Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Api.ai is joining Google

api.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 159 posts

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#111

Post by linkregister »

linkregister wrote: post #76
pinewurst wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't Google acquihire offers conditional on passing the usual Google employee screening process? I ask this not to be negative, but out of serious curiosity. Say your employer is bought by Google - are you axed because you slept poorly and couldn't prove Fermat's Last Theorem on the whiteboard in 15 minutes?

One of my former colleagues failed to pass his interview after his company was acquihired by Google. He had designed and contributed a decent portion of the core of the product. One of his projects for the company had about 50 stars on github. n=1

I am terribly sorry. While looking up information about the company to be able to answer the reply, I couldn't find any news about its acquisition by Google. It was shuttered by its parent company and I presume a portion of the company must have been sold to Google if my colleague was being accurate. I can't edit or delete the comment. If I'm unvoted/downvoted then I certainly understand and agree!

More info: he is a director for a well-used standard in the IETF, so he's no slouch.

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#112

Post by probe »

octaveguin wrote: post #35

Does this signal a continued push for bots and conversational UX? Where does the belief in the tech come from? Are there any examples of real success with this tech? Bots can't solve discovery in a novel way without big advances in NLP. There doesn't seem to be a bridge from here to there where it makes sense as a user. Is this just irrational exuberance? I'd love to understand why microsoft/google/facebook are all c…

The bridge is a hybrid model where you can have humans responding and an AI in the back learning. With enough training data the hope is that the AI would take over and be able to do the tasks.

That being said, I actually haven't seen a successful implementation of a full transition from a hybrid to a chatbot example (maybe like x.ai or something, but nothing on a large scale). Think there is really good opportunity there for some basic tasks, but still see bots as glorified menu options for the time being.

Having worked at 2 of the firms you listed above and doing some deep V1 bot explorations for one of them, the immediate idea for bots in the short-term is to replace apps (which is not the best UI interaction model for tail-end apps)

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#113

Post by linkregister »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #108
linkregister wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my former colleagues failed to pass his interview after his company was acquihired by Google. He had designed and contributed a decent portion of the core of the product. One of his projects for the company had about 50 stars on github. n=1

not to troll or anything but I find it utterly stupid that this is done. Also is it a big deal to have 1000 stars on a github project you run? I am curious because I do not know what the general perception is of github projects, I mean how much do they matter? I do not have a formal training on algorithms and I am studying machine learning now. Also I have a project having 200 something stars and one having 1000+ sta…

1000+ stars is a pretty big deal! I imagine you could leverage this to gain software development job interviews if you were looking.

Do they matter? It is just one of many metrics of how useful a repository is. I think it's one of the most public metrics that can be distilled to a single factoid on HN. There are absolutely better metrics to judge the quality of software.

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#114

Post by eitally »

pinewurst wrote: post #43
kchoudhu wrote: post #4

I'm assuming Google doesn't need any of the company's business, and that it is being acquired for its talent. So, my real question: how much, on average, does a founder get as part of one of these acquihires? And does s/he actually, y'know, have to do any work after getting paid?

Aren't Google acquihire offers conditional on passing the usual Google employee screening process? I ask this not to be negative, but out of serious curiosity. Say your employer is bought by Google - are you axed because you slept poorly and couldn't prove Fermat's Last Theorem on the whiteboard in 15 minutes?

Yes, you are correct (generally speaking).

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#115

Post by eitally »

NegativeK wrote: post #73
fizixer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading your comment multiple times, I have no idea what you said.

I believe anaskar is saying that, for the one instance they've seen, Google either takes on the entire team or no one, and they don't do the normal Google interview.

And he may be right for n=1, but I know of n>1 instances where he's incorrect and whole teams were not taken. I even know of one instance where the CEO/founder was non-technical and they refused to allow him to remain in charge of the product post-acquisition. The direct of product, who was a Google SWE before the acquisition, took over.

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#116

Post by eitally »

threeio wrote: post #28
keithwhor wrote: post #15

Congratulations to the api.ai team. Unrelated to the acquisition directly, but fantastic logo placement. I can't be the only person that looks for their color-changing sign every time I drive down the 101. Awesome advertising / growth hack. :)

Motorola has one over by Moffett Towers if you are looking for a new muse :)

Don't forget Rambus behind them!

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#117

Post by anxrn »

anaskar wrote: post #64
pinewurst wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't Google acquihire offers conditional on passing the usual Google employee screening process? I ask this not to be negative, but out of serious curiosity. Say your employer is bought by Google - are you axed because you slept poorly and couldn't prove Fermat's Last Theorem on the whiteboard in 15 minutes?

from what I've seen at Google specifically, when hiring for team talent, acquihires are typically performed in a binary fashion -- they take everybody who wants to go, without going through the regular screening process. n = 1

I doubt this is always true. I've been involved in acqui{hire,sition} due diligence for a number of startup at a couple of different (large) internet companies. My experience has been that the terms can vary quite a bit, both in the set of folks given an offer (all, all or none, some) and in valuation relative to average developer comp at the acquirer.

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#118

Post by asabjorn »

jshevek wrote: post #110
ben_jones wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the pendulum swings both ways. I'd bet money many a PHD could not delete a file properly.

From what I've seen, people with PhDs in CS are less competent as devs than devs without PhDs.

That doesn't make sense at all. I do not see why a PhD would disproportionally filter out people with talent for coding, so that the graduates even after years of industry experience afterwards would still be unable to be great at coding.

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#119

Post by visarga »

luke_s wrote: post #107
kchoudhu wrote: post #4

I'm assuming Google doesn't need any of the company's business, and that it is being acquired for its talent. So, my real question: how much, on average, does a founder get as part of one of these acquihires? And does s/he actually, y'know, have to do any work after getting paid?

Actually, I'm not so sure its a acquihire. Google has very recently announced a bunch of cloud machine learning products: https://cloud.google.com/products/machine-learning/ * Cloud Vision API - Upload an image, and it will tell you what is in it * Cloud Speech API - Upload a wav and it will transcribe it * Natural Language API - Parse sentences, extracts entities, sentiment and syntax * Cloud Translate API - Transla…

From what I know, Google's NLP service does not include intent extraction. Intent extraction is essential for voice command interfaces, such as those in Siri and Google Now. But I don't see why they would need to buy a startup for that, when they can do it themselves even better.

Re: Api.ai is joining Google

#120

Post by visarga »

bbcbasic wrote: post #87
grrowl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...should know better than to use products and services online? Your comment is as toxic as the acquihire culture itself, and only makes users feel less "part of the internet" when companies treat them as disposable.

Should know better than to be locked into products and services online. Buying a hairdryer from Amazon is one thing, as the hairdryer is 'immutable' but relying on a product for a workflow at work or your day to day life and having it pulled is a danger. That's why I'd use Jira or MS Word over something offered by shiny new startup. Even better use markdown files on your local drive. Back it up at Dropbox sure but ma…

> over something offered by shiny new startup

It doesn't have to be a startup. Google kills projects too.

Post reply on HN