Re:It's official: Google buys Zenter
by nostrademons on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @12:35AM
(#29432)
Somebody asked Chris Sacca (one of Google's main acquisition guys) this at the first Startup School. His answer was "Build it in whatever language will let you get to market and start getting users fastest. Usually when Google buys a company, we have to rewrite all the code anyway to take advantage of Google's infrastructure and scale to millions of users."
This doesn't answer your question about Zenter, but it should about Google...
Re:It's official: Google buys Zenter
by paulgb on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @11:08AM
(#29540)
I think you are right. Whois.sc cached the server response headers before Google switched the server, and it was "Apache/2.2.4 (Unix) DAV/2 mod_jk/1.2.21 SVN/1.4.4". mod_jk is a Tomcat connector, so it would make sense that the site would be written in Java.
Re:It's official: Google buys Zenter
by gibsonf1 on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @06:24PM
(#29319)
An incredible win-win. I'm looking forward to hearing the official buyout cost! (And I'm looking forward to using the app.)
Will the founders survive at the Googleplex for long?
Was Google's earlier vaporware announcement a strategy to get Zenter at a lower cost? Probably not, as they really need that app one way or another for the suite. Excellent recovery that Zenter got bought instead of ending up on ebay.
Also congratulations to the Y Combinator team - yet another good call added to the record. The PR from this will be big.
Re:It's official: Google buys Zenter
by mqt on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @04:37AM
(#29474)
It's interesting that Zenter agreed to an acquisition before publicly launching. I don't recall seeing this too often.
Would they have survived a presentation-ware duel with Google or would they have suffered a fate similar to Kiko's?
I can't remember when I first heard about Zenter but it seems like I've been anticipating its release for a while. We generally hear that it's good to release early and update often so I'm interested in the story behind all of this.
Would it have been better for them to hold out and build a user base so they could be acquired for more money?
Re:It's official: Google buys Zenter
by bootload on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @07:27PM
(#29344)
"... Will the founders survive at the Googleplex for long? ..." && "... second service I know of (after Youtube) that Google's acquired despite already having internal teams working on a product ..."
I was wondering about this as well, then I read this post. It must have an impact on the 'engineers' who work there having groups of buyouts with vesting periods and larger payouts. There must be some level of resentment (it's human nature). How does google manage this?
Re:It's official: Google buys Zenter
by antirez on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @10:03AM
(#29521)
Yeah, also it is not particularly cool after you sold that you need to go at Google to work on this stuff. I mean... ok... after some year the vesting period expires and you are rich and goodbye, but in some way after the acquisition you became a "worker" for Google with much less freedom than before: this sucks.
Re:It's official: Google buys Zenter
by pg on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @10:53AM
(#29535)
It's standard procedure to go work at the acquirer after getting bought. I did it myself. It's not so bad. Having just become rich tends to put you in a pretty cheerful mood, which makes all the everyday annoyances of working at a big co slide off you. Plus Google is probably the most hacker-compatible of all big cos.
Re:It's official: Google buys Zenter
by antirez on Thursday June 21, 2007 @04:17PM
(#29893)
Plus Google is probably the most hacker-compatible of all big cos.
Maybe N years ago when google was a little startup. In every big company there is the rule that you need to do a specific stuff, and this is the worst thing that an hacker can suffer, at least in my experience: all the hackers I know tend to switch domain every few months, just the time to understand "how it works".
Re:It's official: Google buys Zenter
by bootload on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @11:52PM
(#29728)
"... in some way after the acquisition you became a "worker" for Google with much less freedom ..."
In some ways post - acquisition isn't, 'job-done'. It makes more sense to see the task through integration in the new company. It is still your baby and I'll bet anyone working on it would see it that way. At the same time It would make sense also to give yourself a cut-off date working for soft-co.
Re:It's official: Google buys Zenter
by bootload on Thursday June 21, 2007 @12:05AM
(#29731)
"... The smart money is saying this is a build, not a buy. ..." ~ TC, April 17, 2007 ~ http://tinyurl.com/yo99gh
So if you make things that other want, did zenter purposefully make it's product to fill the gap in google office? If so it's a risky (ballsy) strategy to compete head to head with google if they have announced their intentions. What I want to know is what happened in the following 2 months?
Was zenter X times better than the internal version?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/19/google-acquires-zenter-to-fill-out-coming-powerpoint-application/
This doesn't answer your question about Zenter, but it should about Google...
I believe the back end is Java.
Will the founders survive at the Googleplex for long?
Was Google's earlier vaporware announcement a strategy to get Zenter at a lower cost? Probably not, as they really need that app one way or another for the suite. Excellent recovery that Zenter got bought instead of ending up on ebay.
Also congratulations to the Y Combinator team - yet another good call added to the record. The PR from this will be big.
Would they have survived a presentation-ware duel with Google or would they have suffered a fate similar to Kiko's?
I can't remember when I first heard about Zenter but it seems like I've been anticipating its release for a while. We generally hear that it's good to release early and update often so I'm interested in the story behind all of this.
Would it have been better for them to hold out and build a user base so they could be acquired for more money?
I was wondering about this as well, then I read this post. It must have an impact on the 'engineers' who work there having groups of buyouts with vesting periods and larger payouts. There must be some level of resentment (it's human nature). How does google manage this?
Maybe N years ago when google was a little startup. In every big company there is the rule that you need to do a specific stuff, and this is the worst thing that an hacker can suffer, at least in my experience: all the hackers I know tend to switch domain every few months, just the time to understand "how it works".
In some ways post - acquisition isn't, 'job-done'. It makes more sense to see the task through integration in the new company. It is still your baby and I'll bet anyone working on it would see it that way. At the same time It would make sense also to give yourself a cut-off date working for soft-co.
Seriously, making something people want was exactly what the Zenters did. Everyone could see at Demo Day that they'd made something users would like.
So if you make things that other want, did zenter purposefully make it's product to fill the gap in google office? If so it's a risky (ballsy) strategy to compete head to head with google if they have announced their intentions. What I want to know is what happened in the following 2 months?
Was zenter X times better than the internal version?
Congratulations are in order, in any case!
Happy 1st Father's Day Wayne!