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Comment by argonaut | Hacker News Reader

Great part: "Who knows better? These random people chattering on forums - I won't mention any names [obviously Hacker News]? Or Zuckerberg himself who knows all the numbers and is actually betting his money. [WhatsApp] must be worth $19 billion if Zuckerberg was willing to pay $19 billion for it, cause he's no idiot."

Reply to below: I wouldn't nitpick the fact that he says WhatsApp "must" be worth $19B. This is an interview, not anything logically formal. The main point is that Zuckerberg is actually putting money on the line and has personally seen all of WhatsApp's numbers. Compare this to the peanut gallery on HN.

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Remember when AOL was worth $100 billion? And one of the buyers was the inventor of satellite TV?

Zuck may well be right, but it's not ipso fscto. He just made an acquisition bigger than anything ever done by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates etc. Or Warren Buffet for that matter.

Small correction, Warren Buffet spent over $34billion on BNSF

Or Skype for that matter (what eBay bought it for, and what they sold it to Microsoft for).

In comparison, NeXT which became the foundation for almost everything Apple has done since 1997 cost about $650M if I remember correctly.

I find it interesting, in this case at least, PG appears to be talking against the wisdom of crowds.

Now I'm not sure if he is correct in this instance, but it's probably a good idea to keep mindful of both sides. Sometimes a small elite can be better positioned to make the call, and other times it's the crowd.

Regarding the WhatsApp deal, perhaps Mark knows better than the tech community, given the large information asymmetry at play. However the reverse could also be true too, especially in companies with visionary leaders. IOW, one could question how much 'towing the line' happens at FB, given a leader with a large ego footprint.

Looking back, Microsoft missed the internet boat in the beginning (allowing Netscape to dominate), and as a result needed to play catchup. But, I'd wager Bill Gates's own limitations of judgement and inward focus on Microsoft, was a large contributor to this blunder.

seems a great logical fallacy to reference betting, which is what is happening, in a sentence about how the decision was definitely right.

I think thats the big mistake right there. You need to take into account that his actions are backed by knowledge that we do not have. So in order to say that his decision is wrong is the same as saying that "no knowledge he may posses can make his actions correct" which is a rather bold claim.

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