NY Times: Microsoft Tried To Unload Bing On Facebook 230
benfrog writes "According to a blog posting on the New York Times site, Microsoft tried to sell the perpetual money-losing Bing to Facebook 'over a year ago' (the article cites 'several people with knowledge of the discussions who didn't want to be identified talking about internal deliberations'). Steve Ballmer, apparently, was not involved or consulted. Facebook politely declined. Neither Microsoft or Facebook would comment on the rumors."
Who wouldn't want Bing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who wouldn't want Bing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who wouldn't want Bing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who wouldn't want Bing? (Score:4, Insightful)
see this is what I dont understand about business at that level, EVEN IF bing is a 2 billion dollar a year money pit (which I seriously doubt) why not cut it? Its not like companies have cut products before, it happens all the time ..
But in the computer industry there is this HUGE factor of pride of being 100% right 100% of the time no matter the cost. Shit happens, cost go over, nothing is perfect, but for fuck sake at some point its time to kill the white elephant that consumes too much and only produces shit.
So what Microsoft, you renamed MSN to BING and bundled a bunch of crap into LIVE, no one used it, no one uses it, when do you actually look at whats happening ... its only been 20 fucking years of the same bleh
Re:Who wouldn't want Bing? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why Microsoft should have been broken up by the DOJ instead of overturning Jackson's ruling.
Microsoft, back then, had stump ponds full of management deadwood. They use their profitable departments to shore up their epic money losing departments. If the company had been broken up by major departments (OS from User Software, for example), we probably wouldn't see what we see today, that is OS and Office holding up every stupid money losing project ever in Microsoft. Stupid money losing projects should be spun off to sink or swim on their own or closed down.
But what we have today is not only just a few stump ponds, but entire swamps full of deadwood where investor money and profits go to rot, increasing the amount of gaseous emissions coming from Redmond to compete with the amount of hot air emanating from Ballmer's mouth.
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BMO
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So the DOJ did the right thing by accident then?
MS will get so large and lethargic it will slowly rot to death from the inside?
Sounds like someone played the long game...
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>So the DOJ did the right thing by accident then?
No. Read.
Judge Jackson wrote a ruling that Microsoft should be broken up. Microsoft appealed, won, and Microsoft was not broken up.
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BMO
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They don't cut it because it's more complicated than the Microsoft bashers let on.
Microsoft builds search for enterprise, a space where it is very successful, more popular, and a darned site cheaper than Google's offerings. Bing is Sharepoint search for the public, sure it isn't really taking any market share, but that doesn't really matter, because they're getting the kind of test volume which you can't do for in internal product. MSN messenger is the same deal. Microsoft makes no money off of it, but they
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It worked really well for XBOX too.
There's nothing wrong with taking the view that one day the XBox may get to the position of having a positive return across its lifespan. And it is genuinely a positive about Microsoft that they're willing to engage in longterm plans. But the idea that it has already worked out well is just crap. The XBox project hasn't made back anything like what it's cost.
Re:Who wouldn't want Bing? (Score:5, Interesting)
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nonono. They have a totally cool website plan to get that ten billion dollars back.
Where did you get it from? On a Bing search or something?
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Exactly! MS has spent north of $30 *BILLION* developing the Xbox and Xbox 360. They haven't come anywhere close to breakeven on that investment. They'd have made more money if they'd invested $1 in Apple stock in 2000.
I doubt they'll ever turn a profit off their videogame business. A next-gen Xbox to replace the 360 will need to be developed and produced sometime in the next 3 years or so if they want to remain in the industry, and that'll cost billions. In other words, they'll need to dig a deeper hol
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Microsoft has been trying to be the predominant web portal for 17 years. This isn't strategy, it's abject failure. Microsoft has thrown billions at various iterations of MSN, much of it sighs dominant browser, and has only got a distant second, in no small part by making Yahoo a customer.
There is no master plan. The only thing MS can do is keep flinging shit at the wall with little hope of being any more than a bit player.
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Microsoft has been trying to be the predominant web portal for 17 years. This isn't strategy, it's abject failure.
Show me a web portal that isn't a failure.
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Intragam (Score:5, Funny)
And instead they bought Intragam, possibly the only product/site in existence that is actually stupider then Bing.
Re:Intragam (Score:5, Funny)
Bing is on Facebook's acquisition list though. Bing is just below Zombo.com [zombo.com].
