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Bumptop acquired by Google
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoNice. Chromeos touch UI will be sweet now. I called this while shooting the shit a month ago.
- thehodge 17y agoCould the technology become part of the android platform, I find it strange that they've just cut off updating the desktop clients and from next week won't even support / let you download them again..
- crad 17y agoThis is similar to what happened when Apple bought Coverflow.
- mikecane 17y agoProbably more likely aspects of it are headed to Chrome OS. Recalling the demos, I didn't see anything applicable to wee screens like phones.
- alecthomas 17y agoAgreed. BumpTop with a touch based interface would be much more appealing than a mouse. Seems like a good fit.
- sscheper 17y agoHrmmm. This strategy sounds dangerously familiar. Making Money? Who cares... Just buy shit that looks cool.
- enomar 17y agoI think its been shown before that Google (and others) often buy for the talent as much as the product.
- barredo 17y agoAlso I guess Bumptop could have some patents for its products.
- Gibbon 17y agoHow has that strategy worked out for them?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- chwahoo 17y agoAre you suggesting it hasn't?
- Gibbon 17y agoMostly they dump bucketloads of money into projects that disappear into blackholes, or morph into other products that are dubiously successful. As far as talent goes, the Dodgeball founders left, Jaiku founders left, Panoramio, Blogger and Feedburner founders left. That's off the top of my head, there's probably a lot more. Seems like an expensive and unreliable way to do bulk hires.
- _delirium 17y agoI don't entirely disagree, but I think some of the ones you mention weren't talent acquisitions. My guess is that, despite the founders leaving, Google is still happy with its Blogger and Feedburner purchases, and they at least sort of integrate into its larger web of services (and data collection).
- zandorg 17y agoSometimes the shift in their share price from an acquisition pays for that acquisition.
- enomar 17y agoFor those (like me) that don't know what Bumptop is... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Rm4jSRBfissJ:bumptop.com/features.php+site:bumptop.com+bumptop+feature+tour&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Rm4jSRB... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iPF39PXvUeYJ:bumptop.com/+bumptop&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iPF39PX...
- thehodge 17y agotheres also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ and you can still download it for the next week at http://eol.bumptop.com/download.php http://eol.bumptop.com/download.php
- eelco 17y agoIn that light, the TED presentation from a couple of years ago is also interesting: http://www.ted.com/talks/anand_agarawala_demos_his_bumptop_desktop.html http://www.ted.com/talks/anand_agarawala_demos_his_bumptop_d... At least it seemed very entertaining to the TED crowd, they're mostly laughing.
- ThomPete 17y agoThis is quite puzzling to me. I played around with Bumptop a little bit when it came out but I have to say that I quickly removed it as I found it to add no value what so ever. If anything this seems more like a talent acquisition than a technology acquisition.
- mikeryan 17y ago(could also an IP Acquisition)
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- PostOnce 17y agoThe videos looked amazing, but in practice it's just a mess. On the other hand, I thought that a side-effect of 20 years of acclimatizing to the industry-standard GUI might be difficulty switching to such a strange, physics-based 3D interface. It may be another issue of learning curve vs. post-learning benefit. I didn't give it enough time to really tell.
- anigbrowl 17y agoSame experience here, but I thought it had great potential - it was just limited by in-the-box thinking (literally, in fact). Not very good for a mouse/pen combo...but I can easily imagine some evolution of it on my phone. Android already presents picture galleries in a 'pile of photos' fashion, and while there's a limit amount of space on the phone for throwing things about, some tablet device could certainly benefit from a shuffly physics metaphor.
- hkuo 17y agoAgreed. It took me no more than a minute after installing to realize there was no use for this. I'm not buying into 3D interfaces represented on a 2D screen. I don't believe 3D interfaces will succeed until they can be holographically projected around me a la District 9.
- cmelbye 17y agoCan't figure out why they're not just giving away the BumpTop Pro option. The crippled BumpTop free version is almost pointless with its limit of two sticky notes.
- thehodge 17y agoWell, the product has been out just over/under a year, If I'd paid for a digital product and less than a year later I'm told that I've got just a week to download it forever and there will be no further updates, I'd be pretty pissed. Then to find out something I paid (even just last week) for was then given free to everyone else..
- cmelbye 17y agoIt seems as though they're offering refunds by emailing refund@bumptop.com. If I had purchased it and then they closed shop, I would ask for a refund.
- ugh 17y agoWhy would that annoy you? I’m always puzzled by that sentiment – it doesn’t hurt you in any way if others could download it for free, it doesn’t change anything for you. That’s pure jealousy, isn’t it?
- thehodge 17y agoIts the same feeling I get when I buy something and the next day its on sale for 50% off or when steam has one of its mega sales when I just bought the damn game.. or pretty much anytime I buy an apple product.
- fnid2 17y agoI once worked for a product company that started out charging a lot for its product. They began to struggle finding new customers for their product because it cost so much. I said, "Why can't you just decrease the price?" The reason was because they didn't want to anger their existing customer base who had already paid a lot.
- jjonte 17y agoA Bumptop-like interface would be pretty sweet on a tablet device running Chrome. This probably more a talent acquisition than a technology one - Bumptops's engineers have spent a lot of time thinking about UI metaphors and testing theories around them.
- dave1619 17y agoBumptop on an Android tablet would be sweet.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
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- mhp 17y agoGoogle may be having trouble finding good programmers. The Aardvark acquisition and this one as well may have just been an expensive way to get some good people. If you look at the HN thread about which companies are hiring, you'll see it's basically every single tech company under the sun right now.
- LiveTheDream 17y ago...we've been acquired by Google...For the next week, we're keeping BumpTop Free available for download to give BumpTop fans one last chance to grab a copy. That is one hell of a great way to get a huge boost in downloads :) EDIT: link to download page http://eol.bumptop.com/download.php http://eol.bumptop.com/download.php
- brfox 17y agoThe download is really slow right now, does anyone have an alternate download location?
- fnid2 17y agoSince we don't know what the price is, Google might have paid a sum for the product that is simply less than it would cost them to rebuild it themselves. Plus, they get the press for the acquisition and a talented, happy new member of the team. If it would take them 3 engineers and a year to build bumptop and they paid $200,000 for it, then everyone wins.
- _delirium 17y agoI agree how much they paid is important in evaluating the purchase (the less they paid, the more justifiable it'd be to buy it just for some talent and in the off chance some of the ideas/tech/IP turned out to be useful). But I doubt it's anything as low as $200k, because they had VC funding of a few million, and presumably the VCs wouldn't sign off on selling for a loss. This article estimates $40m, though they may have just pulled that number out of thin air: http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/05/02/google-purchases-bumptop-freeform-desktop-coming-android-os/ http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/05/02/google-purchases-bum...
- Colin-DeVries 17y agoDoes anybody know how much google paid? TheNextWeb says its $40 Milion but that number is unconfirmed.
- sfriedrich 17y agoHmm, am I the only one that had fleeting thoughts that Bumpits had been bought by google? http://www.bighappiehair.com/ http://www.bighappiehair.com/