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Comment by jgilliam | Hacker News Reader

My guess is that he just really loves the product, and now that Ev and Biz are AWOL, he can actually do what he wants with it.

It's also a great PR response to the #dickbar.

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I haven't been able to find the answer to this: why are Ev and Biz AWOL? What are they doing now?

Biz is apparently sitting on AOL's board.

Is it a great PR response? It seems to me that a move like this helps solidify the #dickbar as a failure, and shows the company acknowledges it needs to fix the direction (which they have not been willing to state thus far).

I think the acknowledgment is what he meant by a great response.

Perhaps willingness to own up to your failures is actually good PR?

Who knows what motivates a person, but strictly from an opportunity perspective, Twitter is a more certain outcome than Square. If NFC on the phone takes off, then Square technology may soon become antiquated.

This move certainly doesn't bode well for Square, though.

It's important to note that most of what Square brings to the table is not hardware. It acquires merchant transactions and manages payment risk. Square can simply support other hardware technology, but their focus is on the merchant side.

Not wanting to go off-topic but we're a long way away from NFC taking off in any time you could reasonably describe as "soon".

It's available on one semi-beta phone and that's it.

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