Re:Intragam (Score:5, Funny)
Zombo.com is entirely more useful than Bing.
At Bing, you can't do anything.
At Zombo, you can do anything, anything at all, the only limit is yourself!
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BMO - Welcome!
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instagram has 27 million users: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/11/tech/mobile/instagram-sxsw/ [cnn.com]
who don't pay anything; has no real business model; and will probably never earn a penny. That anyone could think that it's valuable boggles the mind. Just because you're happy to use something for free, doesn't mean it has value... in fact, it says the opposite, since you're unwilling to pay for it.
bing has 26.2% of the search engine market: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2158888/Yahoo-Search-Share-Sinks-Google-B [searchenginewatch.com]
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Google also had millions of users who didn't pay anything, with no business model before Schmidt came on board and turned them into an advertising company. Same for YouTube before Google bought them. Facebook itself has millions of users who don't pay anything, and is heading towards a rather large IPO.
Just because a company gives it's major product away for free doesn't mean it doesn't have other valuable assets, and just because it's not bringing in any money now, doesn't mean it couldn't, especially if i
Re:Intragam (Score:4, Informative)
Google also had millions of users who didn't pay anything, with no business model before Schmidt came on board and turned them into an advertising company.
Wow, that's revisionist. Schmidt was at Novell when Adwords was launched.. nearly a year before scmidt became CEO (and 6 months before he even worked at google).
Google does not give away its product for free. Its product is advertising space.
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The difference is that the work Google and Bing done and spent on algorithms, hardware streamlining for their facilities, somewhat locked-in userbases (work to transition over docs, email, presents, "train" the personlized servies) and all of the web of other products in their arsenals that funnel to the search. That ecosystem is simply out of reach without a drastic move on facebook's part, like only allowing editing of uploaded images in Instagram. But that carries it's own risk of exposing them to compet
Stupid to Sell (Score:4, Funny)
Bing is better in some ways than Google and folks are starting to notice. Microsoft would be stupid to abandon it.
Re:Stupid to Sell (Score:5, Funny)
Now you'll be sure to get the raise.
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Re:Stupid to Sell (Score:5, Insightful)
Bing was better for a while, though the "M$"-hating manchildren would never admit it. But by now? No. All of Bing's best features have been copied by Google. Improved image search, preview panes, flight statuses at the top of results, bird's eye view in the maps (not to be confused with satellite view), the list goes on. And that's a good thing. That's how competition is supposed to work. But Bing hasn't continued to innovate. And their other big advantage -- a relative lack of link farms -- has faded. So now they're no more innovative than Google, their results aren't any better, and their market share is stuck around 15% (30% if you include Yahoo). Meanwhile Google's Android platform will ensure they continue to grow. If MS is counting on windows phones to drive traffic to Bing, they're going to be disappointed.
I'm glad Bing existed and forced Google to add new, useful features. But unless they make some big improvements, they're never going to come even remotely close to pushing out Google.
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Over a year ago, Microsoft executives sent out feelers to Facebook to see if the company would be interested in acquiring Bing, though the overture was not officially sanctioned by Steven A. Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, one of these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg declined, saying Facebook had too much else to concentrate on. Dawn Beauparlant, a spokeswoman for Microsoft, declined to comment, as did Ashley Zandy, a spokeswoman for Facebook.
That said, this is the only part of TFA that actually talks about the headline. Apparently, the submitter did not even read much, because the rest of the article is actually interesting instead of this random speculation that has absolutely no proof, names, evidence, or even quotes, and isn't even that intriguing
Re: You may like to read (Score:2)
You may like to read:
http://slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/186252/ask-slashdot-my-company-wants-me-to-astroturf-should-i [slashdot.org]
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You can avoid your first issue with Google by using verbatim search mode.
To activate it, add '&tbs=li:1' (without the quotes, of course) to the url. In the alternative, it can be manually activated by clicking the link on the left side of the results page labeled "more search tools", which will cause a list of search modes to appear. You can then choose verbatim.
Is MS Reverting Back to Its MSN Search Service? (Score:4, Interesting)
Six months ago, I logged from where visitors to some of my Web pages came. I was particularly interested in which search services were crawling my Web site. I am now completing a similar logging.
Six months ago, Bing had completely replaced MSN as a crawler; MSN did not crawl my selected Web pages even once. This time, I am again seeing MSN crawling my Web site.
Does this mean that Micro$oft is reverting back to its prior search service and abandoning Bing?
