WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: Tech’s Biggest Acquisition Stories 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.640 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.600 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm executive producer at How 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:18.240 Stuff Works in My Heart Radio and I love all 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:22.280 things tech. It's time for another classic episode, y'all. This 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:27.200 one went out May two thousand twelve and it was 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:32.080 called Texts Biggest Acquisition Stories. This has been a big 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.080 part of a lot of Tech Stuff episodes, the idea 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:39.960 of companies acquiring other companies and how that changed the 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:45.080 fate of both parties involved. In some cases, those companies 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.280 go on to do great things and in other cases 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:54.959 things fall apart, sometimes because the acquiring company has overextended itself. 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:59.240 But this is one of the the episodes where I 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.480 talk about and Chris, my co host, also talks about 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.760 some of the biggest acquisition stories in tech history. So 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:09.200 enjoy today. We're gonna talk a little bit about some 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:12.600 of the big tech acquisition stories that we've had in 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:16.280 the past. And this is prompted by a recent as 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:19.760 of the recording of this podcast, acquisition that made the news, 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:23.399 you know, in in the last week. Really, I think 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:26.440 one of the funny things about tech acquisitions is there 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:29.760 in a way, there's kind of two versions of tech 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:33.360 acquisitions to me, UM, there are things like the uh, 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:37.000 the acquisition that you were just talking about, the Facebook 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:43.640 purchase of Instagram for one billion dollars UM and this 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:45.840 is kind of this is a big deal for a 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:47.960 number of reasons. It kind of struck me as funny, 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:49.880 this this deal. We'll get into that just a second. 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:53.000 I want to finish my thought. UM. And And but 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.280 in this case, you have a situation where both companies 0:01:56.360 --> 0:02:00.160 are well known. UM. Instagram has a lot of is 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:03.280 going on about it right now. Plus you know everybody 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:06.040 knows Facebook is UM. But then there are these other 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:11.239 tech acquisitions where it's something like infrastructure. You know, some 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:13.959 big company and that's a big company, but it's somebody 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:16.560 who makes something that people don't rush out and buy 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:20.840 off store shelves. UM gets acquired by somebody else who's 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:23.880 sort of in the same vain. And you know, this 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:26.079 is the kind of thing that investors talk about but 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:28.280 is not common UM. And that was one of those 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:29.919 things that kind of struck me as I started doing 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:32.200 research for this podcast. Is you've got the big names 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:34.720 and you go so and so acquired such and such. 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:36.600 Oh my gosh, what is this gonna mean? And then 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:38.640 you have somebody else who goes, well, that was a 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:44.440 billion dollar purchase. Okay, so um yeah, but the big 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:47.359 news the week that we're recording this is the Facebook 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:52.160 acquisition of Instagram for one billion dollars, a princely sum 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:56.160 to be sure. Um, and it's got a lot might 0:02:56.160 --> 0:02:59.160 actually might actually be a kingly sum at that point, 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:04.040 um got got promoted. Yeah the uh and and for 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:06.919 those who don't know, just so that we can get 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:11.200 this uh all on the table. Instagram is a photo 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:15.200 app used to be iOS exclusive and then opened up 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:18.160 recently for Android. I have it on my Android phone. 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:20.640 I as well have it on my Android phone. And 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:23.560 it is both an app that allows you to take 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:26.080 photos and apply different filters to those photos so that 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:28.200 you can make a good photo suddenly look really bad 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:32.400 or uh that's just me making some editorial comments. Well, no, 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:34.320 I mean it's supposed to the idea is that you 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.000 grunge it up so it looks it appears as though 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:41.080 we're taken on an older camera, or maybe it's a 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.920 former paper photo that's gotten stepped on and rubbed in 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:47.080 the dirty. I mean it's it's done on purpose. Yeah, 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:49.320 it's it's it's kind of it's kind of good to 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.960 be bad distressed if you will, But yeah, it does. 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:56.720 It gives it gives things a neat little twist really. 