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Reminded me of this article about Chinese women:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-13/chinese-women-milli...

Seems in the West men buy sports cars and women buy luxury handbags, and it's the reverse in the East.

It probably doesn't come down to any significant cultural differences either. Buying expensive things is a way for some people to feel more confident about themselves, or to spoil themselves, or some area in between. Basically, it's a curious statistic, but ultimately a non-story for actually doing business.

Internal projects is the one outlier there I don't agree with. At every single company I've worked in, I've spearheaded new ideas and new projects I think it would be worthwhile for the company to pursue. It has happened that the company chooses to invest in the idea I brought forward, but in that case I wouldn't consider myself the "founder" of "idea X". I was the origin of the idea, the main cheerleader, the developer of the prototype, the project manager, etc., but not the "founder".

I don't know, maybe it's an asinine point, but I don't think that's typically how the word founder is used, and it still seems funny to me.

I guess I could also comment about the article itself.

It's great that Susan is an influential level-headed intuitive executive at Google, and I suppose it's somewhat noteworthy that it was her garage that was originally used as Google's office, but aside from that I'm not sure what the point is. Her style is reminiscent of several senior vice presidents at several companies I've worked at, and her contributions don't seem manifestly larger then any other SVP in charge of a major project. Sure, she makes the most money at the company, but I'm not sure that entitles her to a special spot in Google's history at the same level as the other 12 SVPs and certainly not the founders themselves.

"Paul Buchheit, the founder of Gmail, had the idea to run ads within Google's e-mail service. But he and others say it was Wojcicki, with the backing of Brin, who organized the team that adapted that idea into an enormously successful product."

Nothing to do with the article, but I just find the "founder of Gmail" language a bit funny in this case. I don't normally associate the "founder" relationship with projects invested in and resourced (and, not to mention, wholly owned) by a large corporation. Being the initial developer != founder.

I understand the down votes, my comment wasn't all that constructive. But seriously, the amount of attention paid to this issue from Google might be better spent making their own products better. At best this is an issue for lawyers. The low road Google is taking by making a big stink in the 'blogosphere' is asinine to me, but clearly many of you disagree by continually voting up these stories.

Wonder if it's related to all the recent news about Google paying millions to keep engineers on staff from defecting to Facebook. I would be tempted to work there if there was a million dollar RSU payout involved.

I also wonder why Google would announce such a thing. My take away from this is that it's pointless to apply, since there are too many applications. Do they want people to stop applying?

Either bring a lawsuit, or be quiet. You aren't going to shame Microsoft into changing their current policy, and even if it does improve results by only 1/1000, as long as they are legally within their right to do it, why wouldn't they?

It's laughable to think this "controversy" is putting a black eye on to Bing in any way shape or form, except among perhaps the most technical and anal retentive among the population.

Funny pattern in responses. People on the younger side (<25) tend to be eager to prove themselves by listing their accomplishments, and people on the older side (>30) seem to be humble and self-deprecating, but still with that unmistakable hacker spirit.

I'm 28 myself, seems like 25-30 are the 'inbetweeners'.

Recursive dupe ?

Isn't it bad form from a marketing perspective to continually mention their top competitor? Does Apple mention android so extensively in their press?

As Paul said, customers don't care. All they are doing is giving Bing some front and center advertising on it's blog (which has several non-tech readers) and the tech people who actually care probably don't enough to actually switch search engines.

It's cheaper then you think to build a hardware prototype (of anything really), and 150K is hardly enough to have a decent first manufacturing run of a brand new hardware product.

I don't think this significantly impacts the hardware/software equation at all.

How many YC companies fold four months in?

The only reason I've heard for a YC company closing is "not enough traction", or some variation of "not enough passion" - I've never heard "not enough money", although I'm sure it happens too.

Does this negatively change anyone's mind who was thinking of applying to YC? I always thought YC was special, they give you less money, take less equity, and typically value you out of the gate at over 100K. Part of the appeal was seeing what kind of company could be grown from such humble roots.

The 150K offer on the table is nice, and the terms are such that you would be foolish to turn it down, but also in my mind it changes the dynamic of YC a bit.

Was wondering if others felt the same.

I'd like to see an actual case reference for this. I've never heard of ignoring robots.txt resulting in any kind of legal action.

It would take a pretty big leap to go from robots.txt is advisory to ignoring it constitutes a criminal action.

This is what I don't like about recent HN comments. A small quip which has nothing to do with the article dominates the comment section for miles.

