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Facebook continues to follow the Yahoo and AOL trajectory of exceptional and generous engineering contributions amidst an increasingly disliked suite of commerc

Facebook continues to follow the Yahoo and AOL trajectory of exceptional and generous engineering contributions amidst an increasingly disliked suite of commercial offerings. Reminds me of a project idea where you list out all the big companies that have GitHub projects like Comcast, Walmart, Verizon, Target and even https://github.com/mcdcorp https://github.com/mcdcorp

lukevp 3y ago
What did yahoo and AOL contribute?
- ralph84 3y ago
  Hadoop, AOLserver, early support for Mozilla
- therein 3y ago
  Apache Traffic Server, AOLserver (no idea why I used this a long time ago)
  - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
    AOLServer was interesting, yeah. A useful counterpoint to Netscape Application Server, and quite influential over mod_perl and PHP.
- speedgoose 3y ago
  Yahoo had YUI which fell out of fashion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUI_Library https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUI_Library
- fragmede 3y ago
  yahoo pipes
- mtmail 3y ago
  Yahoo released their geographic data catalogue under open license and it still lives on as https://whosonfirst.org/ https://whosonfirst.org/ Afaik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_ZooKeeper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_ZooKeeper started at Yahoo https://vespa.ai/ https://vespa.ai/ was Yahoo's search engine for news and other content product, now spinned off (https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/04/yahoo-spins-out-vespa-its-search-tech-into-an-independent-company/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/04/yahoo-spins-out-vespa-its-...)
ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
Actually think that behind the scenes facebook is rapidly innovating on ai and integrating it into its ad targeting. Mets is on fire
- KevinAgain 3y ago
  Sounds squarely within the "increasingly disliked suite of commercial offerings"
  - omeze 3y ago
    Instagram and Whatsapp? Even Quest as a platform has tens of millions. All of these are still up and to the right in terms of user numbers and revenue
    - IshKebab 3y ago
      Instagram maybe, but do WhatsApp and Quest actually make money? WhatsApp is free and has no advertising (so far). Quest is very niche. Yeah I looked it up. Quest costs Meta $5.7bn for $1bn in revenue.
      - kredd 3y ago
        I guess, WhatsApp business just never caught up on our side of the world, but every time I’m outside of US/Canada, there will be some sort of business (like a restaurant) that will contact me through it. Assuming they’re making some pennies from WhatsApp Business.
      - kleinsch 3y ago
        Click-to-message is $10B/year, click-to-message in WhatsApp alone was $1.5B 1.5 years ago. They make buckets of money from business services on WhatsApp. https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/02/15/metas-next-profit-growth-pillar-isnt-what-you-migh/ https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/02/15/metas-next-profit-...
        3y ago
sirpunch 3y ago
This HN bandwagon again. Meta has had an astounding yoy growth. Did you even see their Q4 report.
- test6554 3y ago
  If they are relying on headset sales… competition is about to heat up. Ive been waiting for anyone but meta to come out with a decent, affordable kit and I think were almost there.
- sofixa 3y ago
  YoY growth and quarterly earnings report don't give you a full picture of how much a company is liked (which is important for b2c companies like Facebook) and how well it is actually performing for the medium/long term. GE and Boeing also had amazing YoY growth and great quarterly reports, until the underlying dumpster fire they were nurturing for years exploded in their faces and now they don't have growth nor profits anymore.
  - sirpunch 3y ago
    You could say the same thing about every big company. Apple has headwinds from sales in China and US-China trade wars, Tesla is trailing BYD and seeing declining EV demand, and so on. Every large company has something or the other going on. But I find it funny that every new project from Apple is reminiscent of iPhone 1 while it's the Yahoo path for everything from Meta.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  And AOL's stock had a 500% return in the 2010s... Yahoo had 300%. Are you saying people like Facebook's new features like the suggested posts and what they've done to Instagram? Was their VR product line secretly a success? These things eventually catch up. There's also a number of fairly bad bets they've made, such as the $1 bln kustomer acquisition they spun out at a 75% loss after a year https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/16/kustomer-meta-spin-out/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/16/kustomer-meta-spin-out/ They have enough capital and trust to stumble around for a while but they sure look like they're yahooing
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ahoka 3y ago
By dumping over-engineered crap nobody actually needs while becoming the Nestle of software companies?
ysofunny 3y ago
all because they aren't in the data-center cloud provider business
yedava 3y ago
Facebook is also one of pioneers in making mass surveillance the norm. The promise of technology has been used to prey on society.
paxys 3y ago
Funny how people "hate" them yet they have 4 billion active users and generate $135 billion in annual revenue. A better explanation is that outside of the HN bubble Meta's product offerings are insanely popular.
- yedava 3y ago
  At one time cigarettes were also as popular as Meta's products.
  - paxys 3y ago
    So were toothpaste and laundry detergent and diapers, and demand for those hasn't exactly gone away.
    - yedava 3y ago
      When you buy diapers you are paying for the manufacturing cost and the profit margin. When you use Meta's products, what are you paying for? That's what makes them closer to cigarettes. Tobacco companies sold a lie to their customers. Meta too sells the lie that its products are paid for by ads. Its products are paid for by surveilling users, building behavioral profiles from the data that is collected, and then giving other companies access to that behavioral data in order to manipulate users to specific ends. In this quest to build better behavioral profiles, the products are made to be as addictive as possible, eating away people's time which could have been utilized in objectively better ways.
      - ynx 3y ago
        You're only minorly wrong in that they don't sell access to the behavioral data [1] , but you do realize that you sound absolutely unhinged about it, right? Is HN surveilling my post because I typed here and pressed the 'reply' button? I've never convinced someone of flaws in ethics by framing the perpetrator as a big bad boogeyman to the nth degree. It's unproductive self-satisfaction. [1] They sell visibility to people queried against proprietary behavioral data.

