Tech news from the USAToday news section and TechCrunch to Anandtech and, yes, Hacker News was dominated by news of the Summly acquisition for five days.
The PR read that Yahoo is acquiring a company but shutting down its product and getting only 2 of their engineers for 30 million dollars. PR like that gets Yahoo's name in the press but does nothing to improve the image that Yahoo has no idea what it's doing.
"does nothing to improve the image that Yahoo has no idea what it's doing."
I think that's true, but only true to those people who read (or remembered or understood) beyond "Yahoo buys hot new company, hot new technology, hot new talent". The PR implication is that Yahoo is investing in once again being hot and new.
For those of us who understand the details of the company and product being bought, Yahoo's reputation was already entrenched. For the majority of readers, however, "hot new Yahoo" was the takeaway[1].
[1] Based on my experience as a journalist / writer, and the half dozen people who raised Summly in conversation with me the week the acquisition went public.
But startup acquisition news doesn't reach the vast, VAST majority of Yahoo's current, prospective, or desired users. Even pretending news like this reached a broad audience (while also pretending that audience doesn't have the same context you're attributing to HackerNews readers), acquisitions aren't just expensive - they're expensive with a significant risk of creating longterm internal pain of varying types and degrees for what, at best, could be a shortterm positive blip in general opinion.
How does this perceived misuse of funds and focus impact Yahoo employees? Their moral, productivity, and general satisfaction/enthusiasm?
I don't know, who are Yahoo's prospective customers? Search advertisers, right? They need goodwill with small business owners, whether those businesspersons are technically inclined or not. I'm sure they reached many of that type with this announcement. What niche do you think Yahoo needs for a customer base but has totally failed to contact?
No disagreement from me there! I don't think this was a good way to spend $30M (assuming I know the details behind it, which we all probably don't). But in response to PR qua PR, I think there were benefits.
Possibly because the local media here found an Australian angle, this was above the fold news (today's version of front page!) across a number of mainstream news networks where I am. So it reached a lot of the desired users.
Again - I don't think this was a good way to do it, of course!
> "Yahoo buys hot new company, hot new technology, hot new talent"
IMHO, any non-tech person who read that bit of news will likely have never heard of Summly, and will only remember the age bit. Which kind of makes it all read as "Yahoo needs help from teenagers" and conjures images of kids roaming around the company.
From my anecdotal observation and discussion with people who aren't so obsessed with these details, the story has been pretty misinterpreted by the masses though. Everyone was telling me how cool it was that some kid sold up his business for so much money.
I was talking to my friend and I kept on having to stop him every time he went down the "some 17 year kid created..." No one else he chatted with about it was clearing the smoke from the mirrors. Small sample, I know. I just don't buy that this was a Yahoo! story so much as a story about some 17 year old who build "some news summary app."
I saw it covered on CNN and other network news. They were comparing the acquisition to something like Youtube or the starting of facebook. I think it definitely plays to the heart strings of the american dream. "17 year old kid hits it big all thanks to the generous folks at Yahoo and his hard work"
Yeah, but in all honesty, superbowl ads are pretty "local" to the north American continent, maybe southern, too. A lot of people in Croatia don't even know what superbowl is, those who do just know about it.
Also, I regret to say that, when I overhead a conversation, someone said their browser was Bing and that it was the "bestest" ever. That person is in the same class as me. I study CS.
That PR alone was well worth the purchase price.