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Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

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Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#361

Post by Marciplan »

alberth wrote: post #192
ignoramous wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone is wanting to take on Twilio. Well then we can expect Microsoft to swoop in for Twilio any year now.

Given that TWLO market cap is $62B at the moment I wrote this comment, and Microsoft would have to pay a premium over that current valuation, I doubt they have the stomach to purchase someone for $70+ billion. And given that Jeff Lawson, is both he founder and CEO of TWLO - it's not entirely clear he would sell (unless the number is just so high, he has the fiduciary requirement that he has too - in which case I assu…

I am likely very dense but —- at what point does a (public) company have the fudiciary requirement to sell the company? I mean, I believe you, but I’m curious when that becomes the requirement :)

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#362

Post by propogandist »

rkalla wrote: post #106
agotterer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with the Audi. I don’t understand why all the car companies aren’t licensing the assistant technology from the big tech companies and using it as the default. I get Siri via car play, but even car play is sandboxed because it can’t control things like the radio or temperature.

For the reason it took BMW so long to say yes to Android Auto - Amazon/Google will happily license the tech but want ALL the customer data off the car.

Few years back, and data collection techniques have only gotten more aggressive.

https://www.motor1.com/news/239477/toyota-android-auto-priva...

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#364

Post by propogandist »

rkalla wrote: post #106
agotterer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with the Audi. I don’t understand why all the car companies aren’t licensing the assistant technology from the big tech companies and using it as the default. I get Siri via car play, but even car play is sandboxed because it can’t control things like the radio or temperature.

For the reason it took BMW so long to say yes to Android Auto - Amazon/Google will happily license the tech but want ALL the customer data off the car.

Here's an article from a few years back, from Toyota publicly stating they won't support Android Auto due to privacy concerns[1]

It's not just Amazon/Google, car manufacturers like Hyundai are selling data to Verisk, a data broker, who in-turn sells the individuals driving data to insurance companies and other entities [2]. They get people to "opt-in" by offering people free 'connected services' which has data-sharing buried in the T&C.

I'm sure other manufacturers are also going to do similar things as this allows them to generate additional, incremental revenue from user data about their end users.

[1] https://www.motor1.com/news/239477/toyota-android-auto-priva...

[2] https://www.verisk.com/press-releases/2018/april/hyundai-joi...

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#365

Post by fomine3 »

dalbasal wrote: post #188

I think a lot of big acquisitions make "sense," given the current market. The most successful companies have lots of cash, high share prices, and amazing cash cows. They could borrow for (almost) free, so resources are practically unlimited. Their R&D is already well funded. Most of their big, growth oriented endeavours are not cash-constrained. There are usually no factories to build or production to scale up. Googl…

Just curious the difference of Waymo and Boston Dynamics.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#366

Post by Pokepokalypse »

ryanSrich wrote: post #131
tootie wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure Nuance also does the Comcast Xfinity voice remotes. They are actually really well done. And it's a humongous customer to have your claws in.

It’s literally better than Siri. I don’t know how, but it is. I’d say it’s even better than Alexa in terms of its ability to recognize things I say.

Ironically, Siri (as a virtual assistant) came from SRI's Darpa program "CALO" back in the 2000's. SRI also has a speech recognition platform called EduSpeak, and that is the codebase that was licensed to Nuance for their product.

However, after Siri was sold to Apple, I don't think that they retained the EduSpeak portion for speech-to-text. (I honestly don't know - but it seems to me it did not; I don't think Apple wanted to pay that license fee to SRI).

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#367

Post by intuitionist »

nemothekid wrote: post #242
pedrocr wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree, but I think MSFT (and friends) are in this predicament no matter what. What's the alternative? Returning money to shareholders is the common solution for when you don't know how to grow more and profitability in the businesses you're already in and don't have any particular advantage in entering new ones. I'm not saying that's what they should be doing but sitting on a pile of capital that you don't know w…

My own uneducated position is that is a new problem because shareholders don't want their money back. Shareholders have been piling money into stocks [1], so if you gave them the money back they would likely just put it right back into Microsoft (or, more likely, it would signal that Microsoft doesn't know what to do with the money, so people would pull out of Microsoft to invest somewhere else). [1] https://finance.…

If they reinvested the dividend right back in MSFT then MSFT can give its owners a tax break and get the same economic result by buying back shares.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#368

Post by 2fast4you »

jesseryoung wrote: post #288
16bytes wrote: post #63

For those confused, this acquisition is due in large part by Nuance's dominance in healthcare related products. From Nuance's last earnings release[1]: “We are very pleased with the strong start to the fiscal year, as we delivered revenue and EPS above our guidance range expectations,” said Mark Benjamin, Chief Executive Officer at Nuance. “We continued to advance our strategic initiatives, accelerating our cloud tra…

I work in healthcare software and recently did a spike building a voice assistant for the EMR. We compared Google, AWS, Azure and Nuance's voice and intent recognition and Nuance blew all the others out of the water. When it comes to understanding medical terminology Nuance is way ahead of anything other providers have. Dragon has been around for 23 years and has been THE product for VR in the medical field for at le…

Wow, did not know EMR voice assistant was a thing. Can’t wait till our team works on something like this

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#369

Post by neartheplain »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #189
everdrive wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This never seems to be a popular opinion on hn, but this is the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine: A complex ai built by a billion dollar company, an enormous amount of man hours, only so that switching a light switch because slower, and less deterministic. I'm certainly not suggesting that there are no valid uses for ML/AI, but digital assistants seem to be an enormous waste.

Speech recognition goes way beyond digital assistants. Plain old transcription is super useful, especially in terms of accessibility. I was voice coding for a while because of RSI and even as immature as the tech is, it saved my ass.

What systems did you use for voice coding? I may need to use them soon for similar reasons.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#370

Post by Pokepokalypse »

kelnos wrote: post #340
dalbasal wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually thinking " Satya, you know that Berkshire is you end game here... right? " I agree, but I think MSFT (and friends) are in this predicament no matter what. What's the alternative? That said, I don't really think BRK is the end game. For one thing, Berkshire is kind of an exception. There are plenty of smaller conglomerates that are actually like Berkshire, but most pretend not to be conglomerates. They…

> I agree, but I think MSFT (and friends) are in this predicament no matter what. What's the alternative? Well, they can just stop growing, and continue doing what works. If that thing stops working (or they have a good belief that it will stop working before too long), they have two options: 1) do nothing, and gradually wind the company down and return capital to shareholders so they can reinvest it elsewhere, or 2)…

Well; having been employed at 4 different companies in the past, where those companies were purchased and then shut down by a competitor - I'm pretty sure that consolidation is almost always a bad thing. For the workers, and the consumers.
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