[HN Gopher] Facebook almost acquired Waze, but we ended up with ...
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Facebook almost acquired Waze, but we ended up with Google
Author : mtmail
Score : 272 points
Date : 2023-06-21 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (post.news)
(TXT) w3m dump (post.news)
| gniv wrote:
| Interesting details on the negotiations, especially the lack of
| chemistry with the Facebook teams.
| gniv wrote:
| Also just realized Noam is a founder of this site. Nice way to
| create buzz.
| zirgs wrote:
| Ehh, I would have preferred someone else. Google already has too
| many products that they force you to use with the same account.
| isoos wrote:
| To be fair, waze is perfectly usable without using any account.
| dizhn wrote:
| Does it keep a local search history without logging in?
| Google Maps doesn't. I guess it takes too much storage. :)
|
| By the way, most of the western world are missing out on the
| best navigation app which is Yandex. Unfortunately it's only
| available in a few countries.
| nicce wrote:
| I stopped using it because it was not usable because of the
| ads.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| I just used it twice for a 12 hour trip couple weeks ago
| and had no ads.
| mft_ wrote:
| I use it periodically (in Europe) and haven't seen an
| advert yet?
| nicce wrote:
| It depends on where you are driving. If nobody buys ads
| in your area, then you are probably not seeing ads.
|
| For me the most distraction were the branded pins on the
| map. Literally ads which hide other places and are
| distracting.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Doesn't mean that google won't kill it out of the blue after
| they've extracted they wanted from it to put in their own
| app. I think that's the real possibility here
| mliker wrote:
| Great inside look into the psychology behind a big acquisition
| like this. I can't help but feel Noam's ego was bruised by the
| poor due diligence experience he experienced at Facebook, causing
| him to lash out at the company within the post. Otherwise, really
| insightful details, especially that Instagram was acquired for
| $1B, which is what he was anchored on.
| benzible wrote:
| A straightforward recounting of a negative experience doesn't
| constitute "lashing out" and I don't see any hyperbolic
| language or other signs that he's exaggerating. Also -
| Facebook's offer allowed him to get Google from their original
| $450M offer to the $1.15B he ultimately accepted. I doubt he's
| upset over this.
| burnte wrote:
| Yeah, the writer was vague about exactly who said what and
| never quoted or dropped names, they were very polite about
| it, never saying anything more negative than he felt some
| junior engineers were impolite and personalities clashed.
| Great writeup.
| freedomben wrote:
| Sadly, in contemporary corporate culture, the truth is
| considered rude if it's at all negative. You're supposed to
| imply it, and if that fails you can speak it but it must be
| sugar-coated heavily to avoid people taking personal offense
| at it.
|
| And to be clear I'm not talking about rudely blunt truth
| (which can indeed be pretty rude), I'm simply talking about
| inconvenient facts that people don't want to hear and try not
| to acknowledge. Things like "the Facebook engineers belittled
| our product" should instead become "there were personal
| chemistry challenges between us and the Facebook engineers."
| Instead of "the Facebook engineers were young" it should be
| "we had a culture mismatch" or something like that.
| alwyn wrote:
| Isn't that mostly corporate US and Asia? I love this type
| of directness; no sugarcoating inconvenient facts. If
| someone's ego gets damage because of that, that sounds more
| like a them problem, in my eyes. Then again I am Dutch so
| we live and breathe directness...
| DropInIn wrote:
| Yea to me what the prior commentor suggests is nothing
| more than deception/lying through a form of omission...
|
| If the message isn't clear then they don't hear it, with
| the only reason you don't so that you can say you said
| something when shtf all while ignoring that your indirect
| statement effectively ensured the continuation of the
| problems...
|
| Blunt honesty is the only way to effectively and
| efficiently run an enterprise.
|
| We really need to address this culture of Feeling Over
| Facts...
| xerxesaa wrote:
| Israelis also tend to be very direct in my experience
| working with them. I'm not Israeli (in fact, I hold a
| passport for a country that doesn't even recognize
| Israel), but it's something I've always admired about
| working with people from the region. I think the Israeli
| culture is really good at cutting through fluff and
| focusing on getting things done.
| DragonStrength wrote:
| I think it's primarily West Coast US, and it's the
| culture of the area to be passive aggressive versus
| direct. It's unfortunately had a huge impact on current
| tech corporate culture as a result of where the industry
| is located.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _it 's the culture of the area to be passive aggressive
| versus direct._
|
| Absolutely nailed it. This is exactly what it is.
|
| It definitely does feel a lot more common on the west
| coast than the east coast (I'm in the west). I love a lot
| of people on the west coast, but it can be refreshing
| sometimes working with east coast people :-)
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| The corporate culture is slowly becoming mainstream
| culture. Look around you, it's happening everywhere. Our
| culture isnt driven by musicians or athletes or writers or
| movies any more. It's driven by the values of HR and
| advertising departments, and what content advertisers will
| pay to associate with
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Did someone say toxic positivity?? :)
| sowbug wrote:
| How else would you have explained the key story element of why
| FB was willing to run down the deal clock?
|
| Edit: removed a sentence that made the same point as benzible
| already did.
| [deleted]
| moneywoes wrote:
| Did they build anything after? Great read
| SilverBirch wrote:
| By they do you mean Noam? Because this website - Post.news is
| literally the startup he's working on.
| MicropenisMike wrote:
| Link is broken?
| wodenokoto wrote:
| broken for me too. Any mirrors?
| mtmail wrote:
| http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:C5LXloS.
| ..
| hungrigekatze wrote:
| https://imgur.com/gallery/izcx4Se
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Refresh the page.
|
| Seems like this Post is having difficulty displaying text for
| some reason.
| xp84 wrote:
| Oh, 2023 Internet... it's so difficult to just "display a
| page of static hypertext" when you've got so many
| microservices to write, then to rewrite in Rust, so many
| react components to create, so many lambdas to execute
| serverless in the cloud, and of course so many adtech
| components to integrate on top of it all.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| "...and the engineers doing the due diligence were very young and
| were confidently belittling what we had built. Our average
| engineer was 40 years old,..." - That's so Meta. I wouldn't be
| surprised if they tried to ask them leetcode hard questions
| during due diligence.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to ask them leetcode
| hard questions during due diligence.
|
| Based on my experiences interviewing at Google, I wouldn't be
| surprised if they did that too.
