[larrymyers]

tl;dr Acquihire founder is shocked when the giant behemoth that did the acquisition is motivated to protect its billions of quarterly profit at the expense of empowering all the brainpower it employs to do innovative and inherently risky things.

Really good piece of writing though, it never loses the plot despite being a longer read.

[mcenedella]

“it never loses the plot” - great assessment. it really does hold your attention throughout.

[fleddr]

Why do you position this as a binary option?

Google must have tens of thousands of people not directly working on ads. What exactly is so "risky" about this "subsidized" surplus working on risky bets?

[riku_iki]

but they do lots of risky bets.

[pif]

Your comment is spot on, and the line you wrote summarizes perfectly the article.

If you are wondering about the downvotes, it's because HN'ers hate when you state the truth about the world being larger than the web startups microcosm.