WEBVTT - Tech’s Biggest Acquisition Stories 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:02.880 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:08.960 It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:17.800 tech Stuff from how stuff looks dot com. Hello again, everyone, 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:20.000 and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pelett 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:22.320 and I'm an editor at how Stuff works dot com. 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:25.480 Sitting across from me, as always a senior writer, Jonathan Strickland, 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:29.680 Mrs Dallaway said she would buy the flowers herself. All right, 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:33.080 then today we're gonna talk a little bit about some 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:36.400 of the big tech acquisition stories that we've had in 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:40.120 the past. And this is prompted by a recent as 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:43.600 of the recording of this podcast acquisition that made the news, 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:47.199 you know, in in the last week. Really, I think 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:50.199 one of the funny things about tech acquisitions is there, 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.360 in a way, there's kind of two versions of tech acquisitions. 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:58.120 To me, um, there are things like the uh, the 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:01.680 acquisition that you were just talking about, the Facebook purchase 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:07.640 of Instagram for one billion dollars um and this is 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:09.960 kind of this is a big deal for a number 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:12.240 of reasons. It kind of struck me as funny, this 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:13.959 this deal. We'll get into that a second. I want 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.480 to finish my thought um and and but in this case, 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:22.640 you have a situation where both companies are well known. Um. 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:24.959 Instagram has a lot of buzz going on about it 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:28.800 right now. Plus you know everybody knows Facebook is UM. 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:32.400 But then there are these other tech acquisitions where it's 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:36.280 something like infrastructure. You know, some big company and it's 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:38.600 a big company, but it's somebody who makes something that 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:42.160 people don't rush out and buy off store shelves. UM 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.360 gets acquired by somebody else who's sort of in the 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:48.400 same vain. And you know, this is the kind of 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:51.360 thing that investors talk about but is not common UM. 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:52.640 And that was one of those things that kind of 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:54.720 struck me as I started doing research for this podcast. 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.000 Is you've got the big names, and you go so 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.480 and so acquired such and such, Oh my gosh, what 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:01.240 is this gonna mean? And then you have somebody else 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:06.400 who goes, wow, that was a billion dollar purchase. Okay, yeah, 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:09.200 so um yeah, But the big news the week that 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.600 we're recording this is the Facebook acquisition of Instagram for 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:18.400 one billion dollars, a princely sum to be sure. UM. 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:21.359 And it's might actually be that might actually be a 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:25.600 kingly sum at that point. UM. I got got promoted. 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:28.839 Uh yeah, the uh And and for those who don't know, 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.360 just so that we can get this uh all on 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:36.400 the table. Instagram is a photo app used to be 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:40.800 iOS exclusive and then opened up recently for Android. I 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:43.160 have it on my Android phone. I as well have 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:45.840 it on my Android phone. And it is both an 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:48.600 app that allows you to take photos and apply different 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:50.359 filters to those photos so that you can make a 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:54.200 good photo suddenly look really bad or uh, that's just 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:56.720 me making some editorial comments. Well, no, I mean it's 0:02:56.720 --> 0:02:58.880 supposed to the idea is that you grunge it up 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:02.360 so it looks appears as though we're taken on an 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:07.440 older camera or maybe it's a former paper photo that's 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:09.520 gotten stepped on and rubbed in the dirt. I mean 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:11.760 it's it's done on purpose. Yeah, it's it's it's kind 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.359 of it's kind to be bad distressed if you will. 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:18.480 But yeah, it does. It gives it gives things a 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:22.480 neat little twist really um, and it's made a lot 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:27.800 of iOS fans happy that they can it can do 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:31.000 some some very simple filters, color filters on top of 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.119 their photos that give it an appearance as if it's 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:38.560 been edited, uh, you know, by someone who's fairly skilled 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:40.800 in photo editing. But it's all you're doing is just 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:44.960 choosing a filter. It's really really simple, very easy interface 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:49.560 and um uh. And it's also not just an app 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:52.880 lets you take photos, but lets you share them as well. 