| duxup wrote:
| I would be highly skeptical of any engineer making grand
| generalizations about a product without actually working with
| it for a fairly long time. It's SO easy to belittle code
| without really knowing the whys and history.
|
| I get that is what their job is when doing due diligence... but
| I think it's also a little bit impossible.
|
| I know I have thought of some code as poor, rewritten it
| "better" only to find my code is insufficient and quickly
| evolving into the same code I thought was bad.... for all the
| same reasons that influenced the original code... and thinking
| much more of the old / bad--- proven code.
| touisteur wrote:
| There are still some other metrics and heuristics you can
| use, such as number (and coverage) of tests, overall code
| metrics, number of compiler warnings, that tell you _a little
| bit_ about the care put in maintaining the codebase. You can
| still have quality codebases without those (do I know...) but
| then you 'd have to look at critical business metrics
| (uptime, latency, satisfaction surveys) or the number of
| tickets (even there, beware) or the overall 'cost and
| duration to deliver a fix or a new feature'.
|
| As for architecture, it's harder to find generic metrics and
| guidelines for 'quality'... I won't dive in there but
| external evaluation by people with no or little idea of the
| actual domain is not very interesting. Moreover people tend
| to be biased by either 'we at x have done it like this, and
| we're successful, so...' and 'we at x have built shit' and
| it's very hard to get in a sort of clean-slate mindset.
| duxup wrote:
| There certainly are things they can evaluate.
|
| Just that I think big picture wise I would be hard to draw
| too much of a conclusion from the testable metrics.
|
| Personally I'd want to test the app itself and if it works
| / customers are happy, I might worry a lot less about
| metrics and other decisions.
| jollyllama wrote:
| >That's so Meta.
|
| That's so meta.
| samstave wrote:
| When I interviewed at twitter, ~2007 they asked me a bunch of
| questions which they praised my answers for NOT being "...
| _Well, they way we did it at facebook_... "
|
| They were happy that I wasnt a young engineer who thought that
| the only way to do it was the single exposure of just having
| done it at FB...
| artificial wrote:
| Was your previous employer FB at the time?
| samstave wrote:
| NO... MY FUTURE EMPLOYER (sorry for caps)
| gumballindie wrote:
| That explains why Waze works so much better than facebook or
| google products. Because people were hired based on actual
| competence not high school level "leetcode" questions that
| serve no purpose.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| And just today I learned that the CEO of the failed sub
| exploring the Titanic said that he didn't want to hire 50
| year old white guys. What a tool. He said they weren't
| "inspirational."
| willvarfar wrote:
| Do we know those 40yos didn't go through a programming puzzle
| hiring gauntlet?
|
| (My own experience is that those I've worked with who are the
| best veterans also enjoy algorithms etc too. As do I. Shrug?)
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Waze almost certainly hired/s using the same algo based
| interviews as every other FANG+/FANG adjacent company.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| In the last several years I've done work for some three
| letter agencies and fortune 500s. None of them required a
| technical interview really, only about half required a
| social fit interview. I'm starting to think my experience
| is really unusual.
|
| Edit: I just remembered I did a piece of work for a power
| company. The technical lead talked to me before hand and
| told me the one technical question he was going to ask me
| during the otherwise social fit interview.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I've never been subject to those crazy programming
| questions either and I've done work for some big
| companies including Discovery Channel. They were all
| mainly culture fit. Granted it's been a long time since
| I've interviewed anywhere. I do however interview people
| and make a point to not try gotcha questions or leetcode.
| It's a how would you do this. Make it clear as long as
| there's a solution there's no wrong answer. I just want
| to know how they think and approach problems. And not
| made up hypothetical will never happen questions. Day to
| day what they'd be doing kinda things. 90% of our
| interviews is conversation.
| duxup wrote:
| I think there is a lot of the tech world that isn't quite
| the stereotype / big tech type world we think of... it
| just doesn't get much attention.
| pc86 wrote:
| FAANG / BigTech is the exception in almost all areas.
| Scale, pay, interview, just about everything. Some for
| the better - anyone reading HN can pass just about any
| non-BigTech (or companies trying to pretend they're
| BigTech) technical interview without a ton of studying
| beforehand, especially once they have breadth of
| experience. And some for the worse - BigTech pay is also
| the exception, the median programmer salary in the US is
| something like $110k. 99% of companies give you zero
| equity, and in my anecdotal experience only 10-20% of
| companies give any sort of bonus with any sort of
| regularity.
| duxup wrote:
| Work life balance too.
|
| I hear folks talking about insane hours and feeling
| pressure to work them.
|
| I uh... work when I want... and that's not uncommon from
| other folks I talk to.
|
| I think big tech and squeezing out every last dollar in
| compensation gets folks into a bit of a skewed world
| where their employer wants to do the same and they don't
| always know it.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gumballindie wrote:
| The only time I was asked such "leetcode" interview
| questions was for a contract at a company that
| coincidentally went under a few months later. Asked
| something about css colours in HEX and doing some magic
| stuff with them. When I asked what is the relevance to
| the task at hand they told me this was a question a
| friend of theirs was given at a google interview.
| Hilarious.
| alexjplant wrote:
| I've done more than a few software/"DevOps" engineering
| interviews at DoD contractors and the only three
| practical technical questions that I was asked across
| _all_ of them were 1) what is a CSS selector, 2) how
| would you join an array of strings into a comma-separated
| list in C#, and 3) what Linux command one would use to
| determine disk usage... not exactly LC medium-level
| problems. These types of places don't seem to be big on
| even attempting to rigorously test for technical acumen -
| as long as you had a pulse and sounded like you knew what
| you were talking about they were happy to extend an
| offer.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| In my experience both Meta and Google's products work great
| from an engineering perspective. Low downtime, reasonably
| performant (with an adblock), etc.
|
| It's just that they are designed to maximize ad revenue
| rather than to provide a good service for the user.
| underdeserver wrote:
| Facebook works great from an engineering perspective? We
| have entirely different experiences then.
|
| I can't even count the number of times a photo didn't load,
| a timeline didn't refresh, a like didn't register (or
| worse, got clicked on accidentally and then didn't
| unregister).
|
| Google's products have their bugs but the main flows work.
| That's not the case with Facebook.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Just compare Facebook to WhatsApp.
|
| WhatsApp is crazy good, and doesn't make money. Facebook
| is... what you describe, but very very profitable.
