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Yahoo Acquires Bread, Will Shut Down The URL Shortener That Earned You Money
- gojomo 13y ago"recommends users switch to dominant URL shortener bit.ly" Often old links can't be changed – easily or even at all. (Tweets can't be edited, for example.) URL redirection is such a lightweight service that Yahoo/Bread should commit to either redirect indefinitely or ship the mappings and domain off to someone else who will.
- pbiggar 13y agoNormally, I'd disagree, but part of starting a URL shortening company would seem to be a commitment to keep it working in the future, partially because its so easy and partially because URLs shouldn't die. Charitably, we'll say they have a billion URLs. Each mapping is maybe 8bytes->256bytes. So they have a max of 264GB of data. That would fit on a heroku postgres dev plan, and the code to run it would take a single engineer half a day to put it on heroku.
- gcb0 13y agostill not zero cost
- pbiggar 13y agoSure, but with 6 engineers it would be the polite thing to do.
- patrickyeon 13y agoThey could also just join 301Works[0], who seem to some degree affiliated with the Internet Archive and will keep on running the redirect if they are given technical control of the domain. [0] http://archive.org/details/301works http://archive.org/details/301works
- deafbybeheading 13y agoWhile I agree this is not a huge engineering endeavor and Yahoo could do the Internet a solid by making this work, our free dev databases are limited to 10k rows (and, as the name suggests, intended for development). Please don't put a billion in them.
- pbiggar 13y agoFair. I was just trying to find a thing they could stick this on for basically nothing. The $49 plan would have been fine too. FYI, I didn't notice this limitation on the pricing page.
- deafbybeheading 13y agoOof, you're right--sorry about that. The addons page [1] has the right pricing, but our own pricing page is incorrect. I'll make sure we get this updated. Thanks for pointing it out! [1]: https://addons.heroku.com/heroku-postgresql https://addons.heroku.com/heroku-postgresql
- justincormack 13y agoNo, a URL shortening company was a commitment to breaking the internet by adding redirection. The URLs should die to discourage the others.
- patrickyeon 13y agoIt's not the right solution, but URLTeam is stepping in to archive the links[0]. They estimate 121M links, and it'll be a shame that there's no easy way for a user to automatically look up the link from URLTeam when bre.ad is gone. [0] http://archiveteam.org/?title=URLTeam http://archiveteam.org/?title=URLTeam
- vidarh 13y agoFrankly, I hope they don't, for the simple reason that we need some high profile link breakage before people learn to treat URL shorteners accordingly (that is: avoid them whenever possible if they're outside your own control).
- yefim 13y agoCongrats to the team. Title made me double take for a second there.
- jordanthoms 13y ago"Yahoo acquires bread, will serve in company cafeteria?"
- nomedeplume 13y agoNo go. Marissa wants them to eat cake.
- curiouslurker 13y agoReally bugs me the kind of ideas that getting funding. Some of us have viable businesses that need funds to scale but just don't have the right pedigree.
- dsl 13y agoIf you really need funds to scale you should be looking at business loans and financing, not venture capital. Talk to banks, show them your books, provide receipts, let them talk to a few customers, and you'll have 12 to 24 months growth money out the door no problem. Unless you are using the word "scale" to mean prove your business model, then yeah, your hat is in the same ring as all sorts of harebrained ideas.
- gcb0 13y agopretty sure it was acquihire
- pbiggar 13y agoIt seems you're implying that VCs - people who invest money for a living - care more about pedigree than profit. Now I don't mean to imply anything about yourself or your business, but is it possible there might be a different and perhaps simpler explanation for whatever you're bugged about?
- pppppowerbook 13y agoHe didn't imply that at all; if M&A execs also care more about pedigree, then pedigree is a great way to drive a VC exit, especially compared to building a business that actually makes a profit.
- pbiggar 13y agoAcquihires dont move the needle for VCs.
- pppppowerbook 13y ago
- cheesylard 13y agoIf anyone is missing Bread, my friend made a service that is exactly like it: https://shrinkonce.com/ https://shrinkonce.com/
- easytiger 13y ago> ShrinkOnce allows users to take a link to a file, website, or video and lock it with a survey That sounds terribly annoying
- mikiem 13y agoIf they are being acquired and shut down, but the Bread employees are joining Yahoo... isn't this an "Acquihire"?
- neya 13y agoI just don't understand the logic behind aqui-hires. If a founder starts up his own company, and if he is very serious about it, he will put in everything he's got - his passion, his vision and his hardwork. It becomes an integral part of his life somehow. Now, suddenly a corporation pays the founder a large sum of money, makes him shut down his company, literally erasing every single connection he had with his creation. Now, no passionate founder would like to let someone destroy his own company, his hardwork and passion. But even if he wanted the money, and he thought if it's a good compromise, no passionate founder will think nor share the same vision and passion for the corporate owning him as much as he had for his own company. Obviously most of us startup because we don't want the corporate life and we want something different. So, to aim to get into a corporate by means of a startup is quite contradictory, no? So, in essence, how does the corporation justify the investment for a semi-passionate founder whose product has just been destroyed? They pay billions in some cases, only to realize that the founder doesn't share his old vision and enthusiasm anymore? How does this work? I will gladly love to be corrected on this one. Someone with experience, please explain this cost justification to me! Cheers.
- patrickyeon 13y agoThe acquiring company gets the entire staff (or at least everyone who comes along). Assuming the company being acquired has built up a decent product, you can see the acqui-hire as a recruiting move, where you're hiring on a group that has shown they can work together, ship product, and all the members have already been vetted by somebody else. The purchase price is really just a recruiter's fee and hiring bonus bundled together.
- smsm42 13y agoAnd that hate their bosses' guts for ruining the thing they just spent a chunk of their lives to do and were proud of, and now it's all turned to nothing. But since they need money and they're offered too good a deal to refuse, they swallow it and get in line. I'm not sure it' the best way to acquire talent. Of course, that implies people cared about the thing they did, but isn't that the kind of people you want to get?
- dingaling 13y agoWhat amused me about the bre.ad overview video ( http://vimeo.com/23834665 http://vimeo.com/23834665 ) was the 'shortened URL' example which maintained a www prefix... That's all that amused me.
- aheilbut 13y agoI am on this internet thing a lot, and I have never once heard of or seen a link to bre.ad
- kwestro 13y agoThey could have been toast from running out of dough. Luckily they found a breadwinner to help them rise to the top.
- thedrbrian 13y agoSo what's in this for yahoo?