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Curious the amount? (Score:2)
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three fiddy
The fundamental differnence between companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The fundamental differnence between companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Take away any two Apple products, even product lines, and you still have a viable company.
Really? Take away iPhones and iPods, and what do you have left? Their desktop/laptop business? Yeah, that's viable, but an Apple that only sold those would be a tiny fraction of what it is now. The massive upswing in Apple's profile was the iPod, and the iPhone built on that. Without those, Apple would just be a slightly-more-expensive Dell.
I agree that Apple is putting out more successful products than Microsoft, but it's focus is still very, very narrow. Cutting out Windows and Office would take out most of Microsoft's profit, but only a tiny slice of their product offerings. Taking out iPhones and iPods not only takes out the majority of Apple's profit, but also a decent chunk of their product lineup.
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Take away any two Apple products, even product lines, and you still have a viable company.
Really? Take away iPhones and iPods, and what do you have left? Without those, Apple would just be a slightly-more-expensive Dell
I would extend that to Google, Facebook, and really any tech company. The reality is that many of these companies are one-trick ponies, and despite their best efforts, they are unable to expand. Google really went all out to clone Facebook for G+, and a year later it's a ghost town. Similarly; I can remember when Dell and Sony were the epitome of consumer hardware, and now they've been almost completely eclipsed. There is just no room for second place, and no one stays on top for long.
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G+ is just getting started. I do not think that it is a ghost town, but it really is lacking what is needed to make it compete against FB. The fact that you can not write scripts is just amazing. I am shocked that they did not and still have not, done that.
Re:The fundamental differnence between companies (Score:5, Interesting)
It was and probably is. And if you took away the iPhones and iPods there's still the iPads where there's more excitement today.
If you actually wanted to 'hurt' Apple you'd take away iTunes. Not because it's a massive profit center in itself but because it's what makes the iPod user buy an iPhone, iPad, Apple TV etc etc.
MS has no gateway drug, they thought they did with Windows (and for a long time that was true) but somehow the world changed and a more frequent refresh of the iPhone line is far more exciting that the tick/tock (bad/good) release of Microsofts OS line.
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Really? Take away iPhones and iPods, and what do you have left? Their desktop/laptop business? Yeah, that's viable
It was and probably is
Which is exactly what I said, before you snipped half my sentence to make it look like I didn't.
And if you took away the iPhones and iPods there's still the iPads
There's a difference between an iPhone and an iPad? They're the same thing in a different form factor. Hell, the iPod isn't that much different itself. If you count them as different product lines, you might as well count Microsoft's Home/Pro (or whatever they are this time round) versions as different product lines - there's about as much distinction.
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There's a difference between an iPhone and an iPad? They're the same thing in a different form factor. Hell, the iPod isn't that much different itself. If you count them as different product lines, you might as well count Microsoft's Home/Pro (or whatever they are this time round) versions as different product lines - there's about as much distinction.
As much as I'd like to agree with you, if they are the same product why do people buy one of each rather than just make do with one or the other?
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Same reason people buy a desktop and a laptop? They're fundamentally the same device, but different form factors are useful in different situations.
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Take away the iPod and iPhone and Apple would be one of the bigger PC manufacturers and sell a whole mess of iPads. Both product lines are the most profitable in the business.
Take away Office and Windows and Microsoft would be bankrupt.
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That's true, but those product lines are bigger than you'd think, and Apple has fewer product lines than you think. Office is a gigantic ecosystem including cloud services, it's technically one product but it contains a huge number of sub products. Windows is again a whole bunch of different stuff, though it's probably a shrinking not growing portion of their product set. SQL server is also quite a money spinner these days. The days when Microsoft made all their money on sales of Office for the Desktop and
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Why just 4 years ago, apple was 1/2 of MS's revenue and Google was 1/4. Now, Apple is double MS's and Google is 1/2 of MSs.
And you really think that MS is doing great? Seriously? You have not taken notice of the fact that much of MS's revenue is from price increases on western sold, while decreasing prices on all other locations? Even with that, their unit sales are dropping, not increasing.
Craigslist... (Score:2)
For sale:
Hole in the ground. Sucks massive amounts of your money into oblivion every month.
Price 2 billion dollars, or best offer.
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That is a remarkable deal for a government. I'll take two.
Makes more sense than Instagram (Score:5, Interesting)
Facebook is one of the few sites with the resources and hit count to actually have a chance against Google. Not to say it would have worked, the implementation, combined with Bing's ahem "quirks" would make it an uphill battle.