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:01.360 Um and it's made a lot of iOS fans happy 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:05.880 that they can it can do some some very simple filters, 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:09.200 color filters on top of their photos that give it 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:12.200 an appearance as if it's been edited, uh, you know, 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:16.080 by someone who's fairly skilled in photo editing. But it's 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:18.839 all you're doing is just choosing a filter. It's really 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:23.839 really simple, very easy interface and um uh. And it's 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:27.920 also not just an app lets you take photos, but 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:29.880 lets you share them as well. So it's got a 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:32.120 social aspect to it where you can follow people on 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:37.200 Instagram and then you can see as they upload more photos, 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:39.720 as they take more photos using Instagram, you can see 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.000 them in a feed, so that way you can kind 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:44.480 of keep up with what's going on in that person's life. 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:48.680 And that is the key I think to this, to 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:52.480 this acquisition. That's why Facebook was interested in Instagram because 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:56.760 Facebook is all about you know, social and photos as well, 0:04:57.240 --> 0:05:02.240 but it's mobile interface has not been in widely regarded 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:07.719 as being easy to use or good if we want 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:09.760 to if we want to really boil it down. I mean, 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:13.200 I personally don't have any problem with the Facebook mobile interface, 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.400 but I know a lot of people who use Facebook 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:19.039 even more extensively than I do, which is hard for 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:21.880 me to imagine, but they find that it's just not 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:23.960 as robust as they would like. And part of that 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:27.599 is the photo functions. Now, I use a lot of 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:32.280 other apps that will allow me to automatically push a 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.560 photo to various social networks, including Twitter or Facebook, so 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:37.400 for me it wasn't as big a deal. But for 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:39.960 people who don't use that or don't have that option, 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.680 Instagram gave them the ability to take a photo, put 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.760 this filter on, share it with UH, the social network, 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:49.840 and now with Facebook's purchase, they're going to be able 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.360 to share it with Facebook itself, or maybe Facebook will 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:59.240 just integrate Instagram's UH functionality into its own mobile apps well. 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:03.920 From whatever, the whole idea is to leave Instagram sort 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.640 of on its own UM, and Facebook actually has a 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:11.920 reasonably good track record of doing that. I remember being 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:15.719 a fan of friend feed when Facebook acquired that UH 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:19.760 some time ago, and they said, um, oh, well we're 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:21.719 pretty much gonna leave it alone. We just want to 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:25.080 incorporate some of this technology into Facebook as well, and 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:27.680 that we wanted to get these guys for their expertise 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:30.040 and add some of this functionality Facebook and a lot 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:31.960 of people on friend feed were going out, well, this 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:34.680 is the end. This is the end. And really they 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:38.880 didn't mess with it um as much. But uh, but 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.680 it is kind of funny because different companies have different 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:45.920 takes on it. Um. Jonathan and I first started talking 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.120 about this podcast is being our take on Instagram, but 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:52.760 I think it's kind of been um done in pretty 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:55.400 much every tech channel. Why they were doing it and 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:58.159 on all these things and what happens if you don't 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:01.200 like it. There are a lot of Facebook uh, people 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:05.880 who don't like Facebook taking over Instagram because they um, 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:07.840 you know, they just said, well, they're going to ruin it, 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:12.280 kind of like they didn't like the Facebook Spotify partnership. Yeah, yeah, um. 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:15.320 And there have been lots of well, if you don't 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:19.040 want to use Instagram anymore, here are some alternatives. I 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:21.320 installed a couple of them, like stream Zoo and pixeler 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:23.560 oh Matic and some of those, and they sort of 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:25.360 do the same kinds of things. There are all sorts 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.720 of alternatives if you don't want to use Instagram anymore. 