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:55.040 So it's got a social aspect to it where you 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:58.360 can follow people on Instagram and then you can see 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:01.760 as they up owd more photos, as they take more 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:04.760 photos using Instagram, you can see them in a feed, 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:06.840 So that way you can kind of keep up with 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:09.480 what's going on in that person's life. And that is 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:13.600 the key I think to this, to this acquisition. That's 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:17.839 why Facebook was interested in Instagram. Because Facebook is all 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:21.640 about you know, social and photos as well, but it's 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:27.560 mobile interface has not been widely regarded as being easy 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:32.039 to use or good if we want to if we 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:34.360 want to really boil it down. I mean, I personally 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:37.240 don't have any problem with the Facebook mobile interface, but 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:40.800 I know a lot of people who use Facebook even 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:43.000 more extensively than I do, which is hard for me 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:45.960 to imagine, but they find that it's just not as 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:48.000 robust as they would like. And part of that is 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.680 the photo functions. Now I use a lot of other 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:56.560 apps that will allow me to automatically push a photo 0:04:56.640 --> 0:04:59.479 to various social networks, including Twitter or Facebook. So for 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:01.480 me it wasn't as big a deal. But for people 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:05.080 who don't use that or don't have that option, Instagram 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:07.599 gave them the ability to take a photo, put this 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:11.720 filter on, share it with uh the social network, and 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:14.000 now with Facebook's purchase, they're gonna be able to share 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:16.960 it with Facebook itself. Or maybe Facebook will just integrate 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:23.320 Instagram's UH functionality into its own mobile apps. Well, from 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:27.400 what I've read, the whole idea is to leave Instagram 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:31.120 sort of on its own um, and Facebook actually has 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:34.640 a reasonably good track record of doing that. I remember, 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:38.600 um being a fan of friend feed when Facebook acquired 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:43.240 that uh some time ago, and they said, um, oh, well, 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:45.440 we're pretty much gonna leave it alone. We just want 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:48.760 to incorporate some of this technology into Facebook as well, 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:50.840 and that we wanted to get these guys for their 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:53.720 expertise and add some of this functionality Facebook and a 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:55.760 lot of people on friend feed were going, well, this 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:58.520 is the end, This is the end. And really they 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.560 didn't mess with it uh um as much. But uh, 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:05.080 but It is kind of funny because different companies have 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:09.520 different takes on it. Um. Jonathan and I first started 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:12.880 talking about this podcast as being our take on Instagram, 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.240 but I think it's kind of been um done in 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:19.000 pretty much every tech channel. Why they were doing it 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:21.960 and all these things and what happens if you don't 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:25.000 like it. There are a lot of Facebook uh, people 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:29.680 who don't like Facebook taking over Instagram because they, um, 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:31.640 you know, they just said, well, they're gonna ruin it, 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:36.080 kind of like they didn't like the Facebook Spotify partnership. Yeah, yeah, um, 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:39.119 And there have been lots of well, if you don't 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:42.880 want to use Instagram anymore, here are some alternatives. I 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:45.120 installed a couple of them, like stream Zoo and pixeler 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:47.360 oh Matic and some of those, and they sort of 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:49.159 do the same kinds of things. There are all sorts 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.520 of alternatives if you don't want to use Instagram anymore. 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:55.000 But you know, I think I felt like this would 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:57.200 be an opportunity to talk about some of these these 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.520 acquisitions in the past, because um, they've all take different 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:03.600 kinds of turns. Um. Some have been very hands off, 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:06.440 some have been very hands on, some have succeeded, some 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:10.280 have flopped miserably. Um, so we wanted to talk about 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:13.160 some of the big ones and uh, and we've got 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:16.920 a whole bunch here. I wanna I wanna credit someone 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:19.360 before we get too far into this, because a lot 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:22.040 of the pretty much all the information I pulled I 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:25.880 pulled from a spreadsheet that a Wired writer named Andy 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:31.240 