Google bones an open source startup?

Open source startup bones itself, blames Google?

Sounds like standard Google behavior to me.

Social web for every website and business? Maybe the non-evil company realized it was stupid. Or since it was open source, they could pick up the code without the company.

Gotta fault the business acumen of Crybaby, here. Without a firm offer you gotta proceed on the assumption that it may not happen. That’s fuckin’ Startup 101.

It’s not Google’s fault, it’s the startup’s fault. Before agreeing to dance with Google, they should have had them sign a agreement if they walked away, it would cost MountainView X amount of money. Instead, Google took advantage of their naivety and lack of cut throat business acumen. Open-source, eh? If it has any value, watch a clone of this service pop-up next year. The code will probably be better and open source,too, so naivety-boy couldn’t sue either. This is what may have happened had Microsoft embraced free and open source software – different arrangement but essentially the same song. They’d still be the Vogons. (Does that make Apple the Magratheans or Vogons with good taste?)

Adds new meaning to the phrase, disruptive technology.

Here’s a summary of what they were doing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG6JwSfKcjQ

It was pretty conceptually simple and pretty smart; I suspect that Google either saw it as a threat to existing advertising business, or as easily duplicated.

Hmm, the startup’s “naivety and lack of cut throat business acumen”…? I worked with Bob Bickel at JBoss, the cofounder and CEO, he was the reason JBoss grew from nothing to a $320million+ acquisition (and before that, he led Bluestone software, which was acquired by HP). He has more business acumen in his little finger than most everyone else I’ve met – combined. So I’d be willing to bet this has more to do with a huge company willingly taking advantage of a small one through deceitful behavior. I see your point, that sometimes people can get screwed over because they do nothing to stop it, but I have a feeling that wasn’t the case here.

Hang on a minute: Bob Bickel is the “founder and CEO [ ... of ... ] a $320million+ acquisition … He has more business acumen in his little finger than most everyone else I’ve met – combined.”

So his first choice of finance is VCs rather than his own pocket? And he still managed to bone his own company by not getting anything substantial signed with Google?

By analogy: you’re trying to sell a house, and only one person shows any interest, but he pulls out before signing anything. If that pushes you into bankruptcy, is that fundamentally your fault? Or the other guy’s?

Are we talking the same wolf who ate Wolf Street, pardon, Wall Street or are we talking the wolf starred in “three piglets and some shaky real estate?”

If they got a bone from grandma, that’s Hansel & Gretel (there are cookies and breadcrumbs in that story, too, so it fits into web 2.0 myths).

@Katie Poplin

There’s more to this story than Bickel is saying. He’s going to admit how he screwed up and sully his supposed golden boy rep? He’s not a golden boy and you have stars in your eyes. He got greedy and stupid. He thought he was going to get another payday from a company with deep pockets. He also didn’t want to share any potential Google money with VC, so he blew the VC off. He shot his own foot off and screwed over the other people in this venture,too. Go find another hero to worship.

Amazing! Some startup company reinvents social networking for the thousandth time. They will probably need to reinvent a markup language and a layout engine to go with it. Now imagine this… some sort of room where you can chat, and send messages instantly. How good would that be?

“By that time, of course, we had used up all of our seed money. And by backing away from our Series A offers, we kind of burned the VC’s. Even better, our development had stalled because of our desires to build stuff aligned with our new direction in the non-evil company.”

So let me get this right, they had a great product, but stopped doing development because they got one offer that wasn’t in any way concrete but they put all their money into preparing a bid for that one offer. Yup, Open Source is all about giving people the freedom to make choices, but it does not guarantee that those people make good choices.

The comments are fairly accurate – it was my fault. And I am more than willing to sully my reputation.

The quote of beware is simply intended to state that startups should beware, not to put the blame elsewhere. I was not wary, and had too much trust in people and their “word”.

Bob Bickel

You said bone. Heheheh

Having been the first official employee of Ringside, I would just like to publicly say that Bob, you did not sully your reputation with me, and probably not with anyone else within Ringside.

Bob was very honest, approachable, and transparent with us from the start to the end. If only bank CEOs had the same virtues, maybe the United States economy wouldn’t be on the brink of total collapse…

@ Bob Bickel

… spoken like a gentleman.

@ Mike Schachter

… you need to amend your sweeping indictments about bank CEOs – most are very conscientious and mindful of their depositors and employees. It is the CEOs and other officers and executives and lawyers and brokers of very large financial institutions who created the current bubble pop. Not too many small solid savings banks who wisely avoided taking on risky debt and stayed with boring, tried and true but ultimately profitable risks took a bath, hmmm? A case of greed is good becomes greed is whoops! where’d these banana peels under that ladder that black cat walked in front of came from?

I’m certainly not as experienced as Bob (or other startup bloggers and pundits), but I put together my own thoughts on the experience here: http://tinyurl.com/3jsld5

Hopefully, they will help someone else when making critical decisions about their startup.

Interestingly enough, someone once asked Sergey and Larry about the “don’t be evil” motto and what it means to them. They laughed and said that it’s you, the user, who shouldn’t be evil. So as long as you’re not evil they can wreck companies and help the Chinese with the Great Firewall.

I suppose this is Google’s mindset nowadays. They’re so big, they can do anything they want to anyone without the capital to fight them.

sergey wears crocs

But think also of all the business logic, the customized apps created uniquely for you. Just look at what Facebook does to make it extremely painful for users to move. That’s a tiny taste of the cloud.lig tv izle
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sohbet The tradeoff, of course, will be that you’ll sacrifice a bit of freedom in exchange for convenience. Fair deal? Maybe. But I think Stallman is on to something here