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:31.160 But you know, I think I felt like this would 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:33.400 be an opportunity to talk about some of these these 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:36.680 acquisitions in the past, because, um, they've all taken different 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:39.760 kinds of turns. Um. Some have been very hands off, 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:42.600 some have been very hands on, some have succeeded, some 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:46.480 have flopped miserably. Um, So we wanted to talk about 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:49.120 some of the big ones. Yeah, and uh, and we've 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:52.080 got a whole bunch here. I wanna I want to 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:55.280 credit someone before we get too far into this, because 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:57.440 a lot of the pretty much all the information I 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:01.320 pulled I pulled from a spreadsheet that a Wired writer 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:06.840 named Andy Bayou created. He he created this amazing spreadsheet 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:10.600 where he he just sort of uh trolled the Internet, 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:14.080 not the negative you stink kind of way, but rather 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:18.760 the grabbing right getting all the information you can for 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:22.520 info about various big tech acquisitions. And these are the 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.440 ones that are really the kind that that get the 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:30.360 notice of users because it's the recognizable brand names. But 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:33.720 he pulled them all together, and he went so far 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:39.240 as to even compare how much the reported acquisition amount 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:43.560 was versus how many users the service that was acquired, 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.720 how many users it had. Uh, he broke down what 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:50.280 the cost per user was based on that information, and 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:54.560 even how many employees the service had, and what the 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:58.000 cost per employee was, because when you think about it, 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:02.040 these acquisitions, some of them like Instagram, that's a billion dollars. 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:06.840 Instagram did not have a lot of employees. Uh, that 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:12.040 thirteen employees according according to Andy's research, So thirteen employees 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:16.079 and a billion bucks. He estimated that that was about 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:21.240 seventies seven million dollars per employee. Now that doesn't mean 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:23.720 that each employee of Instagram is is taking home a 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:27.120 cool seventy seven million, because the CEO and the head 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:32.080 of Instagram are taking down about half a billion dollars together. 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:36.000 So that's so about of that purchase price went to 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:40.520 the guys in charge of Instagram. But still you're thinking, 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.160 that's like winning the lottery. You know, you're working and 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:46.640 you're working for this, You're working in a small type 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.760 group and you get acquired for a massive amount of money. 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:51.560 That's kind of like that was the dream of the 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:54.400 whole dot com bust too. There are a lot of 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:56.360 companies that were starting up that we're trying to be 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:59.640 really small and nimble and get acquired by bigger companies. 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:02.120 Some of the some of the stories we have, some 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.360 of the um the acquisitions we can talk about happened 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:09.480 before the dot com crash, including a couple from Yahoo 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.480 that I wanted to talk about. So back in ninete, 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:19.840 Yahoo made two really big acquisitions. The first was in 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:24.679 January of n when Yahoo purchased geo Cities. Yeah. Now, 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.600 geo Cities was sort of a place where you could 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:31.360 build your own web page and it was laid out 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:34.920 like a city, like they had neighborhoods and everything, and 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:38.360 and it was kind of a uh it was kind 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:41.400 of like the place where people would build a website 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:45.760 before there were really social networks. Yeah yeah, Now, UM, 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:49.640 maybe some of you don't remember necessarily what what the 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:51.640 world Wide Web was, like, I was gonna say the Internet, 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:55.079 but let's go stick with the Worldwide Web. Um. Back 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:59.760 in in the mid to late nineties, Um, people didn't 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:04.120 necessarily uh intend to go I mean, and the Internet 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:06.720 was still sort of a new concept for people and 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:09.080 they wanted to know what can you do with this? 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:15.240 I mean, email is a fairly reasonably easy concept to understand, um, 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:17.880 and you know there were others. There were more difficult 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:22.760 things like us net for example, um, and then databases 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:26.240 that weren't the most intuitive. Yeah, as far as user 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:29.600 interfaces are concerned. So, I mean, at the time, geo 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:34.640 Cities was kind of a neat deal because it allowed 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:38.319 people to create their own websites without having to learn 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:41.920 how to code HTML. And there weren't a lot of tools, um, 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:44.840 you know, things like a WordPress dot com or blogger 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:47.800 or you know the journaling sites, which is I think 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:50.440 sort of what a lot of geo Cities pages were like. 