metric?
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#89What this really underscores is that conventional capitalism provides little incentive for fundamental innovation. All this stuff we're gluing together is the product of state-funded research, mostly from the cold war era. DARPANet, the web (CERN), DARPA research on "augmented human intelligence," etc. Stuff like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY (I bet you thought Xerox PARC invented that stuff, right? Or…
If those PhD are really so smart, they should have had the foresight to be born to Morgan Stanley executives, like the Summly kid.
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is the socioeconomic fabric that gives meaning to ideas, things, and ultimately people. What are you saying? Google, Craigslist, the Museum of Natural History and Earnest Hemingway have no meaning without glue like finance?
The people that connect people, things (i.e. capital), and ideas are not naturally less valuable than the people that come up with ideas or who have things. If you have someone who is able to whip together existing technologies into something that's tractable they very well can be more valuable than someone who invents new technologies all day. There is more information needed beyond "that's glue, it's worthless".
> The people that connect people, things (i.e. capital), and ideas are not naturally less valuable than the people that come up with ideas or who have things
I don't think anyone would argue that glue is naturally less valuable. The problem is that our current economic structure treats glue as if it creates approximately ALL of the value because we haven't figured out a good way to split value between different stages of the pipeline (IP isn't a good way).
Over-investing in glue is bad insofar as it comes at the expense of investing in fundamental technologies/research. Since our (over)valuation of glue currently places a rather heavy opportunity cost on performing said research and endorses the "academia is a waste" attitude, I tend to agree that our economy is too focused on glue.