Bayou created. He created this amazing spreadsheet where he he 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:35.640 just sort of uh trolled the Internet, not in the negative, 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:40.320 you stink kind of way, but rather the right getting 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:44.680 all the information you can for info about various big 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.200 tech acquisitions. And these are the ones that are really 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.800 the kind that that get the notice of users because 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:56.240 it's the recognizable brand names. But he pulled them all together, 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:59.600 and he went so far as to even compare how 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:05.400 much the reported acquisition amount was versus how many users 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:09.679 the service that was acquired, how many users it had. Uh, 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:12.720 he broke down what the cost per user was based 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:17.560 on that information, and even how many employees the service had, 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:21.280 and what the cost per employee was. Because when you 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.360 think about it, these acquisitions, some of them like Instagram 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:28.960 that's a billion dollars, Instagram did not have a lot 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:34.160 of employees. Uh, that thirteen employees according according to Andy's research, 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:39.000 so thirteen employees and a billion bucks. He estimated that 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:44.280 that was about seventy seven million dollars per employee. Now 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:46.880 that doesn't mean that each employee of Instagram is is 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.280 taking home a cool seventy seven million, because the CEO 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:53.840 and the head of Instagram are taking down about half 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:58.560 a billion dollars together. So that's so about fifty of 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:00.959 that purchase price went to the uh, the guys in 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:05.920 charge of Instagram. But still you're thinking, that's like winning 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.760 the lottery. You know, you're working, you're working for this, 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:11.800 you're working in a small, tight group, and you get 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:14.160 acquired for a massive amount of money. That's kind of 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:16.199 like that was the dream of the whole dot com 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:18.920 bust too. There are a lot of companies that were 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:20.880 starting up that we're trying to be really small and 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:24.320 nimble and get acquired by bigger companies. And some of 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:26.200 the some of the stories we have, some of the 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:29.720 um the acquisitions we can talk about happened before the 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:33.480 dot com crash, including a couple from Yahoo that I 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:37.880 wanted to talk about. So back in nineteen Yahoo made 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:44.600 two really big acquisitions. The first was in January of 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:50.400 when Yahoo purchased geo Cities. Now, geo Cities was sort 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:52.839 of a place where you could build your own web 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:56.640 page and it was laid out like a city, like 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:59.559 they had neighborhoods and everything, and and it was kind 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:03.040 of a uh it was kind of like the place 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:06.319 where people would build a website before there were really 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:10.360 social networks. Yeah. Yeah, Now, UM, maybe some of you 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:14.480 don't remember necessarily what what the World Wide Web was like. 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:16.120 I was gonna say the Internet, but let's go stick 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.960 with the Worldwide Web. Um, back in in the mid 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:26.480 to late nineties. Um, people didn't necessarily uh intend to 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:28.640 go I mean, and the Internet was still sort of 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:31.360 a new concept for people, and they wanted to know 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:33.839 what can you do with this? I mean, emails a 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:40.040 fairly reasonably easy concept to understand, um, and you know, 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:42.880 there were others. There were more difficult things like using 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:47.440 net for example, um, and then databases that weren't the 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:51.920 most intuitive. Yeah, as far as user interfaces are concerned. So, 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:55.640 I mean, at the time, geo Cities was kind of 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:59.720 a neat deal because it allowed people to create their 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.600 own websites without having to learn how to code HTML. 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.120 And there weren't a lot of tools, um, you know, 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:09.560 things like a WordPress dot com or blogger or you 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.040 know the journaling sites, which is I think sort of 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:14.840 what a lot of Geo cities pages were like. Or 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:18.360 even wizzy Wig editors, yeah exact, which is grain Weaver 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:22.000 or before that go live, so even even page mails 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:24.200 stuff like that and Whizzywig. Just in case you don't know, 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:27.320 is what you see is what you get where the 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:30.600 edit that you're making on the screen, you what you're 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:32.600 looking at on the screen, and your edit mode is 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:35.080 you can be reasonably confident that's what's going to show 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:37.400 up if you were to navigate there through a browser. 