Article is pretty skimpy on details and plays fast and loose with facts. Apple has hardly any MBAs, but it does have some, notably Tim Cook, who many claim singlehandedly turned Apple around. Also telling is that the dollar figures for salaries exclude bonuses. I know several executives who have base salaries less then some engineers, doesn't really mean anything without the bonus figures.

The value of an MBA will be what you yourself put into it. It was never the case that you could just sign a check for tuition and get a high dollar figure salary.

The fact is, that short of a start up with traction, getting an MBA is the best way to get exposed to a wide variety of business challenges, from operations to sales to organizational behavior, and yes, even finance for entrepreneurs and fund raising.

MBAs aren't going anywhere, and they have been evolving with the business climate over the past 100 years. They certainly aren't for everyone, but I don't think this article does much to accurately paint the pros and cons to help someone decide if it's right for them.

There is constructive criticism, and then there is a blog post listing a bunch of reasons why this particular individual doesn't think this company should be given any money to give their idea a shot.

Constructive criticism is great, it's just there has been a notable lack of worthwhile criticism lately. In my opinion of course - but honestly, did you read the linked article? Does it contain any valuable insights into Qwiki? Yet it has over 100 points - this is the start up 'criticism' echo chamber at work.

I don't understand the need for bench entrepreneurs to ridicule start ups from the side lines. All this effort to point fingers and make fun of start ups which are actually trying to build businesses might be better spent actually trying to build your own business.

All the posts about Qwiki and others recently (Facebook, Zynga, Groupon) all calling for the downfall of all these start ups really make me question the value of this community at times - and it's not like these posts have 10-12 points either, they have some of the highest point totals of any articles on HN.

Also interesting how the original oops submission had close to 100 comments whereas this one has less then 50.

I am guilty of this too - being drawn to inflammatory headlines - but to be honest, the truth is much less interesting in this case.

Not exactly priceless - the upside has to be worth more then the 5-7 billion spent for it to be worth it for Google.

Security from people suing you is probably the most compelling reason you gave here - I see no reason why Google would want to control Java IP and future direction when they can write all the software they need to in house to built on the Java platform to meet their needs.

So is 5-7 billion worth security for people suing you? I guess we'll see, but this is likely the biggest lawsuit related to Java they will ever face, and you can bet they won't make this same mistake again. Unless then pay out several billion dollars, which is unlikely given the tendency of these large technology firms to cross sue and settle with cross licensing agreements, I'd say Google's decision not be buy Sun is still sound at this time.

Just my two cents, I am watching just like the next person from the sidelines, this should be interesting.

Somehow I think this lawsuit will cost Google somewhat less then the 8 billion dollars it would have required to buy Sun outright.

This is bad, but I still don't yet believe buying Sun would have been the better option.

If you could go back and change anything the last 13 years would you?

35 is still young too, plenty of successful founders at 35, albeit less common then under 30.

Ah interesting, that makes sense. I'm sure carriers threw a bunch of inane capital intensive requirements at you. Frame relay anyone?

Tim Cook is worth every penny.

Loopt is self hosted? Is that actually cost effective? I can understand a company like justin.tv being self hosted, but loopt makes less sense to me.

Doesn't matter to customers though - most will not do this research themselves (as evidenced by comments in this thread).

Companies like Amazon basically are caught between a rock and a hard place. Either implement the sub-par experience which is what publishers let them (the Nook experience) and have customers complain about your draconian DRM - or don't implement it and have customers complain about not having the features of the Nook.

Considering the Kindle is the market leader in this space, I'm not sure it was the right choice to follow Nook into this space with a sub-par experience. Now the feature and it's limitations are more highly visible, and DRM is front and center on people's minds again.

You know investors have confidence in a company when they finance what basically amounts to a executive cash out round.

Good point.

I guess the thing I would caution about is expanding fast vs. executing well. Hopefully they learn the lessons in the Yandex vs. Google and Amazon/Ebay vs. Tao Bao fights.

Facebook did execute on a very successful international strategy - but from my understanding they didn't need a billion dollars to do it. GroupOn's economics might be different - time will tell.

Of course we don't have all the variables here, but this doesn't seem like a very good move from an outside observer. If groupon is making hand over fist in cash, and has a healthy cash flow, part of me is wondering why they couldn't use that to steadily finance overseas expansion?

I understand VC's desire to get in on the ground floor of GroupOn's meteoritic growth, but giving them a billion dollars of cash right now doesn't seem like right play here.

Get big fast might of worked for a select few dot coms, but it certainly didn't work as a general rule.

The SEC isn't there to ensure profit and growth, the SEC is there is ensure investors aren't being defrauded.