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Robotics, particularly without the gov't pig trough, needs a visionary and a long game point. Andy Rubin was a visionary and he bailed. He left Apple to found
by aresant 11y ago
Robotics, particularly without the gov't pig trough, needs a visionary and a long game point.
Andy Rubin was a visionary and he bailed.
He left Apple to found Danger which was one of the "genesis" products that led to the smartphone era. (1)
He made the next huge leap with Android and almost failed until Google showed up to help him fully execute his vision under their stewardship.
After Android became a very mature business in its own right what to do with the visionary founder?
The article states that "Page is interested in robots" - can you imagine if Larry Page came to you and said "Hey how about you literally build robots all day. You could be Tony Stark and here's $100m to get you started. We'll change the world!"
It's a hard to turn down offer, Rubin accepted and tried to recapture the magic pursuing somebody else's vision.
But it's damn tough to be a founder / visionary under somebody else's thumb, especially when you're set for life financially.
That's a story that never works out, but is played out again and again in technical acquisitions as big organizations attempt to find a place for founders.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_(company)
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
- zmanian 11y agoLeaving out this context from Bloomberg article is negligent on the part of the journalist...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- budu3 11y agoIt's my understanding the Andy has always been a Robotics geek even dated as far back as his days a Danger. So I find it hard to believe the argument that Andy has to be coerced into perusing a Robotics vision that he had no passion for.
- legulere 11y agoHis wikipedia article says that his first job was as a robotics engineer at Carl Zeiss for three years.
- kolme 11y agoSomeone pointed out he already worked in a company making robots for three years. Well, maybe that's even why Android is called "Android".
- mandeepj 11y agoApple engineers nick named Andy as 'Android' and he choose that name for his mobile OS (android)
- doyoulikeworms 11y agoI wonder if that was a Star Trek reference
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago>Robotics, particularly without the gov't pig trough, needs a visionary and a long game point. There's a massive opportunity for a startup to move towards the personal/home robot market and make a killing, without any government help nor without some fabled visionary type person. Google sought what were essentially military robots from BD. Those machines, if ever turned into a product, would have been tens of millions of dollar each. They make no sense and google cannot solve the problem of loud servos/actuators and the relatively low power density of battery technology. Heck, some BD demos I've seen run on gas engines. When the DoD is your customer, the last thing you want to sell them is a tool that'll give away their soldiers' positions. I've seen ROS projects on commodity hardware that's 75% of the way to a decent home robot. I think this is doable within the next 10 years. Having a home robot will be like having a smartphone today. We'll wonder how we got along without them. Hell, I'm half-tempted to get into this field myself. Everything about robots from these big companies has been "big picture" bullshit; big spending, big PR releases, big promises, untried tech, and sadly lots of questionable patent filing sprees. None of these big companies are interested in making a real affordable product it seems, or believe it to be too difficult or unprofitable. Its like they're trying to sell mainframes in 1980 and the PC Jr, Commodore64, Apple //, etc are soon going to eat their lunch. The big iron approach failed in computing the same way its failing in robotics.
- YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago>> The big iron approach failed in computing If you mean 'failed' as in 'is widely used by all major financial organisations and thousands of businesses besides', sure, big iron failed.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoIn the consumer space, which is what we're all talking about, right? Unless by 'robots' you mean giant arms that put cars together, but that's 1970s technology there. Gates/Jobs couldn't sell you a basement mainframe with a house full of terminals, and for good reason.
- 11y ago
- eruditely 11y ago> It's a hard to turn down offer, Rubin accepted and tried to recapture the magic pursuing somebody else's vision. But it's damn tough to be a founder / visionary under somebody else's thumb, especially when you're set for life financially. That's a story that never works out, but is played out again and again in technical acquisitions as big organizations attempt to find a place for founders. Do you think Market's haven't quite priced this in yet? Market's are supposed to be epistemically efficient and factoring in relevant information.
- sgt101 11y agoThat's an economists view of markets, the reality is that the fluctuations of stock every day illustrates the irrationality and near randomness of markets in reality.
- dreamfactory2 11y agosome things aren't for sale
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago"Efficient market" is a hypothesis, not an immutable law of the universe.
- eruditely 11y agoYeah but if this has been going on for quite some time now, people should have adjusted by now. If market's haven't adjusted for this long, then i'm going to say our assessment of the situation and conclusions are incomplete in some major way. This sort of reasoning is saying that buy-outs are overpriced, so we can make a decision-profit by NOT buying these companies and using your money for better opportunities. Something has to be up here.
- Retra 11y agoHow long does it actually take for a market to adjust? "Quite some time" is hardly a quantity that confers any relevant information to your expectations.
- lowglow 11y agoI'll be the visionary.
- devy 11y agoRobotics powered by AI might very well be the next frontier of innovation, at least I think Andy Rubin believes it. [1] Ex-Head of Google China (before Google's retreat from China), Dr. Kai-Fu Lee visited silicon valley last month and wrote a piece [2] of about the trends he saw during his trip. One of the things Dr. Lee mentioned was Andy's new startup Playground will have a huge impact on making Robotics mainstream is what Android has done to make smart mobile phones mainstream. Let's see how soon that wave is coming. [1] http://www.wired.com/2016/02/android-inventor-andy-rubin-playground-artificial-intelligence/ http://www.wired.com/2016/02/android-inventor-andy-rubin-pla... [2] http://www.techsite.io/p/274598 http://www.techsite.io/p/274598
- jimbokun 11y ago"Robotics powered by AI might very well be the next frontier of innovation" The next, and the last.
- hoi 11y agoSymbian OS (EPOC) was several years before Danger was founded
- talideon 11y agoIt's arguable whether Symbian really quite made the jump to being a smartphone OS though, given the limitations baked into the OS. There are good reasons why Android overtook it.
- digitalsurgeon 11y agoWhen Android overtook Symbian, Symbian was a more capable OS than Android, this had nothing to do with capability. Android was able to copy iOS faster.
- talideon 11y agoSure it was more capable: it'd been around a lot longer and had a mature ecosystem. However, it also had fewer constraints on where it could go and what it could ultimately do, which Android (and iOS) weren't saddled with. That started to get better from Symbian^1 onward, but by then Symbian had essentially lost. The S60/MOAP/UIQ platform fragmentation before that didn't exactly help.