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:39.720 Back in the old days, we had to do everything 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.240 by code. Yeah, well I should clarify too, because I 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:46.320 was using some Whizzywig editors back in the late nineties. 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:49.240 But they for the most part, they were They came 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:54.280 in two flavors, um fairly trustworthy, but very expensive, uh 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:57.880 like like like a couple of hundreds of dollars or 0:11:58.400 --> 0:11:59.960 you could you could buy um, there were a couple 0:11:59.920 --> 0:12:02.199 of them that were you know, in the forty fifty 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.920 dollar range, but they inserted junk code and the pages 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:08.600 would break depending on what browser you were using or 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:12.880 sometimes not depending on what browser you're using. Um, and 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:14.840 they were just and you'd have to do this and 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.560 upload it to a server. Not everyone is comfortable with 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:20.520 FTP and knowing how to do this, and Geo Cities 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:24.120 was sort of a pioneer in this space. Hey, throw 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:27.800 this content out there and make new friends in your neighborhood. Okay, 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:32.160 So the acquisition went for reported about all three point 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:36.760 five seven billion dollars. Three point five seven billion dollars people, 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:40.320 that's that's three point five seven times more than the 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:43.560 Instagram acquisition. And those were in you know, that was 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:48.040 about fifteen years rounding off earlier, So that was that 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:50.959 was significant. So here's the problem is that Geo Cities 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:55.080 that was probably right at the peak of geo City's popularity. 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:58.120 Uh and then before too much longer, there was a 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:00.680 shift in the way people use the web. Because before 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:03.400 the dot com crash, a lot of the websites on 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:05.880 the web were very static. So you would build a 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:08.520 web page and it would pretty much stay that way 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:12.360 for months at a time. You wouldn't necessarily add new 0:13:12.400 --> 0:13:14.480 material because it was kind of a pain to do it, 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:16.640 and really most people weren't thinking of the web in 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:18.160 that sense. They were thinking of the web kind of 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:20.320 like a book. You would go you would read a 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:22.240 web page, and just like if you were to read 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:24.880 a book, you wouldn't go back necessarily unless you just 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.720 truly enjoyed the web page. But there wouldn't be any 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:31.000 new material there because it wasn't dynamic. But that began 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:34.160 to change right around the same time that Yahoo made 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:38.880 this purchase. And of course today Geo Cities no longer exists. 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.559 So that's a three point five seven billion dollar purchase 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:44.920 that eventually fizzled out. Now, it stayed around for a while. 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:47.360 It's not like it it's not like it died immediately 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:50.120 after y'all who purchased it, and y'ah who got more 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:53.200 community oriented as a result of it. Yeah, I wouldn't 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:56.640 say that that it was a complete failure on Yahoo's 0:13:56.679 --> 0:14:01.520 part inasmuch as, um, the idea really of g O 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.199 c d s really did propel things forward in the 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:08.840 social space. Um. But yeah, in a way, you go, Okay, well, 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:10.680 they spend a lot of money and then the service 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:13.559 shutdown in that in that regard, you know, strictly on 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.319 that place. Then yeah, I know that whenever you look 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:19.280 at at yeah Who as an analyst today, because Yahoo 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:22.600 is a company that has has been struggling over the 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:25.760 last couple of years. Um, and you start looking back 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.840 on deals like this, it's very easy to point fingers. 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:31.840 But it's even easier to point a finger at Yeah Whose. 