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What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
111–120 of 288 posts
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#112What 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…
It's also very unjust. Where were Douglas Engelbart's billions? Tim Berners-Lee, is he a billionaire? No, we have 17 year olds making quick millions gluing together the work of dozens of Ph.D's who will never see that kind of money in their lifetimes.
I'm not sure this is fair. Look at the number of entrepreneurs that actually succeed, then look at the positions that people with a CS Ph.D actually end up in. On average (using a median), I'm willing to bet those with a CS Ph.d do a lot better than your average startup founder. We just hear about success stories.
All of this is also ignoring the huge benefits that come with becoming a professor, if you are able to. The kind of pay, job security, and benefits that come with the MIT professorship that Berners-Lee has are enormously beneficial to ones peace of mind.
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#113Insightful piece. Thank you.
One point I wish the author would elaborate on is the value a company gets by acquihiring a great designer. I haven't used Summly so I cannot measure the talent of a designer Yahoo gets. But it would be wrong to ignore the design by focusing on technology advancement in "glue vs thought" argument.
How much would a company pay to acquihiring Jonathan Ive or Philippe Stark?
The author may be right to question the designer's talent or by googling "I use Summly", but it seems rather shallow analysis.
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#114[deleted]
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#115Totally unrelated, but what does I interviewed at DE Shaw when Bezos was there and turned them down for 1/10th of their salary offer mean? I'm having trouble parsing the "for 1/10th of their salary offer" part.
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#116[deleted]
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember when selling to Yahoo! was the exit plan.
Exactly. Yahoo tried the "buy our way into being innovative" when they went on their Web 2.0 spending spree, picking up Delicious, Flickr and Upcoming. They systematically choked each one to death because the corporate structure/culture didn't support buying in companies that way (see EA for the same thing in games). Marissa Mayer may be able to stave that off this time around and Yahoo may be able to buy their way i…
Yes, I am familiar with Yahoo's history as well - and clearly their leadership in the past was simply not qualified to buy their way to innovation - as they didn't come from an innovated place.
Yahoo is a web 1.0 company, pre-crash and just didn't have it in their DNA to innovate out - like you said, they choked those previous acquisitions to death.
That doesn't mean that the strategy of acquiring their way back to a good position is bad - it was that the leaders previously attempting to do so just didn't have it in them.
I say that Mayer is their last hope.
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#118As a fellow 17-year-old, I have nothing less than respect for Nick. You're obviously doing something right if you sell your company for $30M before you're an adult. Who cares if he's not an AI researcher? The scholar who wrote this article can't bash this kid's product until he actually builds something useful. If he came up with a revolutionary AI theory, great. But the people who take an experimental idea and see t…
Be careful starting out with the age bomb in a forum full of "grownups" :)
Yeah, he did something right. But the article didn't question that.
The analogy to Tesla is not fitting because Tesla actually does innovate.
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
EXACTLY! I've been saying this for the last three years here on Hn: Yahoo is stupid to not be aggressively and heavily spending their massive cash reserves to buy back into an innovative place here in the valley. Mayer is no dope! She knows that being the convoluted portal that Yahoo is, is a death sentence. They need to act quick and fast and often. Buying up a very young tech upstart is a good step toward splicing…
I remember when selling to Yahoo! was the exit plan.
So does pg. Perhaps this kid is the next pg?
Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly
#120If "brogrammer" is a thing, this picture is next to its definition in the dictionary: http://hackingdistributed.com/images/egs-small.jpg
Why, because he's wearing sunglasses? Color of his shirt? He has short hair? Is near water? Which is the trigger?