|
| I think you can see the difference in priority in the
| product.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| WhatsApp made hundreds of billions for facebook by
| preventing rise of major competitor.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| It probably helps that WhatsApp's backend is written in
| Erlang, which excels in fault-tolerance and reliability.
|
| https://www.erlang-solutions.com/blog/20-years-of-open-
| sourc...
| importantbrian wrote:
| WhatsApp does make money. About $900 million in 2022.
| It's a small part of Meta's total revenues, but the
| margins are really good because of how well built and
| efficient it is.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Facebook moved name updates to their account center and
| there are still incredibly basic bugs.
|
| My girlfriend can't update her name because:
|
| _You can 't change your name right now because you've
| changed it in the last 60 days. You can still change the
| order. Your last name change was on December 31, 1969._
| nashashmi wrote:
| These are low priority issues. Real issue is how many
| times did an ad not load up. And a click to an ad not
| register.
|
| Prioritie$.
| esotericimpl wrote:
| [dead]
| jasmer wrote:
| [dead]
| jasmer wrote:
| [dead]
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| I mean, this is a valid point though? I would not take _any_
| stock in a code review or due diligence performed by a 20 year
| old.
| duxup wrote:
| Personally I would hope for a mix of experience when it comes
| to a due diligence team... but I would lean HEAVILY towards
| more experience.
| asylteltine wrote:
| [dead]
| remote_phone wrote:
| Waze has done nothing in the last 8 years. Things like the auto
| zoom is horrible and especially on car play I have to manually
| keep zooming In and Out. It was great 10 years so but now it's
| below average.
|
| Meanwhile Apple navigation is now the best. It shows the traffic
| lights and the navigation is much easier. The only thing it
| doesn't have is better traffic notification. The anti zooming in
| and out of apple navigation is so much better than Waze
| especially when I'm in areas that I'm unfamiliar with.
|
| I remember when I was laughing at Apple Maps when it first came
| out but now I use it all the time. It goes to show you the
| difference between apple and google and how products go to die at
| google.
| pie420 wrote:
| That is the point. Google acquired them to kill waze, and they
| did.
| dizhn wrote:
| And how good products may come from unexpected places. (Yandex)
| It is the most popular navigation apps in the few countries
| it's available.
| teeray wrote:
| I love Waze, but the product has stagnated. I'd love simple
| things like the ability for it to get me where I want N minutes
| early instead of exactly on time (I hate hacking this in with
| synthetic calendar events). It'd also be nice to be able to file
| mobile orders with Dunkin' / Starbucks / etc. on my route and
| have them executed when I'm within range of them, so my order is
| hot when I arrive.
|
| But yeah, let's have more zany celebrity voices.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| Yeah I've stopped using it entirely. It feels very dated, the
| ads are obnoxious, and I don't speed as much anymore so it's
| primary benefit is gone.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Isn't the last thing the key thing?
| tashoecraft wrote:
| I don't think so. It does coincide with me degoogling my
| life, but I was holding on to waze longer than everything
| else. It's more the product just became bad. When at a
| stoplight I sometimes want to take a look at directions,
| not have an ad for Mcdonalds take over my screen. That's an
| experience that benefits no one, and infuriates me. I'd say
| that alone made me stop.
| k4rli wrote:
| I haven't seen a single ad in Waze ever. Granted I'm
| fortunate enough to not reside in NA as well.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| Interesting, yeah that sounds nice. In NA it's really
| bad, maybe they have toned it down, but it felt like
| every stop sign or red light I got an ad.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Stagnated? Pray they don't sunset it any further.
| scrlk wrote:
| Give it some time and a Google PM will find a way to shoehorn
| in chat functionality for their next promotion.
| maratc wrote:
| Laugh all you want, but Waze actually has less of the
| "social" side to it today than it had ten years ago. Maybe
| some Google PM even got promoted for _removing_ some chat
| functionality for once.
| mewmew07 wrote:
| then get cause it to get shutdown on the next cycle
| henry2023 wrote:
| Believe it or not, shutting down a product is something you
| can brag about in perf. My current manager went form L6 to
| L7 mainly because of that.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I totally believe it and it's the right way. Few jobs ago
| I advocated to shut down a business unit that wasn't
| profitable and as far as I could tell (this was
| controversial) had no path to profitability.
|
| Shutting it down, we freed up about 200 million per year,
| which is the same or better as earnings that amount.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| >I'd love simple things like the ability for it to get me where
| I want N minutes early instead of exactly on time
|
| It's really astonishing how many obvious things like this
| aren't implemented on either Google Maps or Waze. And for those
| that do exist, they feel like they've been designed by someone
| who has never driven outside of California and never used
| mixed-mode transport.
| [deleted]
| wffurr wrote:
| Former CEO has a big rant on why it's impossible to do things
| at Google: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-
| google-stay-s...
|
| Previously discussed:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26165809
| Spivak wrote:
| > This counted on the fact that Google had promised us
| autonomy to continue to act as Waze and we believed them.
|
| Why does this keep happening? It is false 100% of the time.
| Are people really watching the sun come up every morning and
| thinking, "okay but tomorrow it won't."
|
| > I believed that I could build out Waze within Google,
| breaking the myth about what happens to companies after being
| acquired by large corporations
|
| Nice cautionary tale, but I'm different.
|
| > Perhaps Corp-Tech should move to employee share buy back
| where employees must sacrifice some of their salary for
| equity or change equity to vest by a product related metric
| to connect the teams performance with the employee returns.
|
| Performance based incentives never work for people who are
| not directly revenue generating. One piston in your engine
| working extra hard is meaningless, the credit to getting you
| to your destination is the driver. And when cogs in the
| machine lose out on their "performance" incentive because
| they never had any control to begin with they get angry,
| burnt out, and leave. Within a corporation you have to make
| the labor theory of value true and reward effort even if it's
| pointless. You put the responsibility of delivering
| meaningful value on the people directing where that effort
| goes.
|
| > while on line, a Googler ahead of us was overheard saying
| "What? Sushi again???" which became our inside joke around
| entitlement. But several months later, we had been co-opted
| as well and it was Waze employees complaining about the food
|
| This both completely misunderstands and exactly gets why
| entitlement is the wrong concept. Everyone's happiness and
| contentment regresses to the mean eventually when their lives
| get better _and when they get worse_. Someone complaining
| about the sushi is genuinely and reasonably annoyed because
| that very literally made their day worse. People see that as
| entitlement because they 're forgetting how happiness in
| humans actually works.