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:36.440 Other purchase in Broadcast dot Com, which was a an 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:40.320 internet radio company. Broadcast dot Com was so back in 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.760 the nineties. Uh, there were there were a couple of 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:47.160 people who were thinking about the possibility of broadcasting radio 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.160 over the Internet, and I, you know, started looking into 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:52.080 what they would need to do in order to do that, 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:56.040 and eventually this company began m the company that would 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:59.800 become Broadcast dot Com. And Uh, I had a fellow 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.680 eventually leading it named Mark Cuban. I feel like I've 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:06.240 heard that name somewhere. Yeah, you might have anyway. Cuban 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:09.560 he uh he was leading Broadcast dot Com, and yah 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:14.600 Who approached to purchase the company for a amazing five 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:17.480 point seven billion dollars. And when I say amazing, there 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:18.800 are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:21.920 that's that's a whole lot of money. But second of all, 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:26.920 the uh, the company had about According to Andy, over 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:31.360 at Wired had about five hundred and twenty thousand active users, 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.360 so just over half a million active users five point 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:39.360 seven billion dollars to essentially acquire those half million users. 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:41.720 Keeping in mind that, you know, the idea was that 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:43.840 these services would be rolled out into other parts of 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:47.760 Yahoo and become a bigger role. But um but still, 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:49.880 if you were to break that down as Andy did, 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:53.240 I like to call him Andy Uh, as Andy did 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:57.040 for for the purposes of his article, he determined that 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:00.880 that means that they spent almost eleven thousand dollars per 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:06.360 user buying that that company. And um uh so that's 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:10.640 you know, that's just it's crazy how how much money 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:13.560 that is. I mean, it's for per user. Like you 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:15.720 could have walked up to each person and said, if 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:17.560 I give you ten grand, will you come to my 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:22.560 side every day? The person yes, And that might have 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:26.640 been more effective because the broadcast dot com features they 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:28.800 did get rolled out into some other Yahoo features. But 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.240 most of that stuff no longer exists either, not as 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:35.240 not as it did then. No, it got incorporated into 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.200 other things. It's it's essentially lost now, like it's it's 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:42.800 so buried in other other products that you can't even 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:47.760 recognize it anymore. And I think the Yahoo Broadcast acquisition 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:54.640 by many is regarded as the biggest mistake and acquisitions ever. 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:59.320 And that's up against some pretty stiff competition. Well, it 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.920 did give the Dallas Mavericks another shot, since Mark Cuban 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:05.360 bought them and has spent a lot of money on them, 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:08.600 it's gotten quite good. But yeah, five point seven billion 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:11.840 dollars for that company, and um uh, I should add 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:13.720 that there's something else we need to talk about, just 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:15.840 very very briefly. I'm just I just want to address this. 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:18.320 Some people may be thinking, hey, what about oh, well 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:21.800 and Time Warner. That was that was that was often 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:25.359 talked about the worst deal in tech ever. But we 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:27.960 should point out that was a merger. That was not 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:30.320 an acquisition. It was a merger and it was a 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:33.960 it was sort of a tech non tech thing because 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:37.880 you know, it merged if you will, the uh digital 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.960 world with the um old media world O L D 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:47.840 E Media. Um Uh. But you know, if you if 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:50.560 you think about it, though, they were yeah, who was 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:54.080 at least thinking ahead, uh, the idea of streaming media, 0:17:54.160 --> 0:18:00.000 the idea of social websites. They were able to identify 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:01.960 by these things, but they were you know, pre dot 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:06.560 com bubble bursting, uh situations too, because this was the 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:10.320 late nineties, which was right before the bubble burst. It's 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:12.840 definitely frustrating in a way because you look at what 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:14.840 Yah Who was doing and you think they were moving 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:17.479 in the right direction. It was just it was just 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.600 slightly the wrong. It was bye bye by the end 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:23.399 the number of like a year and a half if 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:25.160 it had been a year and a half later after 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:27.840 the dot com bubble had burst, And y'all who assuming that, 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:29.880 Yeah Who had been able to weather the dot com 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:32.080 bubble well enough. And I mean the company is still 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.760 around today. So even after making these massive deals, um, 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:37.760 they might not have had to spend as much, and 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:40.320 they might have might have been able to invest in 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:45.000 similar products that would have been more attuned to the 