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What is the business case for Google in acquiring Aardvark?
Wow! I've been an avid 'Varker for sometime now and this is very surprising! I think this is probably more of a talent acquisition than anything: Just the _highlights_ from http://vark.com/team * Max Ventilla - former Googler; marketing and monetization * Nathan Stoll - former Googler; headed Google News for three years * Fritz Schneider - former Googler; founded and led Google's Firefox and Safe Browsing teams * Win…
It turns out, everything is friend based. Know rich people? They'll help you get rich too. 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.
I'd find it delightful if I were in such a position, but I'm not. Not only am I not, but the more technical side of me doesn't want to play social games to become ingratiated to the decision makers. Deep down, I still believe the world is merit based -- and that's one reason why I'm still a nobody doing nothing going nowhere.
I'd be better off not reading HN most days.
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It may not be too high if you look at the VC money they had raised. $6M had been invested so if that was a 50% stake then you are looking at a 4x return for the VC. Isn't that about right?
The buyer doesn't do his valuation based on what's put into the company.
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Re-hiring a bunch of ex-employees does not look like a talent acquisition. It looks more like someone was shrewd enough to become buddies with the M&A department the first time around.
Sorry, would you care to elaborate? I'm not really sure what you mean by "the M&A department the first time around". I think the fact that only _some_ of the team members are ex-Googlers is significant. Additionally, what other business case could their be to purchase such a small, new company. Couldn't Google just have integrated these features into their shiny new Buzz service _last week_ and have overshadowed Vark…
Wow! I've been an avid 'Varker for sometime now and this is very surprising! I think this is probably more of a talent acquisition than anything: Just the _highlights_ from http://vark.com/team * Max Ventilla - former Googler; marketing and monetization * Nathan Stoll - former Googler; headed Google News for three years * Fritz Schneider - former Googler; founded and led Google's Firefox and Safe Browsing teams * Win…
There was a time I believed all corporate activities were based only on merit. Anything not completely merit derived would be illegal. That's what we're made to believe with all kinds of anti-descriminition laws (you can't ask age, about kids, etc during interviews for example). It turns out, everything is friend based. Know rich people? They'll help you get rich too. Have a project you don't want to do inside of Goo…
I can confirm this. Contrariwise, knowing poor people can help you get poor. Such is life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aardvark will integrate extremely naturally into Google Buzz.
When listening to Sergey talk about Google Buzz ten minutes into this video he brings up the value of using buzz to ask questions to his contacts with the recommendation system directing the question to who best can answer it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_W6Qbob2mg#t=10m10s I was like "this sounds like Aardvark".
What is the business case for Google in acquiring Aardvark?
They might have some as-yet-undisclosed IP which one of the big search companies would be able to defend - rather own it than fight it.
Also, integrating the already-refined code and ideas into Buzz, Wave, Orkut, other future social initiatives.
What is the business case for Google in acquiring Aardvark?
One thing they probably really like is the natural language parsing. It's surprisingly good (though by no means perfect) at automatically tagging your question. For example, looking through my old questions, I think it automatically tagged "what's a good place to get a cheap SSL certificate? I don't think I need wildcard subdomains" as "SSL". In a perfect world, you ask Google a question just like you'd ask a person…