But instead the sage Zuckerberg proved himself to not be the visionary the media paints him by buying a brain-dead obvious "innovative" flavor of the week app (apparently cheap filters and basic image processing + built in camera FTW) with no patents, innovations, or profits. Let me introduce you to the (richer) Shawn Fanning of our decade 2010's.
We used to call ideas like facebook and Napster clever uses of existing technology presented in a way that finally opened the door to normal people. A noble achievement worth a paycheck. Now we call them the basis for Fortune 500 companies and the pinnacle of tech innovations. NASA and real science is just too boring and no matter how many buttons I push my microwave can't make my food come out in sepia.
No offense to the people who work for Instagram the product is fine, just that it's overvalue raises serious concerns about the state of progress. There is not a single thing that is new or better about the product than PC software for decades other than it runs on a pocket computer. imagine telling the people at Bell Labs, Xerox, Honeywell, IBM, or one of the dozens of other real innovators in the 70's that shit like this was what drove our current technology economy. They would laugh, then cry, then ask about the flying cars
Oh but I forgot it runs on a smartphone! Meaning that according to the patent office these are whole new uncharted realms of innovation worthy of the legal protection akin to the lightbulp or the the CRT. Prior art? Now a days whats considred inventive is just shifting and existing idea wholesale from one screen or interface to another. To me in a sane marketplace Instagram is worth about a $1 plus whatever assets and minus whatever debts they have incurred.
Oh well then, off to design my new protected innovation the "Hello Welcome" door-mat based browser. And don't you dare libel it me by suggesting it is in any way similar to PC browsers since Mosaic in the 90's. Can you control your computer browser with your fucking foot? Yeah that's what I thought- invent something as revolutionary and lifechanging as browsing in the the elements from your doorstep 20 feet from your PC and maybe we will talk BTW.
You won't believe what I've got up my sleeve next (assuming you have been in a coma since the death of real R&D focus in the West).
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The thing is, these valuations are based on users, not technology. If I had an app that all it did was show you a random picture of poop every day, and 27 million people turned on that app and looked at the poop each day, I could probably sell that for $1B too.
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Instagram's 30 million users cost Facebook about 30$/head. I'm sure they are worth more than that.
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Don't forget, most of those users already have Facebook accounts.
And what exactly are those $30 users going to pay for?
This "buying users" thing is stupid, except in very limited circumstances. Users are earned, not purchased. Just like customers.
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Sorry for the self reply, but disclaimer for the grammar. No I'm not drunk, but I haven't slept in about 48 hours, and despite previewing it I only just now realized how grammatically "different" and it reads. Sometimes you just have to think outside of the box, trail-blaze and fight conformity even in basic communication mediums defined over hundreds of years forming a basis for modern culture YKWIM? Kewl. That is if you want to lead us into web 10.0. Yup you read that right.
After learning that you can ju
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Fuck... I didn't just read that according to my lawyer. The SEC says I have to disclaim any potential liabilities to my new bosses over at Yahoo who saw fit to buy my 1 man company and product sketches for a 25% share of their stock and board position. For their in touch management a shipping product demonstrated product means more overhead. And no employees or prototypes means they only have to spend a few billion to grab this puppy before Amazon, eBay or the ghost of MySpace swoops in.
So just for the r
Microsoft Tried To Unload Bing On Facebook? (Score:5, Funny)
Silly execs. They should have unloaded it on eBay.
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Wrong product (Score:2)
You goot to admire their restraint (Score:2)
Facebook politely declined
I would have expected "Fuck, I wouldn't take that money-losing shit if you paid me".
Makes me wonder (Score:2)
Why Facebook would want to buy the Zune of search engines?
'Bing Bing' - Helloo? Helloo? (Score:2)
Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called, "Please take us seriously as a search company! Oh BTW, we're shopping our search engine around. Any takers? Anyone? We're gonna beat Google! Seriously, though, guys, how about $1.5B? I'll go as low as $1.2. Cmon. Hello?"
Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:5, Funny)
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As a matter o fact, I did some regular test-driving in the past - it ruined my marriage, by the way.
What? A car? I never owned one...
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Everything is all right. He talked about testing the waters of women. He must be some sort of a scientist who keeps our mothers safe.
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Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:4, Funny)
Testing women? Where can I apply for that job? ;)
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Had you ever considered moving to Guam?
