In the case of finance, it's the fact that they operate as the middleman, getting money from one place to another. The product isn't just getting people together, it's providing a smooth way to move money around.
The other examples have a product where individual technologies were melded together to produce that specific product. They did much more than just take a few technologies, then bolt them together.
On the other hand, Summly seems like the technology should be the product. NLP is a very hot research topic, and when I first saw that the product went for $30 mil, I thought that they had some brand new NLP technique or algorithm that Yahoo was snapping up. In fact, several articles, like this NY Times article(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/business/media/nick-dalois... ) supported that view.
However, the truth is that they just took a pre-existing tech, and bolted it onto an iOS application. I can't comment about the app, since it's been pulled from the iOS store, but it does sound like they attempted to do something new with the interface, but that's about it. So Yahoo basically bought 2 engineers and a Siri NLP engine license, the later of which will undoubtedly become more expensive when the contract is renegotiated.
You are conflating the "thought vs. glue" ratio with the "past thought vs. currently generating thought" ratio.
If you walked out the door of Apple with source code and "source code" for their hardware, you could replicate a lot of their value for the immediate future, until they had time to cook up new stuff.
You are correct in that more of Facebook or Craigslist's values are comprised by network effects, but I still believe more of Apple is network effect than not.
Consider the walking-out-of-the-door-with-the-blueprints hypothetical. You would still need to cobble together a supply chain, i.e. glue together a string of "doers" and make sure the glue is strong enough so the whole thing doesn't fly apart like a 787.
Remember the Hacker News refrain about execution versus MBA-style "ideation"? The execution guys are valuable because they know where to find what and whom, not because they ninja together the eleventh hour code themselves.
Maybe a more interesting hypothetical is "what could the 2nd place competitor do if they got blueprints and source code, and could use it freely?". In terms of Facebook and Craigslist, nothing much. In terms of Apple, Samsung could probably go to town with it, although I suppose you could also argue that "the right to use it freely" is in some ways the most important bit, as Samsung can probably replicate the hardware, and has good enough software at this point.
Glue takes thought, so the dichotomy is a bit rickety out of the door. I'm taking it as network value versus technical value. Both take present thought.
If you are glue, there is a terrible problem. When you are in finance you should be in the "Thought". You should think on who can pay the bills and who can not, so you could give loans to them or not.
You should be on thinking what is going to be the future and the business strategies that makes sense, business that are sound and solid versus scams to get people's money.
The fact that you consider yourself glue is the main problem. We are in a society when finance means "too big to fail", "we make bad decisions but do not pay for it", and "if people can not pay back its loans(because we lended irresponsibly) , we have to lower the requirements for loans even more".
What are you saying? Google, Craigslist, the Museum of Natural History and Earnest Hemingway have no meaning without glue like finance?
I don't think anyone would argue that glue is naturally less valuable. The problem is that our current economic structure treats glue as if it creates approximately ALL of the value because we haven't figured out a good way to split value between different stages of the pipeline (IP isn't a good way).
Over-investing in glue is bad insofar as it comes at the expense of investing in fundamental technologies/research. Since our (over)valuation of glue currently places a rather heavy opportunity cost on performing said research and endorses the "academia is a waste" attitude, I tend to agree that our economy is too focused on glue.
I am in finance. I am glue. I take existing people, things (read: capital), and ideas and bolt them together. Glue is the socioeconomic fabric that gives value to ideas, things, and ultimately people.
It's not just finance. Craigslist? Airbnb? Facebook? Apple? Glue. Put it this way: if you walked out the door with their source code, how much of their value could you replicate? Put it another way: how much would you pay to walk out the door with their source code and physical assets? Put it another way: how much would you pay to walk out the door with their source code, physical assets, and low to mid-level developers but none of their senior guys?
We have laws to protect intellectual property because thoughts and technologies are copyable, fungible, and ultimately outsource-able. We don't need such laws to protect relationships, the gluiest of glues. In fact, we need laws to break down their strength.