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:55.120 Or even Whizzywig editors. Yeah, exactly as drain Weaver or 0:11:55.720 --> 0:11:58.480 before that go live, so even even page mails stuff 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:00.360 like that and Whizzywig. Just in case you don't know, 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:03.480 is what you see is what you get where the 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:07.040 edit that you're making on the screen, what you're looking 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:09.120 at on the screen and your edit mode is you 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:11.440 can be reasonably confident that's what's going to show up 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.360 if you were to navigate there through a browser like 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:17.120 in the old days, we had to do everything by code. Yeah, 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:19.960 well I should clarify too, because I was using some 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:23.160 whizzy wig editors back in the late nineties. But they 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.359 for the most part, they were they came in two flavors, 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:31.839 um fairly trustworthy, but very expensive, uh like like like 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:35.000 a couple of hundreds of dollars or you could you 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:36.880 could buy them. There were a couple of them that were, 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.680 you know, in the forty to fifty dollar range. But 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:43.240 they inserted junk code and the pages would break depending 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:46.480 on what browser you were using or sometimes not depending 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.800 on what browser you're using. Um, and they were just 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:51.800 and you'd have to do this and upload it to 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:54.920 a server. Not everyone is comfortable with FTP and knowing 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:57.000 how to do this, and geo City is was sort 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:00.320 of a pioneer in this space. You know, hey, throw 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:03.560 this content up there and make new friends in your neighborhood. Okay, 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:08.600 So the acquisition went for reported about three point five 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:12.959 seven billion dollars. Three point five seven billion dollars people, 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:16.520 that's that's three point five seven times more than the 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:19.720 Instagram acquisition. And those were in you know, that was 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:25.000 about fifteen years rounding off, and that was that was significant. 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:27.480 So here's the problem is that Geo Cities that was 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:31.520 probably right at the peak of Geo City's popularity. Uh. 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:34.720 And then before too much longer, there was a shift 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:37.040 in the way people use the web because before the 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:39.680 dot com crash, a lot of the websites on the 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:42.280 web were very static. So you would build a web 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:45.559 page and it would pretty much stay that way for 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.000 months at a time. You wouldn't necessarily add new material 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:50.640 because it was kind of a pain to do it, 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:52.840 and really most people weren't thinking of the web in 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:54.320 that sense. They were thinking of the web kind of 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:56.520 like a book. You would go you would read a 0:13:56.520 --> 0:13:58.400 web page, and just like if you were to read 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.080 a book, you wouldn't go back necessarily unless you just 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:03.880 truly enjoyed the web page. But there wouldn't be any 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:07.160 new material there because it wasn't dynamic. But that began 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.360 to change right around the same time that Yahoo made 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:15.040 this purchase. And of course today geo Cities no longer exists. 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:17.760 So that's a three point five seven billion dollar purchase 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.120 that eventually fizzled out. Now, it stayed around for a while, 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:23.520 it's not like it it's not like it died immediately 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.280 after y'all who purchased it, and y'ah who got more 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:29.400 community oriented as a result of it. Yeah, I wouldn't 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:32.800 say that that it was a complete failure on Yahoo's 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:37.400 part in as much as um the idea really of 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.400 geo cd s really did propel things forward in the 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.880 social space. UM. But yeah, in a way you go, Okay, 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:46.480 well they spend a lot of money and then the 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:49.640 service shutdown in that in that regard, you know, strictly 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:52.280 on that place. Then, yeah, I know that whenever you 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:55.240 look at Yeah Who as an analyst today, because y'ah 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:58.720 who is a company that has has been struggling over 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:01.680 the last couple of years, um, and you start looking 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:05.920 back on deals like this, it's very easy to point fingers. 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.040 But it's even easier to point a finger at Yeah Whose. 