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Why a tiny island? Their Internet must suck too. ;)
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That's jail bait. No thanks!
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Teachers, dude. Teachers!
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I'm sure Microsoft would be most grateful if you repeated this line of horseshit at the next shareholders meeting.
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Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Long comment with same timestamp as story
2) New user id
3) "Tech" in username
4) Dig at Google ("Google is desperately trying to do with Google+ and failing")
5) Dubious, at best, praise for Microsoft ("always thinking about long term strategy instead of quick gains", "Microsoft's and Windows' strong brand name")
Ugh...shilling is laaaaame.
Well, Microsoft is one of those companies that only think long term. In fact, most of what Google does is to gain quick profit and ditch the projects that fail with that. Just see how many projects Google quickly and silently cancels compared to Microsoft.
Maybe Google is "thinking long-term" with Google+? Shouldn't you be praising that instead of divining it a failure so quickly? It is, after all, much younger than Bing. Perhaps all of Google's non-profit-generating divisions are "supportive" divisions? Google has had many services that didn't pan out, but Microsoft has many, many more. Your thesis that "Microsoft thinks long-term and Google doesn't" is a real stretch.
And for all their efforts, what has Microsoft's supposed steadfast commitment to the long-term given them? The XBox has turned out to be profitable (I believe), but most of their revenue still comes from Windows and Office, just as it has been since long before Google was born.
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Microsoft is trying to sell its "perpetual money-losing" product to potential client. Unbelievable, Microsoft has a sales team !
Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
Bing is positively ancient, a Ballmer driven marketing name change to boost his ego is meaningless. A One stage MSN search (Live search) was number 2 to Alta Vista and then both M$ and Alta Vista choked the chicken by flooding the first pages with utterly pointless paid for placements. They were so bad at it, you started a search and the immediately click on page 5 or so of results. All of this before google and of course this created google's market.
Ballmer was stupid enough to say at one stage he regretted ever starting MSN just because he was screwing it up all the time. Reality is MSN should be worth more than Google, and it is the true measure of Ballmer's incompetence.
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Schmidt's approach was to have numerous projects and see what stuck to the wall. IOW, he was trying to allow projects to happen in the same way that Google search was done. Page is now cleaning house. It remains to be seen what will happen. I think that he is trying to focus all on search
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Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure shilling goes on in many places, but this particular person is so obvious and persistent that it gets really obnoxious.
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Well, Microsoft is one of those companies that only think long term. In fact, most of what Google does is to gain quick profit and ditch the projects that fail with that.
I give you.... ...the Microsoft Kin [wikipedia.org]!
Launched May 13, 2010.
Discontinued June 30, 2010.
Now that's what I call long-term thinking!
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Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:5, Funny)
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What is this thing women you speak of?
Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:5, Funny)
I don't get the part about testing the waters with women. I didn't know they were any good for that.
You just throw them in and see what happens. They squeal if it's too cold, scream if there are too many sharks, etc.
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What? Doesn't everyone have this problem?!
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Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure if that is correct to say of Google. They seem to ditch most of their products before they even launch so they have no real idea how profitable they would be.
Isn't that the right time to ditch a product? If you don't think it's going to work out, it seems much better to ditch it before you launch it.
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Isn't that the right time to ditch a product? If you don't think it's going to work out, it seems much better to ditch it before you launch it.
I would say it's better to test the product if you can by putting it on the market. I can't remember more than a few of 'industry analysts" who thought the iPad would succeed the ay it has. At best they thought it would play a distant second fiddle to the the iPod/iPhone. Now the iPad has overtaken the iPod as the item chosen by first time customers and Apple sold 15 million units just in 2010. Sometimes products will succeed despite the opinions of long time observers and industry experts including you own
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They're still trying to earn their dirt money.
This discussion is contaminated. Treat all commenters here with contempt for being involved with such sleazy sly tactics.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/facebook-enlists-pr-firm-burson-marsteller-to-pitch-google-privacy-story.html [bloomberg.com]
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-05-12/tech/30002042_1_burson-marsteller-burson-marsteller-facebook [businessinsider.com]
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Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
No. But "Overrated" seems to be
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what you actually use that? its kind of ironic that you change the default on a default ... I was honestly surprised when a co-worker fired up IE 9 on my computer while I was away, I sat there for a brief moment and thought someone installed firefox 3!
The Internet as we knew it is going away (Score:2)