241–250 of 260 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the point was that Yahoo, a public company, was throwing away 30 million for no apparent gain.
The are buying traction. That's 30 million dollars worth of it. It could make them back that much money by getting people to start using Yahoo again.
Edit: and if Marissa does get a lot of faith from investors, which she will if one of her first moves is a victory against google, then her reputation will undoubtedly rise. And how much is the reputation of a CEO worth at a multi billion dollar company? I think a lot more than $30M. Just look at Apple's recent stock movement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused. Are you saying this kid should have his $30M (or whatever he gets out of the deal) taken away from him, because you perceive he didn't earn it?
No. I'm saying is maybe increase high end income taxes, maybe look into the viability of higher capital gains taxes, maybe find and create some kind of disincentive for companies to be bailing out VCs. Find some way to even the playing field. I'm sorry, but you don't need to have come from Stanford to be smart enough to work at Yahoo! or Google or etc.
Ah, so you are saying this kid should have his not $30M but $29M taken away from him, because you perceive he didn't earn it. That's quite diferent!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually this is a very common scheme in Silicon Valley -- public companies "throwing away" money on relatively worthless startups. It is a good way to siphon money out of the stock market and into the pockets of VCs and founders -- and I would not be surprised if the person who pushes the acquisition gets a cut of the money too, or other "favors" in the future. The company knows its going to can the product and the…
That's a perspective that hadn't occurred to me (I'm not actually in startups or Silicon Valley). Sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it's believable. It does not, however, mean shareholders can't/shouldn't complain about throwing money away, though.
$30 million could be spent on building daycare for all Yahoo mums and dads who can no longer work from home.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the part I don't understand capitalism: on one hand, big corps try to save every dime by downsizing and outsourcing, and on the other hand, they pour money like this.
That's not capitalism, it's poor valuation, managerial inefficiency/stupidity, and fad/reaction behavior (among other things, I'm sure). It's counterintuitive, counterproductive, a massive waste, contrary to the penny-pinching you mention, and obtuse. It's also just kind of how people are. You can't reasonably expect a large corporation -- which is just a big group of people who are all trying to make decisions and g…
In 2005 Yahoo buys Delicious, a bookmarking site, for between $15MM - $30MM. Summly was acquired for a reported $30MM. Delicious had 5MM users, and let's face it how much "CS beef" goes into a bookmark sharing site. Summly claims to have 1MM downloads. The difference between Delicious' 5MM users and Summly's 1MM is a factor of five but the order of magnitude is roughly the same. Joshua Schachter is highly respected a…
Can someone comment on whether this is a reasonable amount of money to pay for talented engineers and some patents? As a service, the deal doesn't make much sense...it doesn't seem that the world is hungry for ways to simplify web content, even if the technology actually worked. The most popular articles on most news sites are popular because of their in depth content or because they are slideshows of arousing photos…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> unfair It's laughable that a programmer would worry about how unfair the industry is on the top end. Do you get how lucky we are compared even to other engineers? To say nothing of service workers who work much harder for much less.
Every now and again, if I feel I need more money, I take a look at http://www.globalrichlist.com/ and plop in my current salary. Though the numbers are probably a bit dated by now, it's quite sobering.
with that said, I do consider myself tremendously lucky, but when looking at such lists there are more dimensions to consider than just salary number.
Summly is a product, and as such, has been purchased for more than it cost to "manufacture", as you laid out.
$30M is bargain shopping; lest we forget "Draw Something" was bought for $180 million, or "Instagram" was purchased for a whopping $1 billion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually this is a very common scheme in Silicon Valley -- public companies "throwing away" money on relatively worthless startups. It is a good way to siphon money out of the stock market and into the pockets of VCs and founders -- and I would not be surprised if the person who pushes the acquisition gets a cut of the money too, or other "favors" in the future. The company knows its going to can the product and the…
That's a perspective that hadn't occurred to me (I'm not actually in startups or Silicon Valley). Sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it's believable. It does not, however, mean shareholders can't/shouldn't complain about throwing money away, though.
The one thing that I have learned about corruption is that at least small instances of it occur everywhere, even if its not "the norm." Wherever there is way to make money, people might very well be doing it.
And yes you are right although I tried to imply that shareholders were the ones being screwed - this is obviously unfair to shareholders, whether the transaction is corrupt or not.