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:13.160 Other purchase in Broadcast dot Com, which was an internet 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:18.600 radio company. Broadcast dot Com was so back in the nineties. Uh, 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:20.600 there were there were a couple of people who were 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.160 thinking about the possibility of broadcasting radio over the Internet, 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:27.160 and you know, started looking into what they would need 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:29.640 to do in order to do that, and eventually this 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:33.920 company began m the company that would become Broadcast dot Com, 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:38.760 and UH had a fellow eventually leading it named Mark Cuban. 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:41.040 I feel like I've heard that name somewhere. Yeah, you 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:45.040 might have anyway, Cuban he uh he was leading broadcast 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:47.800 dot com and yah who approached to purchase the company 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:52.880 for a amazing five point seven billion dollars. And when 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:54.560 I say amazing, there are a couple of reasons for that. 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:56.720 First of all, that's that's a whole lot of money. 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:01.200 But second of all, the theme but he had about 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:05.360 according to Andy over at, Wired had about five and 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:10.280 twenty thousand active users, so just over half a million 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:13.560 active users five point seven billion dollars to essentially acquire 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:17.200 those half million users. Keeping in mind that, you know, 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:19.320 the idea was that these services would be rolled out 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:22.040 into other parts of Yahoo and become a bigger role. 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:24.920 But um but still, if you were to break that 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:28.600 down as Andy did, I like to call him Andy Uh, 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.520 as Andy did for for the purposes of his article, 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:35.760 he determined that that means that they spent almost eleven 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:40.880 thousand dollars per user buying that that company. And um 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:45.840 uh so that's you know, that's just it's crazy how 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:49.040 how much money that is. I mean, it's for per user, 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:51.600 Like you could have walked out to each person and said, 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:53.600 if I give you ten grand, will you come to 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:58.640 my side every day? The person yes, And that might 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:02.440 have been more effective. But as the broadcast dot com features, 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:04.879 they did get rolled out into some other Yahoo features. 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:07.639 But most of that stuff no longer exists either, not 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:11.200 as not as it did then. No, it got incorporated 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:14.120 into other things. It's it's essentially lost now, like it's 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:18.760 it's so buried in other other products that you can't 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:23.080 even recognize it anymore. And I think the Yahoo Broadcast 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:29.399 acquisition by many is regarded as the biggest mistake and 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:35.440 acquisitions ever, and that's up against some pretty stiff competition. Well, 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:38.720 it did give the Dallas Mavericks another shot since Mark 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:41.280 Cuban bought them, and it's spent a lot of money 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.000 on them. It's gotten quite good. But yeah, five point 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:47.800 seven billion dollars for that company. And uh, I should 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:49.760 add that there's something else we need to talk about, 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:51.520 just very very briefly. I'm just I just want to 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:54.119 address some people may be thinking, Hey, what about a 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.280 Well and Time Warner that was that was that was 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.359 often talked about the worst deal in heck ever, But 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:04.080 we should point out that was a merger that was 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:06.320 not an acquisition. It was a merger, and it was 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:08.880 a it was sort of a tech non tech thing 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:14.040 because you know, it merged, if you will, the digital 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:18.320 world with the um old media world l d E 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:24.040 or media um uh. But you know, if you if 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:26.760 you think about it, though, they were yeah who was 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:30.240 at least thinking ahead, uh, the idea of streaming media, 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:36.280 the idea of social websites. They were able to identify 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:38.320 these things, but they were you know, pre dot com 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:43.440 bubble bursting uh situations too because this was the late 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:46.280 you know, nineties, which was right before the bubble burst. 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:48.919 It's definitely frustrating in a way because you look at 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:50.760 what yeah, who was doing, and you think they were 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:53.480 moving in the right direction. It was just it was 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:57.280 just slightly the wrong. It was bye bye by the 0:18:56.640 --> 0:18:59.080 end the number of like a year and a half. 