Ouch. Still, hard to find fault with the analysis, no matter how unpopular it may be with much of the readership of HN. Many folks here would love to sell a company to Yahoo! for $30MM after 18mo with minimal engineering effort and download numbers probably below those of many folks reading the news on HN.
We should all be very happy. This is a sign that easy money is still out there for the clever individual. I applaud the kid for what he has done. Yahoo might be stupid, but we've known that for a long long time.
I hear what you're saying, but the problem with poor deals like this which are done for reasons other than the headline reason, is that they're effectively random. You cannot structure your business in order to get an exit like this. You tend to luck into one - or more often you get it because you have a network of unpublicized connections who have interests that are not overtly clear. The rest of us? We should be happy when money is going to solid, well-built businesses with metrics we can all understand rewarding us for hard work and innovation - because unless you're already an insider, that's the only thing you can control to get a win.