I don’t quite understand why OpenAI would pay so much when there’s a solid open-source alternative like Cline. I tried both, and feel that Cline with DeepSeek v3 is comparable to Cursor and more cost-effective.
When you have just raised $40 billion and you spend $3 billion on a company that has a product that you also build that is dumb as rocks.
YouTube had the advantage of being able to post pirated videos something that I'm not sure Google would have been able to do. YouTube gained traction in ways Google couldn't duplicate.
I guess not mostly stock, but still half a billion cash, although not $1 billion. I guess my original point still stands, though it isn't quite as impactful an example. :)
[0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/facebooks-fi...