|
| Whether this is a comfort or nihilistic is up to you but Elon
| Musk is not happier than you.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Tbf, they were acquired back when Google wasn't seen as
| evil yet. A lot of things seemed more promising in 2013.
| jeffbee wrote:
| TL;DR he wanted to be a dick to his org and Google wouldn't
| enable that. He wanted to move fast by ignoring privacy and
| security. He wanted to abuse Google's market position to get
| his app pre-installed and artificially ranked in the Play
| store. Sounds like a real prince.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| In all fairness, Google's security record is the best of
| any FAANG. I still treat my phone as compromised, but no
| one got (0 click) Pegaus'd.
| arein3 wrote:
| I read the article and the guy sounds like the typical CEO
| that wants the team to work weekends and to be passionate
| about it.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| To be fair..lets be honest with ourselves: Google bought
| Waze for exactly one brutally obvious reason: To prevent
| competition for Google Maps.
|
| Google has sat on it since, eventually they will port
| features to Maps and kill it when it is convenient. As for
| installing...uh..Google Maps? It's Google's Android, Google
| could do whatever they want. That was the whole point of
| the 'Free' OS Phone post yesterday.
| jader201 wrote:
| I'm not arguing that will never happen, but it seems like
| if their only reason was to prevent competition for
| Google Maps, they would have killed it a long time ago.
|
| The fact that it's still around 10 years later suggests
| it wasn't their only motivation behind the acquisition.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| They already combined under Geo
| mft_ wrote:
| I always assumed they bought it to augment Google Maps
| with Waze's superior real-time stream of road condition
| data?
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| Is that actually a different idea though? Augment and
| protect.
| acomjean wrote:
| I had Mr. T yelling directions at me from my old TomTom. It
| really cut through any other noise in the car. I miss that
|
| The only downside mr T couldn't tell me street names (though
| with ai voice...)
| NDizzle wrote:
| More people need Mr. T yelling at them in the car. MERGE,
| FOOL!
| artificial wrote:
| [flagged]
| potency wrote:
| `I pity the foo that doesn't take a right at the second exit
| in the upcoming round-about`
|
| It feels like a lot of the 'fun' in apps has been removed
| over the years.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > It'd also be nice to be able to file mobile orders with
| Dunkin' / Starbucks / etc. on my route and have them executed
| when I'm within range of them, so my order is hot when I
| arrive.
|
| So much talk about AI, but we dont get simple things that go a
| long way, and don't even need AI to function. What we will get
| instead is a forced option that buys dunkin and starbucks
| anytime you drive near them because whenever tech giants
| release things they think of the most obscure / under QA'd way
| to implement and release them.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Well, celebrity voices, and updates that break things! The
| recently released a nice, pretty new Android Auto UI that
| prevents people from reporting and confirming hazards if they
| are using a trackpad input. So there's that.
| [deleted]
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| A google product stagnating? No way!
| curiousllama wrote:
| McDonalds was building this kind of thing years ago. Ie ask the
| app to ping you in a few hours when you're near a McDonald's on
| your road trip. Two clicks: one to order the usual, one to give
| you directions.
|
| The tech exists + it's an obvious good idea. I wonder if just
| not enough people used it
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I'm actually happy it's stagnant. It works well and I don't
| want it ruined because someone is under pressure to ship a new
| feature.
| k4rli wrote:
| Recently they updated Android Auto version of Waze with new
| UI and it hasn't been as usable since. Route changing
| features (or some of them) have disappeared somewhere
| stronglikedan wrote:
| And also it's nearly impossible to report or confirm
| hazards for those with a trackpad input. I'd have rather it
| _did_ remain stagnant, lol!
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I dream of using a Stream deck for physical buttons for
| reporting hazards instantly.
|
| I wish I had permanent "Police reported this side", "police
| reported that side", "vehicle on shoulder", "Road hazard"
| buttons _immediately_ accessible like my hazard lights are.
| Having to tap through a few screens of navigation in the
| app is annoying.
| whylo wrote:
| But in Google-land, doesn't that mean it's next on the
| chopping block?
| jerrygenser wrote:
| Google puts things on the chopping block due to small
| userbase or not enough user growth. A very large user base
| product but which has stagnated should be fine as long as
| users don't start leavign
| jethro_tell wrote:
| Take search for example.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| Waze was bought to keep it away from Google Maps. Google
| actually doesn't want it to succeed.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Yes and no. Waze provides data points to Google Maps that
| it wouldn't otherwise have. Like crashes, objects on
| road, cars pulled over, police speed traps, etc. Waze
| users provide that data, and Google Maps gets to display
| it for free. The day when that data input capability is
| merged into Google Maps completely is when Waze will be
| shut down and the user experience will slowly be
| enshitified.
| bushbaba wrote:
| It's stagnated as google is pushing people to maps. No surprise
| there.
| gumballindie wrote:
| I am the opposite. I enjoy using waze precisely because it
| doesn't change much. If i want to find a specific shop i use
| google maps, which then opens to location directly in waze.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Why do you use Waze instead of Google maps? I read the
| wikipedia article and it sounds like google maps with a bit of
| extra user input.
|
| Never felt a reason to switch.
| mr-ron wrote:
| For me, its a better CarPlay experience with the phone.
| Google maps has very tiny text that is hard to read. Waze has
| a great high contract view of all upcoming turns that is easy
| to drive with.
| megax wrote:
| Working URL :
| https://post.news/@/noam/2RTRvTNNxSCQb3yNjqa0DPfr1Yk
| benzible wrote:
| It's also worth reading how he ultimately felt about the
| acquisition. His original post seems to be gone but this is a
| good summary... https://www.timesofisrael.com/waze-ceo-noam-
| bardin-explains-...
| wslh wrote:
| Imternet Archive to the rescue! for the original post:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210219020655/https://paygo.med...
| z3t4 wrote:
| What I find interesting is that the end goal for many companies
| is to be sold to a global monopoly. It is not a fair competition.
| But I guess it's good for consumers who get free stuff - but the
| question is - would we get a better product if there was
| competition!? So in order to compete: 1) Get to know people
| working for a monopoly 2) Make a better product 3) Profit (or
| bleed to death)
| caligarn wrote:
| If Waze had taken the FB deal tho, it would have been a stock
| deal, and it would have been worth 2-3x more than the Google cash
| deal.
