[mbesto]

Reminds me a lot of when Groupon was looking to raise $1bil and everyone squawked. Aggressively hiring sales teams alone is an absolutely massive undertaking. Google doesn't (didn't?) understand that because they are under the notion that good technology can alleviate massive sales team. Thus why I feel they haven't been able to compete with Groupon's offering and rapid expansion. Even though Airbnb is not a 1-1 comparison to Groupon I think it still holds some relevance.

The overall point is that business is still conducted by people. Even in today's e-commerce era, people still want to be treated like a human beings by human beings - and us Americans are bloody expensive human beings.