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Accenture to acquire Ookla

newsroom.accenture.com

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Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#151

Post by tjoff »

jedberg wrote: post #88
tjoff wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just searching surely does not mark them as down?

That's exactly how it works. The website is just a counter of how many people landed on the page searching for "is $X down"

I don't know but I really doubt that.

When you search for a service you get the current status and you get the option to report a problem.

The minimal you expect from such a service is to keep track of how many % of users are searching also reports an error. There might of course still be errors but that alone surely can't be it. But please correct me if I'm wrong.

edit: and their own description only mentions actual reports https://downdetector.com/methodology/

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#152

Post by mcintyre1994 »

dmurray wrote: post #96
simmonmt wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was one of the reasons given, at the time, for why Netflix created fast.com. It's served by the same infra that does their streaming, and is thus difficult for isps to game. That is, it'd be hard for them to do some hack to make fast.com numbers without also benefiting Netflix streaming performance in the bargain.

Actually I thought Netflix had already acquired Ookla / speedtest.com, so I was surprised to see this headline. But it looks like this was just the Mandela effect. That said, why didn't Netflix acquire the market leader in this space? Creating their own seems way less useful, since network effects are the whole point.

Based on Accenture acquiring them, I’d guess the actual business wasn’t really interesting to Netflix. And that leaves the infrastructure, where the value they get is it being Netflix infrastructure. I can see why they spent the money on a really good brandable domain instead.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#153

Post by vanviegen »

bruce511 wrote: post #132
anotherevan wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the codebase doesn't really matter Sigh. I’m sure the viewpoint from being in mergers and acquisitions is quite different (and to me, often comes across as quite callow). I’ve been a software developer for 35 years (closer to 45 if you include my pre-professional life, aka adolescence) and have deliberately stayed “on the tools” in my career with working in codebases and product development as I’ve found that is wh…

Your argument is sound. It certainly takes a good deal of skill to create good code. And yes, good code makes it easier to create a better product. And yes it's easier to build a better company on a better product. But history is littered with "worse products" that won in the marketplace. It turns out that all the attributes you name are helpful but not necessary . Good marketing trumps good product. We see this over…

> So, assuming we can all make "good enough" code

Your entire argument hinges on "good enough". Problem is: you can never know if something is "good enough", except in hindsight for those products that succeeded.

I'm upvoting you because your comment is well made, and certainly common, even if it is nothing more than a tautology :)

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#154

Post by tormeh »

bruce511 wrote: post #132
anotherevan wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the codebase doesn't really matter Sigh. I’m sure the viewpoint from being in mergers and acquisitions is quite different (and to me, often comes across as quite callow). I’ve been a software developer for 35 years (closer to 45 if you include my pre-professional life, aka adolescence) and have deliberately stayed “on the tools” in my career with working in codebases and product development as I’ve found that is wh…

Your argument is sound. It certainly takes a good deal of skill to create good code. And yes, good code makes it easier to create a better product. And yes it's easier to build a better company on a better product. But history is littered with "worse products" that won in the marketplace. It turns out that all the attributes you name are helpful but not necessary . Good marketing trumps good product. We see this over…

I've been in an acquisition where code quality was important. But it was probably an edge case since the buyer just wanted to turn the company into a feature, and ease of integration into the buyer was important.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#155

Post by [deleted] »

8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #146
forcer wrote: post #44

I am not sure why this old news is surfacing here today but I can give my 2 cents, since I sold speedchecker.com last year and were directly competing with Ookla. The main business is selling the data. You use Speedtest.net to troubleshoot your connection but metrics captured with the test alongside location data give telcos invaluable insights on where they should improve their networks. Telcos pay 6 figures annuall…

ISP seems to give higher network priority to Ookla so I'm not sure how useful it is compared to actual experience.

[deleted]

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#156

Post by kalleboo »

qsxfthnkp2322 wrote: post #90
athrowaway3z wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever fear that any big player like Google, Apple, Valve (though fewer mobiles), Meta, OpenAI (nowadays), etc decide to get involved?

Apple has their own internal speed app due to privacy concerns.

And on macOS Apple has `networkQuality` on the command line which runs a speed test against presumably the iCloud servers

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#157

Post by swiftcoder »

mbesto wrote: post #110
arikrahman wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it takes to defeat the business model is https://openspeedtest.com/

Or https://speed.cloudflare.com/

Cloudflare's undercounts my download by 25% and my upload by 75% (versus both speedtest.net and my observed sustained data rates). Also reports double the latency.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#158

Post by acdha »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #103
fragmede wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Netflix doesn't care what your connection to speedtest.net is, they care what your connection to your closest Netflix server box is. A while back, Comcast/your last-mile ISP was throttling traffic to Netflix to get Netflix to pay them. So while Netflix's box had plenty of bandwidth to their ISP, your ISP wasn't using it, intentionally. Fast.com was their response to that, so you could blame your ISP and not N…

That’s a really over simplification of the issue. Plenty of Netflix edge CDNs are (and always were) ISP hosted. It’s a win-win for both and a complete no-brainer. The ISP v. Netflix argument was always about contract and margin negotiations. Flat rate, usage percentages, minimums, maximums, special plans, cuts, etc. who has the upper hand in the negotiation so to speak. Funnily enough the repeal of net neutrality gav…

The internet discourse focused on the big ISPs which refused to deploy CDN nodes and then said they needed to double-charge for peering capacity. Most smaller ISPs deployed those Open Connect nodes either becsuse they weren’t as greedy or felt that their customers had alternatives.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#160

Post by ricardobayes »

forcer wrote: post #44

I am not sure why this old news is surfacing here today but I can give my 2 cents, since I sold speedchecker.com last year and were directly competing with Ookla. The main business is selling the data. You use Speedtest.net to troubleshoot your connection but metrics captured with the test alongside location data give telcos invaluable insights on where they should improve their networks. Telcos pay 6 figures annuall…

Telcos wanting to improve their networks is news to me. I always thought providing the bare minimum is basically their business model.
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