| EngCanMan wrote:
| A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. They could have
| easily invested their cash in whatever they chose, whereas a
| stock deal can be limiting.
| ericd wrote:
| Or it could've ended up at 1/3 by the end of the lockup. With
| cash, they're free to put it into FB stock, if they want,
| though statistically (especially from a variance/gut wrenching
| swings perspective), an S&P500 fund is a much better option.
|
| Generally, I'd happily take a significant discount on the
| amount to make it a no/low strings cash deal, unless the stock
| offer is basically equivalent to a cash deal (super liquid, no
| restrictions on sale).
| Sai_ wrote:
| FB ca 2012-13 was a pretty sure bet, imho. They basically had
| no competition in social. TikTok hadn't come out yet. G+ had
| perished not long ago. Apple hadn't yet kneecapped them on
| privacy. They hadn't yet turned into supervillains.
|
| If all I cared about was money and the potential upside, I'd
| have taken FB any day over all the no/low strings cash Google
| could throw at me.
|
| Noam talks about the civic breakdown caused by FB and how he
| is happy he chose Google but that could be a case of post
| facto justification. Google, sans its "Don't be evil" is no
| saint either. I'm sure if he had gone with FB, he'd find five
| different things to ding Google on - e.g. firing the AI
| ethics team, sunsetting products without notice, dropping
| "don't be evil" from their charter, having no North Star
| other than maximizing ad rev.
| justapassenger wrote:
| FB in those years also had horrible mobile apps, made no
| money on mobile while world was shifting there. And they
| kept on investing mostly into their desktop website.
|
| It was sure bet, in a hindsight. They could've easily
| botched mobile, open room for competition to swoop in and
| become irrelevant in the process.
| Sai_ wrote:
| If I remember my tech history, by 2012-13, FB had
| realized that their html5 FB app wouldn't cut it on
| mobile devices and had gone all in on a native app.
|
| https://magazine.wharton.upenn.edu/digital/the-pivotal-
| tale-...
|
| I mean, I myself left Wall Street to work on iOS apps
| back in 2011. Only a willfully blind person would have
| ignored mobile/smartphones by 2012-13.
|
| Of course, they could have botched their mobile
| transition - Reddit's ongoing dumpster fire is an example
| of corporate self immolation - but even back then Mark Z
| was no schmuck.
| justapassenger wrote:
| There's big gap between not being a schmuck and getting
| your company to be one of the biggest tech behemoths.
|
| Rewriting app, means years of no new features (like
| Twitter did with their backend rewrite). That's a very
| vulnerable period of time. And no guarantee that their
| apps will be any good (especially given their track
| record of low quality). It wasn't guaranteed in any way
| that they will start making meaningful money on mobile.
|
| They could've easily end up like Twitter, plagued with
| reliability issues and no good monetization.
| mucle6 wrote:
| Curious, how much did you make from buying shares in
| Facebook in 2012/2013?
| Sai_ wrote:
| I did okay, can't complain, but I bought in early 2015,
| not 2012-13 once the upswing was confirmed.
| binkHN wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > At the time, the Facebook deal was a stock deal and their
| share price was ~$25/share. Had we closed with them, the deal
| could have had a 10X multiplier. Despite that, I feel that
| Google was the right place for us. We clicked with the
| engineering team, they let us stay independent and grow (from
| 10M MAU to 150M MAU)...
| burnte wrote:
| I sold a business a decade ago. I had two main offers, $X
| today, or $X today plus $Y in a year with me staying on board.
| I took $X and left, no interest in staying on board because I
| knew what the new owners would do, and I knew they'd wind up
| blaming me. 3 years later they totally abandoned the business.
| Some people you just can't work with, and the writer here
| didn't want to work with Facebook.
| viknesh wrote:
| I remember being at the Facebook weekly Q&A session when this was
| announced and Mark definitely stated it quite differently than
| the author's perspective. Basically that the Facebook deal was
| already "done" and just pending final signatures when Google
| swooped in at the 11th hour and stole the acquisition.
|
| I still think it's a shame that there isn't a second major tech
| company with a serious mapping product. Apple Maps has always
| seemed laughably inferior even to what Waze offered 10 years ago.
| MH15 wrote:
| I use Apple Maps while driving in cities now, I find they've
| put more detail into the navigation experience. Google Maps for
| navigating anywhere outside of a populated area, they've still
| got way more data. I've been burned by Apple Maps in the sticks
| a few times.
| duxup wrote:
| Maybe Mark thought it was done from his level, but
| communication with Waze (or lack of it) gave them a different
| impression?
|
| I could see them thinking the deal was done, but waze getting
| shopped around inside Facebook internally might give waze a
| much different impression.
| thiht wrote:
| Honestly Apple Maps is ok for navigation, I use it most of the
| time now.
|
| Google Maps is still way better for business reviews, opening
| hours, or even existing businesses. I try to submit updates to
| Apple Maps when I can but the review is very slow.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Google Maps is still way better for business reviews,
| opening hours, or even existing businesses.
|
| Google Maps has become pretty poor at indicating existing
| businesses unless those businesses are largish. And I don't
| want my map application to tell me business reviews, opening
| hours, or any of that stuff. I just want directions.
|
| So Apple maps is more my style, although I actually use OSM
| these days.
| mezeek wrote:
| Meanwhile, I'd say 50% of iPhone users, including 90% of
| boomers, have no idea they're not using Google Maps.
|
| My parents couldn't open a link I sent them "in Maps"... came
| to realize they never knew their day-to-day was Apple Maps.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| I don't need all of the fancy features that Waze has. Just a
| simple map that routes me from A to B. Which is why I use Apple
| Maps more than Google Maps these days.
| freeplay wrote:
| You're missing out on the speed trap alerts, though. That's
| the primary reason I use Waze over anything else.
| jamesrascal wrote:
| Apple Maps has this as well and I often get the alerts
| while driving.
|
| What would be amazing is if the major apps opened the
| social aspects to share this data.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I personally find speed trap alerts to be without value.
| tanjtanjtanj wrote:
| I don't know when it was added but Apple Maps also has
| speed trap, collision, object on road, and traffic jam
| alerts.
| brk wrote:
| I have not found that to be reliable enough to trust
| overall. I hate Waze wanting to announce every damn thing,
| it's annoying after a while. I don't care if there is a car
| on the side of the road, or the tiniest piece of cardboard
| in the road that someone felt compelled to flag for points.
| beardicus wrote:
| Another thing you could do is simply follow the posted
| speed limits, instead of using technology to evade law
| enforcement. It's very relaxing!