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:48.520 and I hate to use this buzzword web two point 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:51.760 oh approach to the way the web works. Well, should 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:53.520 we stick with Yahoo down? Sure we can talk a 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.200 little bit more. Yeah, they they've made some other purchases 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:58.440 that actually did quite well for them, or at least 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:02.080 are still very popular or like Flicker, Yes, that's you 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:07.000 know the photo sharing and photo album uh database site, 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:10.080 and Flicker I think is one of the more popular 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:13.240 ones that's out there. Yeah. Um, although I did read 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:16.480 in uh in my research that some people have been 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.080 upset that Yeahoo didn't really do anything with Flicker, like 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:23.480 they were expecting them to take it the next step 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:27.760 and Flicker sort of stayed the same red much. That's true, 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:31.480 it hasn't changed much. And and as other social networks 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:34.199 like Facebook and Google Plus have become more popular and 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:38.480 even Twitter, a lot of that photos sharing and photo 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:42.919 storage stuff has been offloaded onto those so sites like 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:46.439 Flicker and also Google's Picasa, which never I don't think 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:49.440 it was ever anywhere near as popular as Flicker was. Um, 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:54.399 but Google's Picasa also have have sort of taken ahead. 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:57.359 I guess Google Picasa less so because that is what 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:02.760 Google Plus uses as its foundation form for photos photo 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:05.720 bucket one of the two. Yeah. Well, as a contrast, 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:10.040 we're talking when yeah, who was spending billions of dollars 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:12.400 for these acquisitions in two thousand five, And I would 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:16.440 argue that Flicker in a way, it's probably way more 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:19.840 popular than either of those two products, where that they 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:23.439 acquired for multibillions of dollars. Um Flicker was acquired for 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:27.560 thirty million, but that's a big change, much more modest 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:32.119 acquisition compared to the billions of dollars they spent just 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:34.600 a few years earlier. And I think, yeah, I think 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:38.239 that was much more wisely spent in that case. And 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:41.359 the the acquisition the same year of Delicious for thirty 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:44.199 million dollars, to which I think was done again with 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:48.880 the best of intentions. Link sharing sites are still popular. 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.240 I think they were in ways for runners to Twitter, 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:55.600 because they were supposed to be social link sharing sites. 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:58.800 But I use mind more for Hey, I wanna save 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:01.800 this because I'm gonna look at it later, let me 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:03.440 say this, And I don't really want to share it 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:05.280 with anybody because it's you know, I just want to 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:07.160 remember to read it. Yeah. There there are a couple 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:10.639 of these links sharing sites that are on these acquisitions 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:12.560 that what we can talk about and and and a 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:15.040 lot of them have kind of faded a way. There's 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:18.200 still there's still I think Reddit is really the only 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:23.280 one that I habitually go to now. I don't I 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:26.840 don't tend to use dig anymore, and I don't don't 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:29.560 really use stumble Upon and I don't really use Delicious 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:33.880 so well. Delicious was one of the early sites like this, 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:37.360 and I think Yahoo had intended to make something big 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:39.760 out of it, but they ended up, uh planning on 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:43.640 shutting it down until people complained about that so much 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:48.400 that they found someone to uh to let it go to. Um. 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:51.560 So another one of those things that just sort of, 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:54.480 you know, pass right on through. So why don't we 0:21:54.520 --> 0:21:57.000 talk about some other Is there another company would like 0:21:57.040 --> 0:21:59.560 to move to from Yahoo? Or do you want to necessarily? 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:03.760 How about we talked about eBay because eBay's also made 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:06.800 some pretty big acquisitions in the past. One of them 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:10.160 was in two thousand two and eBay bought PayPal. Yeah, 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:13.160 that was the most synergistic of all of these, if 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:15.880 you'll pardon the corpse speak, right, Yeah, it's the one 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:19.639 that fit the best into what eBay does. I mean PayPal. Obviously, 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:22.080 if you want to have a service that allows you 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:25.840 to set up an account to purchase things online, and 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:29.159