Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 418 posts

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#401

Post by wombatmobile »

jonas21 wrote: post #359
jesseryoung wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dragon's actually been around since 1982 (39 years). Sad story about the founders, Janet and Jim Baker, though. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-an...

The Bakers sued Goldman Sachs for negligence, intentional misrepresentation and breach of fiduciary duty, which in January 2013 led to a 23-day trial in Boston. The jury cleared Goldman Sachs of all charges.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/business/goldman-sachs-cl...

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#402

Post by mbesto »

sumedh wrote: post #400
mbesto wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech M&A guy here. This is survivorship bias at its finest. How about Facebook's acquisition of Instagram? Google's acquisition of YouTube? Android? DoubleClick? Amazon's acquisition of Twitch? I could go on. For the record, yes there are VERY many acquisitions that go wrong, especially when you get to the $B+ value. The parent's characterization seems in line with the "no one ever got fired for using IBM" and that s…

> Facebook's acquisition of Instagram? Google's acquisition of YouTube? Android? DoubleClick? Amazon's acquisition of Twitch? I could go on. These examples are not comparable to what the OP was saying, e.g AOL/Time-Warner, Compaq/HP are mergers of giants with lot of employees.

Ok fine. Here ya go:

BoA/Merrill Lynch

Shell/Royal Dutch

Sanofi/Avantis

Glaxo/SmithKline

P&G/Gillette

Roche/Genetech

Exxon/Mobil

Conoco/Philips

Disney/Fox

AT&T has had so many successful mergers that the government has basically had to split them up every time because it made them into a monopoly.

Should I go on?

EDIT: PS - DoubelClick in 2007 was considered "BIG". It had 1200 employees and was bought for $3.1B. Which was A LOT at the time.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#403

Post by tootie »

geenew wrote: post #302
pie420 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the real challenge now is how do you minimize the amount of processing power needed, or bandwidth needed, and how do you do all this while minimizing translation time to under 0.5 seconds. Obviously accents and irregularities are also areas I'm sure they are focusing on, but I imagine that optimizing for real time, mobile and low CPU power devices is a huge focus for them.

They ran dragon on contemporary computers, and that was very good at least 10 years ago, probably more. So they have voice recognition working well on what would now be considered very constrained hardware.

I had an early version of Dragon on Tandy running Windows 3.1. And it was pretty usable. Not just dictation it could imitate mouse clicks when you said stuff like "maximize window".

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#404

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

fnord77 wrote: post #354
FourthProtocol wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some examples would be useful. Yes, many that don't pay tax benefit from the government, and yes, you can view that as a working class paying for the unemployed. Imagine, if you will, a 50-year-old woman on the dole (she's paid a monthly sum by the government). In Germany, for instance, this is only paid if she can prove that she applied, and continues to apply for work/seek employment. It's a bit of a mad circle - s…

we americans seem to prefer paying for bombs more than paying to have our own citizens treated decently

i think you are referring to the american government.

now, we are suckers for people giving us promises that they cant seem to keep. That's a different story.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#405

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

ZuLuuuuuu wrote: post #262
fakedang wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of Europeans in the lower taxpaying tiers who love to shit on Americans (especially when the American healthcare system has been getting so much coverage the past decade).

That is not reality, that is what American right thinks about European people. We of course know that we are paying for healthcare with our taxes, but we also know that in the end what we pay is lower than what we would pay without a government healthcare system. So we chose this healthcare system consciously.

Do we though?

What % of the general population do you think can actually come close to estimate the real cost of their complete annual health care premium cost (let alone actual procedures or services like emergencies)?

And what subset of that do you think would be incredibly shocked at the actual price ?

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#406

Post by traveler01 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #395
traveler01 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really hope not, Ubuntu is like a beacon in the Linux world, no matter if you like it or not. Microsoft purchasing Ubuntu would mean the end of Linux desktop...

I don't know, I wouldn't welcome it either that's for sure. But the github acquisition went pretty OK so far. I don't think it will be disastrous. I'm referring to the various overtures between MS and Canonical lately, a lot of collaboration going on. https://pulse.microsoft.com/en/transform-en/na/fa2-canonical... I don't think it would be the end of desktop Linux but it would mean a focus away from the core principl…

Considering those collaborations with Microsoft, I've seen some reports of Microsoft wanting to change Windows so it's based on the Linux Kernel. Seems like a long shot but...

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#407

Post by millsmob »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #389
millsmob wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edward Snowden revealed that Apple has been part of the PRISM electronic surveillance program since 2012. I would agree that Apple is significantly better on user privacy than Google or Facebook but that does not mean that the NSA isn’t sucking up all your data from Apple Maps. Claiming that Apple isn’t “telling Big Brother about me” is at best naive and at worst dangerous misinformation that could put activists and…

A fair point. But it's also worth noting that Snowden recommends Signal, and doesn't say "don't use it on an iPhone" as a caveat. To say Apple is benign is ridiculous. To say they're better on privacy than google is just true.

A fair argument but I don’t think it’s really fair to compare Signal to Apple Maps because IMHO while there is a possibility that the NSA is able to somehow intercept my Signal messages on-device prior to encryption occurring; it is almost a certainty that the NSA has some form of back door access to Apple’s infrastructure and is able to access location/search data from Apple Maps.

This isn’t even really a criticism of Apple, it’s just the reality of the world that we have created since 9/11. I don’t believe any company that operates at Apple’s scale can keep its infrastructure totally private and secure from abuses of user privacy by the state. Especially if that company has infrastructure or employees in countries like the US/UK/China that are notorious for having extrajudicial/illegal/secret/unaccountable surveillance programs.

Totally agree with you on Google, they are the worst by far on user privacy. And we shouldn’t really expect anything different from a company that derives almost its entire revenue from advertising/data AND has been deeply connected to the intelligence agencies from Day 1.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#408

Post by jpetso »

newsclues wrote: post #18
someperson wrote: post #11

Several years ago I used a Nuance product named Dragon NaturallySpeaking that had speech-to-text capability and adds verbal accessibility features on Windows platforms (eg, say "Open Word", speak your document aloud, then "Close Word") I had no idea they had enough sales to justify a $20 billion valuation. Though to be fair, Microsoft tends to acquire companies at high price tags (eg, Skype, LinkedIn, Minecraft) comp…

I think the way carmakers are going the auto industry could justify most of the valuation.

Nuance spun out their automotive business into Cerence in 2019, so they presumably have zero business with carmakers right now. There should be conditions not to compete with Cerence in the automotive market.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#409

Post by neartheplain »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #385
neartheplain wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I tried a few. Caster and talon were the best. I’d recommend talon with dragon as it’s speech engine, but apparently talon has a new built in speech engine which people like, so maybe try that engine first to save money.

Thanks! I’ll try them both out.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#410

Post by bananaface »

someperson wrote: post #11

Several years ago I used a Nuance product named Dragon NaturallySpeaking that had speech-to-text capability and adds verbal accessibility features on Windows platforms (eg, say "Open Word", speak your document aloud, then "Close Word") I had no idea they had enough sales to justify a $20 billion valuation. Though to be fair, Microsoft tends to acquire companies at high price tags (eg, Skype, LinkedIn, Minecraft) comp…

FWIW the acquisition was only 25ish percent above market value. In the public markets Nuance was worth something like $15 billion.
Post reply on HN