4 ms·
This is infuriating. Typical of Yahoo's ham-fisted, clobber-them-over-the-head-with-an-extremely-blunt-instrument approach to things -- 'acquihire' a company th
by parennoob 13y ago
This is infuriating. Typical of Yahoo's ham-fisted, clobber-them-over-the-head-with-an-extremely-blunt-instrument approach to things -- 'acquihire' a company that's doing very well and give its users 90 days (90 days? really?) to get the eff out.
If there's someone at Yahoo on here, explain this to me - Do they really do this for the engineering talent? To get the makers of Astrid to stop working on the thing they built, and make them work on Yahoo! Mail, or something like that? Because a lot of those services seem way too far behind the curve to start working on them now.
On the other hand, if they had just made Astrid into "Yahoo! Tasks" I (and thousands of other users) would have just kept it on my phone and browser. Yahoo is missing out on a decent opportunity here.
- ryguytilidie 13y agoI worked on the Facebook team that did acquihires for awhile and yes, this is basically it. Hire kid doing awesome, innovative new photo startup, have him build your photos feature and then watch them quit the second they vest, repeat. Does it happen? Yes. Is it a good idea? I can't imagine it is.
- hga 13y agoIt also presents difficultly for companies that develop a reputation of mostly acquiring, and perhaps eventually all big companies who buy small ones: if they actually want to make an acquisition to keep the product(s), will enough users believe them? I suppose inertia helps prevent this with the customers are consumers, but I gather it's at least something of a problem in initially gaining traction. With the IPO exit firmly closed for all but quasi-black swans like Google and Facebook, why take a chance on a startup when the two most likely outcomes, failure or acquihire, result in their shutting down?