ohsnapman

You're looking at this the wrong way. Google acquisitions tend to go two ways: talent acquisition, or hitting for homeruns. Is it worth it to Google if they buy a Jaiku and a Dodgeball and a bunch of other relatively small companies and essentially whiff, then knock it out of the park when they buy an Android or a YouTube? Short termers always back, but when you look back over the last five years the overall strategy has been sound.

With specific regards to Foursquare: note that the founder left to do Foursquare, and they're floundering right now. Maybe the vision was never sound to begin with.

"Most of my (and I imagine a good chunk of this site's readership) access to GMail is handled through IMAP, for one."

Data? Projecting much, aren't you? My anecdotal evidence contradicts yours.

And that's probably why this was written: https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/

The most important lesson I learned recently is how little impact logic actually has on real world discussions. Way too much of what we do is driven by emotion.

So, given that, instead of trying to use logic to sway someone who needs a ring, what are some tactics that appeal to emotion that can work?

Totally agree. I see so many comments on HN along the lines of "ads don't work on me". Guess what? They do. You just don't know it. That's how good they've gotten.

Here's a link for the equivalent evolutionary theory: http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/handicap_old/handicap_...

I've always felt that Ben Horowitz's characterization was the best:

http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/15/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo/

TLDR Eric was a peacetime CEO and could allow the company to do the things he allowed. Larry is a wartime CEO. Hard decisions need to be made, and the company needs to be driven with focus.

There's always upkeep. Very few things at scale require zero or even near zero upkeep - these aren't toy apps that get no traffic. Google has stated that Reader was an app with a very heavy amount of use from a small number of users.

The sense I get from reader being discontinued is that it was being kept alive as a best effort, and the effort was becoming too complex, too difficult to take on without real staffing. I suspect "leaving the servers running" was what they were doing for the last few years, and it wasn't working anymore.

I posted that link only because it was one of many search results for "Google benefits" - I was a bit surprised to see that the benefits aren't posted anywhere on Google's jobs site, but the fact that they're negotiable probably is why.

Anyway, the benefits are confirmable if you just ask someone who works there - those are the baseline benefits everyone already gets just by signing an employment contract. While I don't doubt that this article is a plant, I was making a point that I am pretty sure their benefits are best in industry, and I haven't seen any evidence that there are any companies that there are, as you say, several places that are on par with Google across the board. In fact, when I've spoken with people, the number of companies in Silicon Valley that are even close (NetApp is certainly one of them) can be counted on one hand.

Can you post a link? At least according to this link:

http://www.netapp.com/us/careers/your-career/benefits-new.as...

Google's actual US benefits are scattered, unfortunately, but:

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Google-RVW2...

NetApp offers a $3000 401k match, whereas Google does $8750 (50% of maximum) with no vesting.

NetApp gives you 25 days vacation a year after 10 years, 15 days after year 2, 20 on year 6. You get 25 days after your 5th year at Google, 20 on 4th year, start at 15.

NetApp offers $5250/year in tuition reimbursement. Google offers $13,000/year.

In addition to all of these, it's well known that Google provides donation match to a charity, gym reimbursement, heavily subsidized massages, sick days as needed.

If Google benefits are hype, I'd love to see data that shows where other companies beat them out.