Paypal acquires Stackmob | Hacker News Reader

Paypal acquires Stackmob

techcrunch.com

50 pointsMadness6419 comments

This is bad news - Paypal is an incredibly shady business and I dislike them intensely.

They have all the power of a bank, but none of the accountability. They can freeze your assets and if you want to complain dial 1-800-talk2robot, like pissing in the wind.

I'm sure you've all read the horror stories about Paypal. There certainly isn't a shortage of em.

Banks can and do freeze merchant accounts for the same reasons and same amount of time as PayPal, and you can complain to the same robotic call tree if you don't like it. PayPal's not unique in that at all, most consumers just have no exposure to this as they never operate a business and have to get a merchant account to accept credit cards.

There does seem to be a shortage of horror stories with PayPal compared to how fiercely they're hated by some like yourself. I read a handful a year at most. For 230 million accounts, that's less complaints than you'd expect as a baseline regardless of the company's service record; every business gets their share. Certainly less than I hear about cable and phone companies, big retail chains, etc.

Just dug this out from Quora: http://www.quora.com/PayPal/Why-does-Paypal-have-so-many-pro...

They have all the power of a bank, but none of the accountability.

They're actually a bank in Europe.

Yeah let me just hop on my G6 and fly down there, maybe I'll actually get some customer service.

So they're closing up shop? No more Stackmob?

I was just looking at Stackmob last week as a potential backend for my next project. I had originally planned on using Parse but with their acquisition, I felt uncertain about their future. With Stackmob going the same route, is there any decent backend I could use reliably?

I've been completely reliant on Parse as a backend for a long time. The acquisition made me nervous but I've been reassured and am now comfortable with Parse as a long term solution for a few reasons. For one, the development of the platform has not stalled at all since the acquisition. I don't think you can find a more complete and enjoyable backend solution than Parse.

Azure Mobile Services is comparable for the basic backend service and push notifications (and isn't in danger of being aquihired away any time soon): http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/solutions/mobile/

You expect something enterprisey if you haven't played around with Azure lately, but you can work entirely in JavaScript on the server-side (powered by Node) and there's good support for iOS, Android, Ruby, Python, etc.

Take a look at FatFractal (http://fatfractal.com). Better functionality and usability than Parse or StackMob, especially the Datagraph. Full disclosure: I work for FF.

You can use http://backbeam.io It supports mobile-only development with SDKs for iOS and Android as well as web development and server-side logic.

Disclaimer: I work in the company behind it. If you have any questions we will be glad to help you out. By the way, the SDKs are Open Source and we are working on a "community" release of the backend for our customers to not be afraid of the vendor-locking.

I never really understood what StockMob does/did? Will the service continue?

"By joining PayPal, the StackMob team will maintain its focus on developers and extending innovative mobile technologies that aim to allow consumers to access the rich capabilities of the PayPal global network... We believe that our work at PayPal will make it easier for developers to create seamless payment solutions that span online, mobile, and in-store experiences."

I think they're done.

They're gonna be joining Paypal to improve what Paypal has.

That really sounds like an acquihire to me.

They were a competitor to Parse. A backend-as-a-service. Instead of writing your own web api (for, say, a mobile app or a web app), you could just create an API with their service.

Any guesses what the sticker price was?

Since it wasn't disclosed, I'm guessing less than the amount raised. Doesn't seem like something PayPal as a business would be interested in, so it's most likely a talent acquisition.

A talent acquisition is usually for more than the amount raised. Unless they were really struggling and about to go out of business.

in spite of the added incentive of a reportedly low asking price, Yahoo opted not to make a deal.

So, while PayPal and StackMob declined to share details on the acquisition price, it doesn’t sound like this was a blockbuster deal. Furthermore, while StackMob had a good run, it doesn’t come as a complete surprise that StackMob struggled in its efforts to reach profitability and scale to the degree it had initially hoped.

It sounds like maybe investors will break even and employees get jobs.

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