Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million

#101

Post by marshallp » Fri, Feb 12, 2010, 10:53 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #98

marshallp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you some kind of friendfeed fanboy it's a fair and legitimate point that it's easier for already famous people to get their company acquired than it is for a nobody it's naive to thinks it all about remarkable products, or even luck, politics comes into it

What's naive is to think that Mark Zuckerberg would pay $50 million for something unless he actually wanted it that much.

Well theoretically, the low level people on the acquiring team could be bribed by the acquired, as is often the case in governmnet contracts.

edit: and you can 'dazzle' the acquirers with your reputation and nudge things along. Even if that hurts your reputation in the future, you can be making this as a last ditch cash grab. Kind out of taking out a mortgage and fleeing the country - or the 2000 tech boom and the current housing crisis

Re: Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million

#102

Post by marshallp » Fri, Feb 12, 2010, 11:20 PM UTC

jayliew wrote: post #100

marshallp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you some kind of friendfeed fanboy it's a fair and legitimate point that it's easier for already famous people to get their company acquired than it is for a nobody it's naive to thinks it all about remarkable products, or even luck, politics comes into it

it's a fair and legitimate point that it's easier for already famous people to get their company acquired than it is for a nobody It's naive to think that only products remarkable by your standards should see success in the market place. It's another thing to be jealous of the success of others, because the world is not a zero sum game. I'm done with this pissing match, I think I already said too much - say whatever…

I didn't make a 'malicious' attack and i'm not jealous, you're overreacting on an emotional level to an intellectual argument

no hard feelings, goodday

Re: Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million

#103

Post by icco » Sat, Feb 13, 2010, 10:50 PM UTC

bigbang wrote: post #76

ashishk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good with niche questions that only a human could help with. I've had luck with social questions ("where's the yscraper located?") and tech questions ("why's my jscript [code here] breaking in IE6?"). It's like stackoverflow, but "real-time" and not limited to coding questions only.

like Yahoo! Answers?

And, Yahoo Answers has some of the poorest questions and answers on the Internet. The only site that is worse is Experts Exchange.

Re: Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million

#104

Post by jey » Sun, Feb 14, 2010, 12:05 AM UTC

FreeRadical wrote: post #94

zaidf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a project you don't want to do inside of Google? Just quit, make it anyway, then they'll re-hire you with a $5M per head bonus. Way off base IMO. If it was true, there would be very few ex-googler companies failing. And there would be A LOT more acquisitions by Google. I have used Vark. And I think this was a SOLID technology acquisition and well worth $50M. If I was a Vark founder, I'd feel insulted by your pos…

Your implying the cost to replicate the technology and gain the same traction would cost Google more then $50m. This is clearly not true, even if you grossly overestimate and assume it takes 20 engineers 6 months each at a salary of $300k each to replicate vark, plus $10m in marketing. It still falls short of $50m. So is the difference the cost of mostly re-acquiring talent? Talent that you had already ascribed a val…

That's the Microsoft approach to building products, and while they meet all of the "feature check-list" of the product they're cloning, they usually somehow fall sort on execution. There's something a bit ineffable that comes with the people who truly grok the problem being solved and pour their heart and soul into solving it.