10/06/2005 01:23:00 PM|||Joe|||Check this out. From Wired News:
Small Web 2.0 companies are already being snapped up by internet giants.
Google acquired Dodgeball, a mobile phone social networking application, and recruited one of the princes of mash-ups, Paul Rademacher of Housingmaps.com, from his job at DreamWorks Animation SKG.
Yahoo snapped up Flickr, a community photo sharing application that relies heavily on tagging, and on Tuesday, bought Upcoming.org, an user-driven events tracking service.
Wednesday afternoon's LaunchPad presentation, featuring 13 companies giving six minute pitches, drew throngs, including venture capitalists smelling money to be made from the cleverness of young programmers, and representatives from internet giants trying to determine whether their business models were as doomed as bloggers have prophesied.
You know what? I can't say exactly why, but reading all that just made me a little sad. Maybe because it sounds so much like the mid and late 90s, and we all know what happened there.
It also seems that so many good ideas get destroyed when they are purchased by bigger companies. Not all the time. But a lot of the time.
Then there's the weird attitude that these people have... this whole "Web 2.0" thing. Their basic thrust is that users contribute the content. Which is fine, and I guess I'm glad that some people will make money off of it. On the other hand... I don't know. It always seems like companies can't help but get in the way of people's creativity and contributions.
The irony is, of course, that I use Blogger to post here, which is owned by Google. Though I'm still thinking about switching to Wordpress. I've just been too distracted with other things. Anyway, now I'm rambling off-topic.
What I'm saying is that it can be done. Google hasn't done much to screw with Blogger. As far as I can tell, it's actually improved it. But I trust other companies less. It's been a long time since Yahoo! was considered really smart and innovative. They're always a step or two behind Google, it seems. I hope they don't screw Flickr up. I know I've held off on a pay account there to see what happens.
Is it always profitable for larger companies to buy smaller ones outright? Why can't they just have exclusive licenses? That way, the culture of the smaller company (that produced what is apparently a desireable technology) won't change, and maybe they can continue to produce neat stuff.
I mean, what if (for some dumb reason) Apple bought Delicious Monster? Sure, they'd probably integrate it into iLife and all that, and it'd be neat, but... I don't know. I'm rambling now. I need it to be Friday afternoon now.|||112863022222973988|||Snapped Up