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Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

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Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#131

Post by darklajid »

jamesjyu wrote: post #120
darklajid wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's .. an IM app (and arguably it wasn't a good one/a broken one for quite a while). Like AOL offered? ICQ? MSN? Okay, all dead. Xmpp? Skype? Lync? Hangout? Telegram? TextSecure? etc. etc. I'm sure I forgot lots of somewhat sensible/popular options. Basically it's not doing a lot, there are lots of alternatives, I see no way to keep users - or make them pay anything. I mean, I guess they pay with their privacy and/o…

"To see the value, you .. need to find value in something?" I disagree. I think everyone is capable of empathizing with a market and understanding why something would bring value, even if it doesn't bring value to you specifically.

That's fair. But it doesn't work like that for me.

Now that I think about it, I can come up two reasons:

1) The sums involved. Both for the deals in question (AOL, WhatsApp) or in my football example, the sums are mind-bendingly large. I .. cannot grasp those. Millions are already insane, but billions? I have no clue how to value _anything_ at those levels. Certainly not things that aren't entirely new or special. My gut feeling says "That's far too much" a lot earlier already, more or less regardless of what we're talking about.

2) I guess the market is hard to estimate if you're not only not part of it, you're actively surrounding yourself with people that are like-minded. Sure, every WhatsApp user can tell a story about friends and family getting a lot of value out of it. Of course! In a similar fashion I can point out that none of my family members (as far as I'm aware) use it, none of my friends seems to require it, it .. doesn't exist in my ecosystem and the last person that asked if I am on WhatsApp - about 3 month ago - was a manager at work. I mean.. WTH? "No, and certainly not for work". It's reinforcing the initial position, confirming my bias. "No one uses it, no one needs it".

Then again, maybe that _is_ a lack of empathy. You're the judge. I merely express my disbelief and sense of wonder here, if everyone thinks these values are cool then yes, I'm obviously wrong.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#132

Post by mikeash »

epmatsw wrote: post #84
aylons wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but why do you believe WhatsApp is overvalued? They have an incredible mindshare, it is the only app (besides Facebook), that I see moms and grandmas using on a daily basis. Heck, my mom talk to me mostly through it. She evens send me emoticons, pictures and voice notes!

I've never seen a person in the US actually use WhatsApp to talk to another person in the US. I used to occasionally see someone use it to talk to friends who were traveling abroad, but that's mostly been replaced by iMessage or Hangouts at this point.

WhatsApp's user base is largely non-US, so I wouldn't expect you'd see many people in the US using it compared to its actual popularity.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#133

Post by mikeash »

raverbashing wrote: post #92
tat45 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention those people who live in areas still not serviced by any broadband providers. I know, insane, right? I thought everyone lived in cities too!

You can usually get an Edge/2G connection, which is probably faster than dial-up.

Satellite internet can also be had for prices which aren't completely absurd.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#134

Post by sliverstorm »

67726e wrote: post #50
earlyriser wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: why do you say luckily?

No the commenter you're asking, but I've never had a constructive conversation with "those types" - the kind who go out of their way to talk about getting laid off from a tech company. Of all the ones I've spoken with, it followed the pattern of "BigCo outsourced jobs to those darn Foreigners, and I got laid off, and it will happen to you too!". In particular I worked with a former DBA for IBM at a grocery store in h…

[...] you probably suck

It doesn't matter how good you are when your whole department or office is axed. The wheat is thrown out along with the chaff.

if low wage, and probably lower skilled workers can take your job

What actually happened in many cases was executives thought low wage unskilled workers could do your job, and over the course of a few years discovered whoops, no, they really can't. Jobs are then repatriated. Then a few years later some executive gets a bright idea... It seems to be a cycle these days.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#135

Post by rpcope1 »

steego wrote: post #81
67726e wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the commenter you're asking, but I've never had a constructive conversation with "those types" - the kind who go out of their way to talk about getting laid off from a tech company. Of all the ones I've spoken with, it followed the pattern of "BigCo outsourced jobs to those darn Foreigners, and I got laid off, and it will happen to you too!". In particular I worked with a former DBA for IBM at a grocery store in h…

> What I never heard was any constructive career advice, or any details other than the outsourcing and cheap foreigners. I don't think the purpose of their tirade was to provide you with career advice. It sounds like they were bitter that they invested time and energy in their career and they were resentful of managers replacing them with an option that seemed cheaper. They probably grew up in a time where you could…