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Agreed. However...
|
| Speed trap notification are for more than just evading
| law enforcement. It lets you know that there's going to
| be a slow down because a lot of people who see cops
| instinctively tap the break and that has a domino effect.
| So if you're coming up the hill and you don't see the
| traffic yet, you can still be prepared.
| spike021 wrote:
| Google Maps has arguably gotten worse. Many times businesses
| that don't pay to be listed either won't show up on the map/in
| search or at best show up basically last. I also live in the
| Bay Area and sometimes I feel like the GPS routes it chooses
| are to avoid certain areas even though they'd surely be
| quicker. For instance sometimes it insists on me taking 101
| around Palo Alto/MTV when traffic is just yellowish but other
| routes are totally clear, and 101 ends up becoming nearly stop
| and go when the other routes are basically still clear.
|
| I will say google maps is superb for traveling in Japan,
| though.
| DropInIn wrote:
| > Many times businesses that don't pay to be listed either
| won't show up on the map/in search or at best show up
| basically last
|
| Well that explains a butt ton.... Keep having issues with
| maps showing places on the other side of the city instead of
| the 15 places in walking distance...
| dehrmann wrote:
| I keep waiting for a racketeering case against Google.
| spike021 wrote:
| I notice it the most when I'm just trying to find a place
| whose name I can't quite recall, but I know where it's
| located. Usually hole in the wall or other lesser known
| spots. I'll literally zoom in as far as I can on the
| building or plaza where it's located and Google refuses to
| show it to me.
| bigyikes wrote:
| Apple maps has been good for a long time now. Anecdotally, I
| find the navigation to be more clear and the UX more intuitive.
|
| I only use Google Maps for discovery and reviews. The
| navigation experience is not very good.
| epanchin wrote:
| Apple Maps is much better for discovery. Search for "pizza"
| on Google maps and it shows you the nearest pizza places
| which advertise with them - for me that misses the two
| closest pizza places to my house. I have to zoom right into
| where I know they are to see them.
| OJFord wrote:
| Isn't it Apple Maps that Duckduckgo uses? I've used DDG
| _exclusively_ for search for at least ten years now, but I
| _always_ end up out of the maps tab and into
| maps.google.co.uk. 'm' in address bar autosuggests it. I
| think that speaks for itself.
|
| Apple Maps doesn't even offer (maybe it does on iOS?) public
| transport directions at all.
| byproxy wrote:
| As a U.S. user of Apple Maps on iOS, I can say that they do
| indeed offer directions with a public transportation
| option.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Main complaints are lack of offline maps (finally coming in
| iOS 17) and that it pulls business photos from Yelp and then
| tries to install their app if you want to enlarge an image.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| One more complaint: they've had survey vehicles with
| cameras and LiDAR on the road since at least 2015 [1] but
| their Street View competitor still only covers 19 cities in
| the US [2].
|
| It was quite good both times I was within the coverage
| area, and I was guessing it might roll out much more widely
| as a feature of their VR headset (since the data is more 3D
| than street view's), but no.
|
| There's a big list of places where they're mapping this
| year [3] but who knows when that data will make it to the
| actual service.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Around_(Apple)#/medi
| a/Fil...
|
| [2] https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#maps-
| look-ar...
|
| [3] https://maps.apple.com/imagecollection/
| pcurve wrote:
| I hate to say it, but I feel quality of Google Map's
| direction actually has gone done in recent years, even though
| I haven't changed any preferences.
|
| It will put me through some ridiculous routes or lead me to
| incorrect destination for the same place I've been visiting
| for many years.
|
| I get the feeling that I'm being used as a Guinea pig.
|
| When I went to Venice, Apple map generally worked better in
| terms of walking directions.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| I've definitely noticed weirdness with Google directions
| lately. It will routinely send me down streets that are
| obviously, clearly worse choices - slower, with more
| lights, and more local streets than the arterial streets
| that I would normally use.
|
| As well, it insists on naming my cities main streets by
| their highway #s rather than the actual names of the street
| - which is extra confusing because the two directions of
| the "highway" are the two one-way main streets through
| town.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| > ridiculous routes > guinea pig
|
| I agree - I've long suspected that I've been used as a
| "probe" to check if a road is still accessible, or what
| speed is typical, etc. by being sent on strange sub-optimal
| routes.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Google maps is free and you're the product. In this case,
| your services as a convenient information gathering
| appendage.
| codalan wrote:
| All I really want is cardinal points on the map. So simple,
| and yet Google doesn't know how to do this.
|
| If I know the orientation of the map, then I can usually
| figure out what my starting direction is. Otherwise, I
| stuck with Google Maps fumbling direction until I start
| moving my vehicle, and by that point, it's already mis-
| navigated me.
|
| I also hate the way their maps are constantly hiding
| information, like street names, unless you zoom waaaaaay
| in.
|
| MapQuest provided so much detail at similar scales vs.
| Google Maps.
| duped wrote:
| Apple maps UX kinda sucks. Map preferences are under the
| Settings app and not the app itself (there are at least two
| clicks to get here from the Maps app, and it's under your
| Apple ID, wtf?). You cannot configure it to maintain cardinal
| directions when driving (I want "north" to always be "top").
| The 3D view while driving in a city with skyscrapers is
| downright dangerous, let alone confusing. It does a terrible
| job of keeping track of your recent queries (search for
| "food", select one place and see its location, step away and
| search the name of that place, if its a chain or there are
| similar things close by good luck finding again!)
|
| Like Maps is _fine_ but it 's like using an off-brand google
| maps from 10 years ago with a pretty display. Unfortunately I
| don't really care how pretty the display is, I care about
| being able to find things and get there.
| thiht wrote:
| > Map preferences are under the Settings app
|
| That's the case for most Apple apps, and some non Apple
| apps too
| duped wrote:
| Other apps having bad UX doesn't negate this app's bad UX
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I live in London and use public transport all the time. Apple
| Maps has always had a feature where if you leave a large
| tube/train station with multiple exits, it'll tell you which
| to use, or which signs to follow inside. For some reason
| Google still doesn't have this so I pretty much always use
| Apple Maps at least for new journeys.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Apple Maps was a pleasure to use when I last visited Tokyo,
| for the same reason.
