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What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

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Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#281

Post by manys »

robomartin wrote: post #186
api wrote: post #74

What 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…

First: Je viens en paix. So, please, don't turn this into a mud-slinging competition. Also, because of the ambiguity that exists in the English language I should clarify that this is addressed to the general HN audience rather than to api. In other words, when I use "you" it is generally meant as the plural "you". I have a genuine problem understanding where anti-capitalism sentiment, particularly in HN, comes from.…

Why should we care whether you understand, especially when you attempt to hijack a thread, demanding that people satisfy your curiosity?

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#282

Post by orangethirty »

michaelochurch wrote: post #238
orangethirty wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given your comment history, and the way you seem to understand the bigger picture, I would not hesitate to go to business with you. So, let's get busy getting acq-hired. (:

Are you in New York? I'm always happy to kick around ideas, and for the next 3 weeks or so I have more time than usual.

No, I'm not in NY. Currently reside in the Caribbean. May you email me? We could, at the least, speak through Skype or telephone.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#283

Post by WickyNilliams »

michaelochurch wrote: post #243
WickyNilliams wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to say this without sounding insulting or belittling, but I'm genuinely curious... What are your credentials? You don't have to justify yourself to some random guy on the internet (me), but a few of your comments mention you're in the "1 in a 100" category, so I'm wondering what you've done that would be so valuable to Yahoo. Is it that you're a talented engineer or more? I probably sound like a complete di…

This is a really good question. If you're looking to assess personal software skill, here's where I defined the software scale: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajector... It's from 0.0 to 3.0, but the majority of professional software engineers are between 1.0 and 2.0. Average is about 1.1-1.2, and 1.5 is seriously good; it means you're starting to have sound multiplier, infrastructural contribut…

Haha, "here's an article I prepared earlier"! Looks like an interesting read, I'll go through it now.

I understand what you mean, given the sample size it's statistically likely that there must be a some number of extraordinarily talented devs. And that they're not nurturing that talent. It is a fair observation I must say.

EDIT: Thanks for not misinterpreting the question

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#284

Post by hazov »

robomartin wrote: post #218
hazov wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe he went too far, I think he is just trolling. As someone who lost a close friend in a war and who had grandparents who lose relatives because of the Soviets and the Nazis, I think he's just talking bullshit in trying to advance the old Randian Gospel and its false dilemmas of calling everyone Socialists. I was to answer him, but I could not believe he's doing this to listen,as he claim. I also would n…

Well, considering that my family lost quote a few members to genocide I think I am entitled to detest war. And, no, I am not trolling. You shouldn't be angry at all. This is just a conversation. Pointing out that the vast majority of the technology stemming from state-funded research came from military programs is nothing less than the truth.

Ok, I'll give you the benefit of doubt, I'm not angry anymore and realized it was stupid to be in the first place.

I'll not enter in a discussion with you here and now, politically I'm very pragmatic, although I'm pretty Conservative (As a Tory used to be some years ago). This post brought some memories (of my friend) which are uncomfortable in certain situations and with the due respect to my grandparents I'll also pass this one.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#285

Post by frozenport »

kev009 wrote: post #94
frozenport wrote: post #61

Yahoo is a media not a technology company. Can you recall something Yahoo has done innovative?

They're not too shabby at engineering. Heard of Hadoop?

Certainly I know some people of U of I who worked on it, but Hadoop isn't developed for a Yahoo user. It is used mainly for serving ads and doing market analysis. A normal Yahoo user reads their mail and the sports page. Google makes its bread by facilitating advertizements on other peoples websites - it provides these kinds of technologies to other people. How they put up advertizements is their choice. Google's clients are responsible for content. Yahoo is more about providing media, they happen to make revenue with their own internal advertizements.

Google's primarily goal isn't to own every computer screen, they just hope that their ads make it to every screen. Yahoo's goal is to fill every screen. For Yahoo buying screen space is a end in itself.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#286

Post by Swannie »

michaelochurch wrote: post #247
Swannie wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, pure innovators dilemma. Seems Yahoo! tried to solve this with their "brickhouse" program, a new product incubator, but ultimately it seems that was too disruptive and got axed.

As a cynic who is constantly looking for ways for human structures to fall to pieces, I'd be very worried about the large-company politics of a center-of-excellence/"honors college". When you set up a CoE, the rest of the organization feels put out. If you put some set of people into R&D roles where they have full autonomy, then everyone wants it. The "Real Googler" issue (~10% of engineers have 20%T and the freedom…

Whilst I generally agree with your view on innovation and the whole "special friends club". But 20% time wouldn't counter the innovator's dilemma: there will still be established power structures in place, reaching to the top levels of the business, who have a vested interest in their status quo (and that doesn't mean no innovation - they can still be innovating), who will fight disruptive innovation. Google seems particularly rife with this!

The value in a incubator, new product development group, or "spin out", (don't think any CoE I've seen fits this model...), is that they have top level sponsorship to go outside of normal process for: hiring, sales, tools, platforms, etc. as required, and just build new stuff. If that's disruptive in the short term, C-levels should be pushing it through for long term gains.

You also place a lot of trust in engineers to have Clue about what to work on. Most will have ideas, many of those ideas would be a very poor use of the companies resources. If those guys feel strongly, they should spin out, and pitch to their old senior execs for seed funding. They'll soon find out if their idea has legs...

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#287

Post by [deleted] »

wwkeyboard wrote: post #265
ProblemFactory wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even five programmers - according to the news, only the founder and 2 employees are joining Yahoo. This is acquisition is fantastic news for the founder, but I'm still at a loss on how it can possibly be a good business decision for Yahoo. I don't believe in "publicity" and "getting in the news" and "making Yahoo hip again" - for $30m, you could do much better. I don't really believe it's for talent either -…

SRI accidentally granted Summly a too broad and cheap license for their summarisation technology, and it's cheaper than licensing from SRI directly. ding! ding! ding! I think we have a winner here.

[deleted]
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