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:00.960 If it had been a year and a half later 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:03.280 after the dot com bubble had burst, and y'all who 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:05.560 assuming that, Yeah who had been able to weather the 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:07.960 dot com bubble well enough? And I mean the company 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:11.919 is still around today. So even after making these massive deals, um, 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:14.040 they might not have had to spend as much and 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:16.520 they might have might have been able to invest in 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:21.199 similar products that would have been more attuned to the 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:24.720 and I hate to use this buzzword web two point 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:27.920 oh approach to the way the web works. Well, should 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:29.639 we stick with ya who? Then? Sure we can talk 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:31.800 a little bit more. Yeah. They they've made some other 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.320 purchases that actually did quite well for them, or at 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:38.280 least are still very popular, like Flicker. Yes, that's you know, 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:43.719 the photo sharing and photo album uh database site, and 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:46.480 Flicker I think is one of the more popular ones 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:50.040 that's out there. Um, although I did read in UH 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:53.159 in my research that some people have been upset that 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:56.520 Yahoo didn't really do anything with Flicker, like they were 0:19:56.520 --> 0:20:00.000 expecting them to take it the next step and Flick 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.560 or sort of stayed the same as it really innovated much. 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:06.320 That's true, it hasn't changed much and launch, and as 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.680 other social networks like Facebook and Google Plus have become 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.240 more popular and even Twitter, a lot of that photos 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:17.679 sharing and photo storage stuff has been offloaded onto those 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:22.000 so sites like Flicker and also Google's Picasa, which never 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:24.159 I don't think it was ever anywhere near as popular 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:29.560 as Flicker was. Um, but Google's Picasa also have have 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.600 sort of taken ahead I guess Google Picasa less so, 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:36.240 because that is what Google Plus uses as its foundation 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:40.960 for UM for photos photo Bucket one of the two. Yeah. Well, 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:45.720 as a contrast, we're talking when Yahoo was spending billions 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.280 of dollars for these acquisitions in two thousand five, and 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.200 I would argue that Flicker in a way, it's probably 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.720 way more popular than either of those two products, where 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:59.119 that they acquired for multibillions of dollars. Um Flicker was 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:03.040 acquired for thirty million. But that's a big change, much 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:07.199 more modest acquisition compared to the billions of dollars they 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.480 spent just a few years earlier. And I think, yeah, 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:14.119 I think that was much more wisely spent in that case. 0:21:14.280 --> 0:21:17.040 And the the acquisition the same year of Delicious for 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.280 thirty million dollars, to which I think was done again 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:25.080 with the best of intentions. Link sharing sites are still popular. 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:28.399 I think they were in ways for runners to Twitter 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:31.760 because it was supposed to be social link sharing sites. 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:34.960 But I use mind more for Hey, I wanna save 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:38.000 this because I'm gonna look at it later. Let me 0:21:38.000 --> 0:21:39.639 save this, and I don't really want to share it 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:41.480 with anybody because it's you know, I just want to 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:43.479 remember to read it. Yeah, there are a couple of 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:46.919 these links sharing sites that are on these acquisitions at 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:48.960 what we can talk about and and and a lot 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:51.760 of them have kind of faded away. There's still there's 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:54.760 still I think Reddit is really the only one that 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:59.920 I habitually go to now I don't. I don't tend 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:03.240 to use dig anymore. Yeah, and I don't don't really 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:06.640 use stumble Upon, and I don't really use Delicious so well. 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:10.640 Delicious was one of the early sites like this, and 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:13.720 I think Yahoo had intended to make something big out 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:16.359 of it, but they ended up, uh planning on shutting 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:19.960 it down until people complained about that so much that 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:24.600 they found someone to uh to let it go to um. 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:27.760 So another one of those things that just sort of, 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:30.520 you know, passed right on through. Chris and I have 0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:33.680 more to say about tech's biggest acquisition stories, but first 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:44.160 let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. How 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:48.040 about we talked about eBay, because eBay's also made some 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:51.040