|
| This was in 2019 and I was using google as my default
| application, and I was blown away how much better Apple
| handled the trains. The part I remember most was how it
| denoted each train with proper colors, while showing their
| live positions. That made it easy to navigate the otherwise
| intimidating quantity of trains and complexity of the
| stations.
|
| The experience got me to try Apple Maps in the USA again,
| where I found the quality had substantially improved and
| good enough for my use cases. It's only improved since
| then.
| smugma wrote:
| As a Westerner who doesn't live in Japan, Apple Maps is
| infinitely better there (2023).
|
| In the US, I use Google Maps / Waze / Apple Maps about
| 50/20/30% of the time (Google by default / Waze if I care
| about shaving minutes or police / Apple if I am using
| Siri or just going somewhere I know and the Map is easily
| shown)
| astrange wrote:
| The trains should be about the same in either one since
| they come from a vendor (Jorudan), but the station info
| and walking times inside the station come from the maps
| companies.
|
| Though I haven't used Google Maps there in a while, maybe
| they stopped using Jorudan.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Yes, I didn't mean to imply they have different
| information about the trains, rather that how they
| present the information in the UI was (is) markedly
| different.
| amf12 wrote:
| Interesting. Google Maps showed me which exit to use at
| stations in Japan, recently.
| sincerely wrote:
| I can't speak for London, but I live in NYC and Google Maps
| definitely does this here: ("Exit via...") and ("Follow
| signs for...")
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| I use Apple maps almost exclusively, except when I rent a car
| on a trip sometimes. There are still some goofy things that
| Apple does (or doesn't do). Like several times in a certain
| rural area, I had Apple nav tell me to exit at the Nth
| roundabout exit, except that it didn't count a farm driveway
| or agricultural access roads while I did count them, not
| knowing any better. While the nav of the car I was renting
| did count those as exits.
|
| I can understand the perspective of not counting non-public
| roads. The ag access was clearly marked as a road for
| ag/forestry but it was still a road that had a direct access
| to the roundabout. On the other hand, the driveway was not
| marked in any way though you could sort of tell it was a
| driveway.
|
| But when you are driving, you are not necessarily evaluating
| whether this roundabout exit is one you can use or one you
| should or shouldn't count.
|
| It was interesting to me that the Apple nav was harder to
| follow in those cases than the car nav. Before these
| incidents happened, I am not sure I could have guessed at
| which would be better.
|
| "Don't drive on other people's private driveways so don't
| include private roads" is a reasonable heuristic to follow.
| But "count every road whether or not _you_ might use it " is
| also reasonable.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > Apple maps has been good for a long time now
|
| It's good, but I find it offputtingly cartoonish.
| fossuser wrote:
| +1 I switched from Google to Apple maps a few years back, I
| think it's easily the better product now.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| Apple Maps tells you "after this light, turn right" which is
| great while I am on my motorcycle and can't quickly read the
| street signs.
|
| It means my phone can stay in my pocket and I can still get
| directions to where I am going without needing to look down
| at the screen to figure out that I need to pass this next
| traffic light then turn right at "Something st" when I can't
| even see the sign for "Something st" and looking for that
| sign would take my focus off the road/other drivers.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Yep, and Apple maps doesn't do the most annoying thing that
| Google/Waze do.. show me an Ad when I'm stopped which
| prevents me from looking at the map and getting my bearings
| while I'm stopped and it's actually safe to do so.
|
| Apple used to get some things boneheadedly wrong and it's
| hard to go back to an App that's done that but it has gotten
| really good, and the UX has been vastly better than the
| Google products for a long time. Much more legible at
| dashboard distance, much more clear, not showing popup POI
| locations based on advertising that you aren't interested in,
| voice directions are much better, etc..
|
| It feels like both Waze and Google Maps have stood still for
| the last 10 years, at least if you're using them on the
| iPhone.
| DropInIn wrote:
| Ads while navigating?
|
| I've never experienced that.... That would be insane...
| majormajor wrote:
| I get audio ones, I haven't seen screen ones.
|
| "Turn right at McDonald's" and such.
|
| (It's possible that that's not an ad, just something they
| thought was a convenient feature, but it sure sounds like
| the thing that they'd figure out a way to monetize even
| if it didn't start that way.)
| jedberg wrote:
| That's not an audio ad. They've identified recognizable
| signage using street view and then use that to help guide
| you, because usually it's easier to see the McDonalds
| than the small street sign behind it.
| majormajor wrote:
| Seems like leaving money on the table if they aren't
| getting paid for that. It's brand advertising gold for
| the shops.
|
| Anyway, my family doesn't care for them. No thanks for
| another machine sticking brand names into our lives.
| Hopefully Apple doesn't adopt the same feature.
|
| Especially since - and this is the part that makes it
| feel most like an ad - it's really seems only to be for
| certain big brands. "Street name, street name, street
| name, WENDY'S, street name..."
| et-al wrote:
| Oh c'mon, like jedberg said, fast food chain restaurants
| and gas stations usually have good signage for driving
| (hat tip _Learning from Las Vegas_ ), so it makes sense
| to use them as visual milestones.
|
| I love Naomi Klein and all, but sometimes looking for
| small side street sign while everyone's going at least
| 45mph on a stroad is nearly impossible.
| jedberg wrote:
| > No thanks for another machine sticking brand names into
| our lives. Hopefully Apple doesn't adopt the same
| feature.
|
| I actually find it super useful. I remember the first
| time it happened to me, because I was surprised but also
| super pleased.
|
| I was driving and it said "turn into the driveway after
| the Good Earth sign". And sure enough, I would have
| totally missed the nearly hidden driveway right past the
| Good Earth, but the sign on the restaurant was so big it
| was impossible to miss, even on the 45mph stroad I was
| on.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I disagree. I absolutely see it as an ad, using driving
| directions as the trojan horse to sneak it in.
| parl_match wrote:
| Well, it's not. And they're not paid for it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Whether or not it's intended as an ad, and whether or not
| they're getting paid for it, kinda doesn't really matter.
| I perceive it as a kind of advertising, probably because
| it came around when maps was adding all sorts of other
| advertising as well, and advertising was the final straw
| that drove me away from Google Maps.
