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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Back in May, ex-Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch was ousted by HP (or left out of frustration, depending on the source) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...

I have to say, I can't recall hearing about Autonomy...not that I keep up with all the tech news, but a $10B valuation is pretty big. Is it just accounting fraud that's going on, or was the technology not what it was claimed to be? $10B for tech that would encroach on what Google/Apple/the NSA would do seems like it would make Autonomy more of a household-tech name, even if it was based in the enterprise sector:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomy_Corporation > Autonomy's technology attempts to "understand" any form of unstructured information, including text, voice, and video, and based on that understanding perform automatic operations, for example inferring what the user wants and on that basis finding other information that may be of interest.

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They're well-known in Cambridge circles, though mostly as a place that hires graduates and offers a poor working environment until they leave a year later.

Autonomy was one of the places I worked very early on while getting enough of a CV to pick and choose. I was only there for a matter of months though, and in systems, but I really rather liked that job. In the end I left fairly rapidly because I couldn't cope with living in Cambridge (I like smaller places and I like being near the coast).

Looking back I'm fairly sure I was woefully underpaid for the position ... but also not nearly as good at it as I thought I was at the time. So if anybody reading this thread remembers my work less than fondly, sorry :)

Yeah, when HP said they were going to buy Autonomy, my first reaction was "Who?" And it's my job to stay up on this stuff...

Frankly, I expect this to cause huge problems for HP, possibly even sound a death knell. HP has been fucked for some time, but the real problem here is that they had no fucking clue what they were buying. I could have told them, if they'd asked, that there's no market for a Baysian search pack. I think anyone here could have said as much to them, but HP wasn't really paying attention to anything except the Autonomy people.

If I was an HP share holder, I would be on the phone to a lawyer right now, creating a class action suit.

Autonomy is more of a household name in Europe -- when I lived in London I remember seeing billboards, etc., like you do with Oracle in the bay area. That said, enterprise software is never particularly "famous"; you would be surprised at the number of $10bn-valued companies you've never heard of.

(Of course, that doesn't preclude them being super-shady; Enron was a household name)

They have a best in breed, magic quadrant, CMS. If you're in content management, they're the best. Outside of that, no one has a reason to know them.

Bold claims. Do you really trust Gartner with their CMS recommendations?

I think that was a pretty thick sarcasm

Garner AND Forrester. Yes, from hands-on use, my experience seems to agree with their assessments.

Autonomy used to be the shirt sponsor for Tottenham Hotspur.

They still are

Isn't 'Aurasma' the sponsor now? Or is that a new company formed by Autonomy's founders?

Aurasma is some kind of an augmented reality browser / platform by Autonomy.

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