lukevp 3y ago

What did yahoo and AOL contribute?

ralph84 3y ago
Hadoop, AOLserver, early support for Mozilla
therein 3y ago
Apache Traffic Server, AOLserver (no idea why I used this a long time ago)
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  AOLServer was interesting, yeah. A useful counterpoint to Netscape Application Server, and quite influential over mod_perl and PHP.
speedgoose 3y ago
Yahoo had YUI which fell out of fashion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUI_Library https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUI_Library
fragmede 3y ago
yahoo pipes
mtmail 3y ago
Yahoo released their geographic data catalogue under open license and it still lives on as https://whosonfirst.org/ https://whosonfirst.org/ Afaik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_ZooKeeper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_ZooKeeper started at Yahoo https://vespa.ai/ https://vespa.ai/ was Yahoo's search engine for news and other content product, now spinned off (https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/04/yahoo-spins-out-vespa-its-search-tech-into-an-independent-company/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/04/yahoo-spins-out-vespa-its-...)

ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago

Actually think that behind the scenes facebook is rapidly innovating on ai and integrating it into its ad targeting. Mets is on fire

KevinAgain 3y ago
Sounds squarely within the "increasingly disliked suite of commercial offerings"
- omeze 3y ago
  Instagram and Whatsapp? Even Quest as a platform has tens of millions. All of these are still up and to the right in terms of user numbers and revenue
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    Instagram maybe, but do WhatsApp and Quest actually make money? WhatsApp is free and has no advertising (so far). Quest is very niche. Yeah I looked it up. Quest costs Meta $5.7bn for $1bn in revenue.
    - kredd 3y ago
      I guess, WhatsApp business just never caught up on our side of the world, but every time I’m outside of US/Canada, there will be some sort of business (like a restaurant) that will contact me through it. Assuming they’re making some pennies from WhatsApp Business.
    - kleinsch 3y ago
      Click-to-message is $10B/year, click-to-message in WhatsApp alone was $1.5B 1.5 years ago. They make buckets of money from business services on WhatsApp. https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/02/15/metas-next-profit-growth-pillar-isnt-what-you-migh/ https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/02/15/metas-next-profit-...
      - 3y ago

sirpunch 3y ago

This HN bandwagon again. Meta has had an astounding yoy growth. Did you even see their Q4 report.

test6554 3y ago
If they are relying on headset sales… competition is about to heat up. Ive been waiting for anyone but meta to come out with a decent, affordable kit and I think were almost there.
sofixa 3y ago
YoY growth and quarterly earnings report don't give you a full picture of how much a company is liked (which is important for b2c companies like Facebook) and how well it is actually performing for the medium/long term. GE and Boeing also had amazing YoY growth and great quarterly reports, until the underlying dumpster fire they were nurturing for years exploded in their faces and now they don't have growth nor profits anymore.
- sirpunch 3y ago
  You could say the same thing about every big company. Apple has headwinds from sales in China and US-China trade wars, Tesla is trailing BYD and seeing declining EV demand, and so on. Every large company has something or the other going on. But I find it funny that every new project from Apple is reminiscent of iPhone 1 while it's the Yahoo path for everything from Meta.
kristopolous 3y ago
And AOL's stock had a 500% return in the 2010s... Yahoo had 300%. Are you saying people like Facebook's new features like the suggested posts and what they've done to Instagram? Was their VR product line secretly a success? These things eventually catch up. There's also a number of fairly bad bets they've made, such as the $1 bln kustomer acquisition they spun out at a 75% loss after a year https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/16/kustomer-meta-spin-out/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/16/kustomer-meta-spin-out/ They have enough capital and trust to stumble around for a while but they sure look like they're yahooing

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ahoka 3y ago

By dumping over-engineered crap nobody actually needs while becoming the Nestle of software companies?

ysofunny 3y ago

all because they aren't in the data-center cloud provider business

yedava 3y ago

Facebook is also one of pioneers in making mass surveillance the norm. The promise of technology has been used to prey on society.

paxys 3y ago

Funny how people "hate" them yet they have 4 billion active users and generate $135 billion in annual revenue. A better explanation is that outside of the HN bubble Meta's product offerings are insanely popular.

yedava 3y ago
At one time cigarettes were also as popular as Meta's products.
- paxys 3y ago
  So were toothpaste and laundry detergent and diapers, and demand for those hasn't exactly gone away.
  - yedava 3y ago
    When you buy diapers you are paying for the manufacturing cost and the profit margin. When you use Meta's products, what are you paying for? That's what makes them closer to cigarettes. Tobacco companies sold a lie to their customers. Meta too sells the lie that its products are paid for by ads. Its products are paid for by surveilling users, building behavioral profiles from the data that is collected, and then giving other companies access to that behavioral data in order to manipulate users to specific ends. In this quest to build better behavioral profiles, the products are made to be as addictive as possible, eating away people's time which could have been utilized in objectively better ways.
    - ynx 3y ago
      You're only minorly wrong in that they don't sell access to the behavioral data [1] , but you do realize that you sound absolutely unhinged about it, right? Is HN surveilling my post because I typed here and pressed the 'reply' button? I've never convinced someone of flaws in ethics by framing the perpetrator as a big bad boogeyman to the nth degree. It's unproductive self-satisfaction. [1] They sell visibility to people queried against proprietary behavioral data.