Can confirm about IBM. Dad spent the majority of his career at IBM as an engineer working on various mainframe platforms (and some AS/400 stuff later on); he mentioned that in the 70's an IBM check was about as good as gold; they were all promised pensions and that they'd be taken care of out into retirement, hence why there were many "lifers" like dad. The culture back then was such that if you changed jobs every single year, "there must have been something really wrong with you, since you couldn't hold a job down." Fast forward to the late 2000's and IBM had kind of been turned on it's head; Dad was real close to retirement and hoping to get out with a pension while he still could but got cut a year before he could retire, when IBM moved a huge swath of it's big iron resources to Indian firms, which is a hell of a shame. I've met a lot of these guys, and while it's unfortunate that many of them can't adapt, I think there's a serious lesson to be learned here, as they got pretty screwed by their employer. This is the reason unless I have some very personal involvement in something I'm doing, I won't break my back for my employer, I won't work 80 hours a week, I won't deal with someone jerking my chain, because you better bet few (if any) employers will ever do the same for you, and I'd hate to get later into life like that and realize I committed a huge part of my life uncompensated to an organization that didn't ever really care about me. I think that's at the root of what has torn a lot of these guys (and gals) up, is that's not how it was seen 40-50 years ago.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#136

Post by paulhauggis »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #79
67726e wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the commenter you're asking, but I've never had a constructive conversation with "those types" - the kind who go out of their way to talk about getting laid off from a tech company. Of all the ones I've spoken with, it followed the pattern of "BigCo outsourced jobs to those darn Foreigners, and I got laid off, and it will happen to you too!". In particular I worked with a former DBA for IBM at a grocery store in h…

if low wage, and probably lower skilled workers can take your job, you probably suck The alternative hypothesis is that you are overqualified. You may not have been overqualified when you took the position but now you are. De-skilling is a very real phenomenon in the workplace. The xenophobic uncle has seen more than you and may well be the wiser man. Sometimes the country on the other side of the border is the enemy…

"The xenophobic uncle has seen more than you and may well be the wiser man. Sometimes the country on the other side of the border is the enemy."

Open source has also cut many jobs and devalued salaries, but many don't see it this way. As businesses get more tech savvy (which is happening fairly quickly), they realize that they don't have to pay software engineers to build software any longer. They can take open source, which many engineers and good developers toiled away on for years, and pay what I call a 'software mechanic' considerably less money (and they don't need nearly as much experience) to add features to it. It makes outsourcing very easy and a realistic option.

I predicted this 10 years ago when everyone said free software was the future and Stallman somehow thought that all developers would become government workers (his dream was to have all software "free" and have the government pay developers salaries for the good of everyone).

I just don't understand why people in the tech community try so hard to give all of their leverage away to big companies.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#137

Post by sliverstorm »

allendoerfer wrote: post #123
pyvpx wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if so, then why should the pipes be privatized at all? in that case, the pipes should be built out and maintained at a governmental-level and leased back at a uniform/standardized price to all providers.

Because, you want the pipes to grow.

I wonder if that really matters all that much. It could be my limited perspective talking, but fiber seems pretty future-proof. Nothing is faster than light; the only conceivable improvement would be cables that can handle wider spectrum of light.

(The nodes on the other hand, of course, are continually improving)

Ethernet cable is a similar story. NICs have advanced tremendously, but Cat5 (defined in 1991) is still usually all you need.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#138

Post by hatu »

ams6110 wrote: post #65
ascagnel_ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes; Verizon has an offering designed explicitly for rural areas[1], but it's expensive. The linked article is from 2012, and prices have since declined, but the general gist of the service is the same: a big antenna you bolt to your house or a tree and will pull from an existing account-level share plan (if you have one). [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/verizons-homefusion-now-brings-4g-l...

You still have to be in a 4G coverage zone. I guess we're getting into the definition of "rural." Where I live I have no coverage from any carrier.

Living in the midwest, when you're 10 minutes outside of a major city, you're lucky to get spoty 3G. After 20 minutes you're lucky to get any signal.

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#139

Post by [deleted] »

sliverstorm wrote: post #134
67726e wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the commenter you're asking, but I've never had a constructive conversation with "those types" - the kind who go out of their way to talk about getting laid off from a tech company. Of all the ones I've spoken with, it followed the pattern of "BigCo outsourced jobs to those darn Foreigners, and I got laid off, and it will happen to you too!". In particular I worked with a former DBA for IBM at a grocery store in h…

[...] you probably suck It doesn't matter how good you are when your whole department or office is axed. The wheat is thrown out along with the chaff. if low wage, and probably lower skilled workers can take your job What actually happened in many cases was executives thought low wage unskilled workers could do your job, and over the course of a few years discovered whoops, no, they really can't. Jobs are then repatr…

[deleted]

Re: Verizon to Buy AOL for $4.4B

#140

Post by serve_yay »

huskyr wrote: post #15

For those who are wondering why this might be a good investment: AOL still has 2 million (!) dialup subscribers that fork over $20 a month. http://qz.com/401567/more-than-2-million-american-homes-are-...

They do have that, but I suspect this has more to do with ads than those customers. If it was about those customers, Verizon would be paying quite a lot for them.
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