Google Acquires North • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Acquires North

#211

Post by 908B64B197 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

peeters wrote: post #41

DiabloD3 wrote: post #15

Sigh, all I can think is yet another promising startup vanishes into the depths of Google, never to be seen again. Google, please stop buying companies, please learn to support your products and build a loyal customer base. You are not a startup anymore, you need to make the transformation that companies like Microsoft did, and quit moving fast and breaking things. People don't want an agile foundation, they want a h…

I'm not sure "promising startup" describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well. Everything I've heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government. Tales from past employees are not flattering. Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders…

The public announcement really make it sound like an acquihire, but in practice it sounds like an acquihire without the hire. Really what Google is after are the patents that North bought from Intel[0].

From what I've been told the current employees won't even be offered to interview at Google, much less hired. They might keep some of the folks around until the support for their existing products end, but if they do it will be from their offshoring development center in Canada. Only the patents and the tech is really going to Mountain View. That paints a pretty dark picture of the business; it seems they didn't improve a lot on the tech that they got from Intel. Google is paying a premium to make sure the patents don't end up at Apple.

No words on the founders either, that typically means they won't be part of the AR team at Google. Else it would have been announced.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/19/intel-abandons-vaunt-smart...

Re: Google Acquires North

#212

Post by 908B64B197 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

ornornor wrote: post #72

peeters wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure "promising startup" describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well. Everything I've heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government. Tales from past employees are not flattering. Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders…

> mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government This describes a surprisingly high number of companies I’ve worked at in Canada. These SRED credits keep afloat so many companies that should have otherwise perished and that won’t ever go anywhere. You can even hire SRED consultants that will help you milk those credits as much as pos…

SRED is a cargo cult thing mostly.

The American approach is to finance fundamental research that's just beyond what's currently possible and viable (take a look at the Apollo Program and the semiconductor industry or any modern DARPA challenge) while the Canadian one seems to be a kind of cargo culting of Silicon Valley where some non-technical civil servant looks for keywords in a form to grant money or not.

Re: Google Acquires North

#213

Post by 908B64B197 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

baldajan wrote: post #145

peeters wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure "promising startup" describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well. Everything I've heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government. Tales from past employees are not flattering. Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders…

"able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government" - that's absolutely false. North/Thalmic was flush with cash for a long time, and though their Myo didn't sell "well" - it still brought in millions. Not denying the founders had lavish lifestyles, but they were running a company that raised 15M series A, and 120M series B - so that's honestly "expected". The grant I assume you're refer…

I'll put it differently, they raised almost as much as what Google was willing to pay for the Intel Vaunt patents.

They got to milk government grants for a few years and managed to sell the company (really the patents) at a premium before it went bankrupt.

Had they been able to sell more units and make a viable product they would probably have been able to raise more.

Re: Google Acquires North

#214

Post by 908B64B197 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #45

DiabloD3 wrote: post #15

Sigh, all I can think is yet another promising startup vanishes into the depths of Google, never to be seen again. Google, please stop buying companies, please learn to support your products and build a loyal customer base. You are not a startup anymore, you need to make the transformation that companies like Microsoft did, and quit moving fast and breaking things. People don't want an agile foundation, they want a h…

This was a talent acquisition from the looks of it. North had failed and this was an exit that was better than bankrupcy.

There's no talent to acquire. Google is in for the patents.

Employment is explicitly not guaranteed at Google, and if so it'll be from their satellite office. And no words on the founders coming onboard at Google which is a sign that they really aren't interested by the company itself.

North shipped about 1'000 units in its lifetime, barely different than the Intel Vaunt, and their V2 was still exclusively CGI rendering on their website with no launch data in sight.

Re: Google Acquires North

#215

Post by 908B64B197 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

vikramkr wrote: post #74

DiabloD3 wrote: post #15

Sigh, all I can think is yet another promising startup vanishes into the depths of Google, never to be seen again. Google, please stop buying companies, please learn to support your products and build a loyal customer base. You are not a startup anymore, you need to make the transformation that companies like Microsoft did, and quit moving fast and breaking things. People don't want an agile foundation, they want a h…

North was not doing so hot - they've been looking for an acquirer for a while now and were facing running out of money. So, not exactly a promising startup at the current moment unfortunately. Based on the announcement that second gen focals are cancelled as a part of this acquisition, it doesn't even seem like they're pretending it's to continue the product line etc - it seems pretty clearly for the tech/patents/etc…

They barely produced 1'000 units. It would be pretty hard to support these.