bobthebee

If DuckDuckGo could really make $301+ M on search in Firefox, they would bid that. Reality, they can't. There is no value created in the imagined middle man investor.

It's a great option to consider, but: * What matters is not just default placement, but actual share. How many would not switch to Google? Say hypothetically half which I think is generous. * That leaves them with the kind of share that Bing had prior to the yahoo deal. And bing was losing over a billion a year. * That still doesn't actually create a business model, because now they have create a search ad network to compete with AdWords. That's another tough problem - especially without scale.

So all in all I don't doubt they could raise some money, but chances of success would be extremely slim.

I don't think that Mozilla has a BATNA to Bing/Google which is why the economics are so different in each round. It's entirely based on Google and Bing bidding against each other.

The dynamics behind the deal are interesting. Google probably paid just enough to outbid Bing, the second highest bidder. Or Firefox played a great hand of poker with Google. In either case it should trouble Mozilla that they are dependent on not only Google, but Bing (by extension) for the majority of their revenue.

Finding a sustainable way to reduce reliance on these companies should be the #1 job of the Mozilla business team in the next 3 years, before the deal comes up for renewal.

I don't think it is productive to blame "the players". In fact, it obscures the issue.

Look at it from the perspective of the patents (in a Dawkins sense). Patents want to make money. Patents grant exclusivity to something valuable. In a capitalist society they will naturally be acquired by whoever can make the most money. Maybe not initially but over time they will find the right (value maximizing) host. There is an inevitability to this. The value maximizing host seem to be so called patent trolls.

The role of government is to set the rules/bounds for capitalism. With patents you could argue that there is a problem with the rules. But I don't think you can blame the players once the rules are set. Capitalism is not about morality, but profit maximizing and resource allocation. The solution is simple. Change the rules of the game.

As a side note Paul Graham's patent pledge attacks the wrong side of the problem and will therefore not be effective. Instead create a pledge for companies that want to change the game and let them be vocal about it.

Ask the shareholders. And since I am one I'll answer.

I don't have a problem with this at all. $300M is about 1/1000 of the current market cap. The rewards are spread over 10 years. So 1/10000 per year to have a world class CEO running the company. Would I pay that? Gladly.

Freakonomics had another entertaining podcast related to Nathan, namely his work on "molecular gastronomy" and comparing to traditional cooking. http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/01/27/freakonomics-radio-wa...

And my assessment is that the article is wrong. Google+'s goal is absolutely to kill Facebook. With something this important to Google, they want to control it themselves. If not, there is always the chance that Facebook will screw them over at the next opportunity and the battle restarts.

True. But to go a level deeper, Facebook is dangerous to Google, because: 1) The competitive advantage of AdSense ($10 billion in annualized revenue) is all about having better user profiles that can translate into better syndicated ads. Facebook will undoubtedly launch a competitor given the hires they have made. 2) The competitive advantage of AdWords ($20 billion in annualized revenue) is mostly about having better search results. Again driven by better user understanding.

Facebook has excellent information on users interests. As opposed to MySpace and Twitter, most of the data on Facebook is not crawlable. It's private data, which means that Google is completely locked out. Even if it was crawlable, the data is not as valuable since Google would have to try to interpret it, while Facebook knows what it really means.

Summary: Facebook is an existential threat to Google's two major lines of business AdSense and AdWords. This is going to be a huge drawn out battle. Sit back and enjoy the show.

Pointless generalization. Engineers have their place: as individual contributors without customer facing roles. Not at the top or any management position.

1) lobby your congressman and senator. get everyone on HN to do the same in a co-ordinated way.

2) ask them to lower the barriers to invalidate patents. many big companies including apple, google, microsoft would support this as well.

3) ask them to raise the barriers for granting software patents. many big companies including apple, google, microsoft would support this as well.

Seems like a very poor choice for Eric to appear in front of Congress. Can only result in bad PR for Google and hightened scrunity of Google.

My favority Schmidt gaffe thus far was his comment on user privacy "If you have something to hide, maybe you shouldn't be doing it"