|
| I also find it a much less useful way of indicating
| directions, but I recognize that's just because my brain
| works differently. That's not a criticism of doing it
| that way.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| It's literally the only thing that matters to the
| question of whether or not it's an ad. Imagine telling
| your grandma 30 years ago you don't appreciate her
| advertising to you because she used a business as a
| navigational reference giving directions to her house.
| Absurd.
| ixwt wrote:
| I've seen them. The ones I have seen are more like pins
| on the map for locations that clearly say Ad on them.
| [deleted]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| This is definitely NOT the behavior of Google maps in any
| android device (always default rom) I ever had, never saw
| any ad as you describe, and I keep using them daily...
| don't you have by any chance crapware-infested-from-
| manufacturer brand like Xiaomi or Huawei?
| gnicholas wrote:
| My Waze app shows me ads when I'm stopped too. On my
| iPhone.
| Grazester wrote:
| Google maps doesn't do this and that is what the op was
| stating.
| gnicholas wrote:
| The original comment referred to Google/Waze doing this,
| which is why I chimed in.
| astrange wrote:
| Google owns Waze, so it is "Google/Waze".
|
| Apple Maps also rarely tells you to make unprotected left
| turns against traffic, whereas Waze will happily give you
| nearly impossible but theoretically faster directions.
| justsomeadvice0 wrote:
| Agree the quality of Apple Maps has improved to the point
| of acceptability in my experience. In addition to privacy
| reasons, I end up using Apple Maps because Google Maps has
| been having a lot of really terrible bugs for me lately.
| Probably 10+ times over the last few years it re-routes me
| down random side streets or back country roads, for no
| reason: sometimes even when it itself thinks doing so will
| add a significant amount of time to my travel! But for
| business search and reviews, Gmaps is still unparalleled,
| so it stays installed.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Wow, I can't believe it has been 10 years, and all the Waze data
| is still not integrated into google maps.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I want to be able to easily add/remove waypoints to customize my
| route. Google Maps desktop does this through drag and drop which
| is awesome but the route can't be transferred to mobile. Apple
| Maps has this on desktop and transfers to mobile but the UI for
| it is clunky and the number of points is severely limited. Waze
| you can add stops but again it's not really designed for
| customizing a route and it's not friendly, especially not on
| mobile.
| bsimpson wrote:
| My workaround on mobile is to add a stop that is along the
| route I wanna take. It mostly works, but you have to remember
| not to e.g. turn off on the little sidestreet to get to the
| random waypoint you picked. This is even more of a concern when
| you use it to give directions to somebody else.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| Did anyone use the car sharing feature that have/had? I always
| wanted to use it but never did.
| umeshunni wrote:
| No, I think it launched right before the pandemic and that
| likely killed any momentum it could have gained.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I've been really impressed with out much Apple Maps has improved.
| I remember when it first launched I had Waze and Google maps on
| my phone since I would need to fall back to them often. Haven't
| had to do that in a long time now
| nicce wrote:
| It depends where you are using it. Apple Maps is still missing
| public transport locations or information about shops in many
| areas.
| ladberg wrote:
| Yep, I pretty much exclusively use Apple Maps in the US and
| it's great but when I'm on vacation it's often unusable.
|
| Most recently, I was in Georgia (country) and navigation of
| any kind is nonexistent. Like often times I would look
| something up and want walking directions there but it simply
| isn't available. Google Maps worked great.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I also find generally that both Apple Maps and Google Maps
| are extremely unsatisfying to use if you typically travel by
| bicycle.
|
| Google Maps _looks like_ it supports combining public transit
| and bicycle, since you can select bike as a connecting mode
| to /from public transit, but then it never proposes bike
| routes. Apple Maps doesn't pretend to be able to do this. It
| is annoying, because mixing and matching bike/bus/train is a
| very common way of getting around in the DC area.
| mtmail wrote:
| "By the time we began the acquisition process, we had already met
| the CEOs of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, and members of the
| senior teams at Amazon, Apple, and others."
|
| That's already a milestone few small companies can accomplish.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Can someone expound on the strategy around the unsolicited offer
| part of the story. He was unable to engage with the offer
| legally. He told FB about it to, presumably, let them know about
| the new BATNA if they tried to get concessions during due
| diligence. But doesn't that also send the signal he is looking
| for them to match the offer after he had signed for a price (that
| he had offered as the won't shop it around price). That seems to
| have led to them accusing him of leaking the story to solicit the
| offer during a the period he was supposed to not shop it, which
| led to the deal blowing up.
|
| I'm also a little unsure about the ethical and legal limitations
| he was under.
| senko wrote:
| The term sheet potentially had a clause that (a) prevented him
| from soliciting other offers, and crucially (b) disclose any
| unsolicited offers immediately. (I don't have a ton of
| experience with m&a, but we had something similar in my
| previous exit and it did seemed like a standard clause in such
| contracts).
|
| So yeah, the leak may be intentional to in effect solicit an
| offer from Google (and would definitely explain ill will from
| Facebook).
| HWR_14 wrote:
| He definitely mentioned (a) in his write up. I wasn't aware
| of (b), and I thought he made it sound more like a choice. He
| talked about fiscal obligations requiring him to tell the
| board. But if he was contractually obligated to disclose the
| offer to FB that makes it a lot clearer.
| deanCommie wrote:
| We could never prove it but the quote is interesting: "With
| accountants, lawyers, board members, and investors involved,
| the news was bound to leak, and it did. Though I did not leak
| the information, and to this day I still do not know who did,
| I think Facebook and Google still believe I leaked the news."
|
| There are 3 statements in this
|
| * "A leak was inevitable"
|
| * "I did not leak it"
|
| * "I do not know who did"
|
| Here is a scenario under which they could all be true:
|
| Noam, his exec team, OR some board members, OR some investors
| (which are likely to be friends or family members for a
| private company) are out for late night drinks.
|
| Someone says the words "Ugh, these Facebook guys are idiots,
| and we don't seem to get along with them. I wish we could get
| acquired by Google instead. If somehow they got word of the
| acquisition, I bet they'd reach out with an unsolicited
| offer. Sure would be a shame if SOMEONE LEAKED IT."
|
| No conspiracy necessary. No orders.
|
| Some party at the table hears, agrees, and contacts their old
| IDF buddy at Haaretz. Done.
| xnx wrote:
| Waze would've been a much better fit with Facebook because of its
| social angle.
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