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Microsoft is actually more B2B than B2C.

And yeah, Yahoo! was just making a list of links - hardly a challenging technical problem, but people wanted it.

That's my point exactly. They focused on what people wanted more than a challenging technical problem. That makes them the exception to most programmers I've come across who are fascinated with technical challenges so obscure the resolution of which nobody cares about. In academia, that's respectable and commendable. In business ... nobody cares.

"But most programmers, if they're anything like the ones I've come across, would consider that "below them" and instead favor a startup working on some obscure problem that 6 people on the planet could understand and appreciate."

Do you realize you're arguing with yourself?

The 6 people argument was presented by you, and you're challenging other people based on that.

Not sure what you mean. I'm not posting this as an "argument with myself" as you put it. The poster above said that Yahoo wasn't an interesting technical challenge, just a useful approach to a common problem. Then I just acknowledged that. The "argument" is either based on a misunderstading of the 2 posts or a projection of your own self-debating thinking process.

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