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Fridge is Joining Google+ Team
- peterzakin 15y agoCongrats, guys!
- riordan 15y agoFridge built a really amazing product - Social groupware for people outside of Facebook. I'll be sad to see it go. I wonder if the team is going to be moved out to Mountain View or stay in NYC?
- nakajima 15y agoLooks like they'll be moving to Mountain View: http://allthingsd.com/20110721/frid-ge-acquired-by-google-to-build-groups-in-google/ http://allthingsd.com/20110721/frid-ge-acquired-by-google-to...
- cemregr 15y agoI like Austin, but a group I was part of used Fridge and it made my pull my hair. Thanks to Fridge, I now know how my grandmother feels like using a computer. The UI was really overwhelming and I could never find what I was after or why things were sorted a certain way.
- randall 15y agoJust got the email. Congrats guys!
- ryanb 15y agoAustin and the Fridge team are super sharp. I'd say this was a great move for Google+. Congrats!
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- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ColinWright 15y agoYou know what? I was going to go back, find the URLs, compare them, offer a summary as to why they are different, list which ones have content and which ones don't, characterize their differences, and basically do all the homework. This, in addition to having taken the time to find the duplicates to start with. Then I thought - why? Had enough, don't care, can't be bothered, and won't waste the time. I'll just let the front page full up with half a dozen or more duplicates, and not bother that it waters down the value of HN. It won't last. So screw it. Thanks for the heads up - I'm deleting them all, and I really, really won't bother again. ADDED IN EDIT: I was also going to defend pointers to duplicates, even in the instances when there is not yet substantial discussion, but I just don't care any more.
- forgotmypasswd 15y agoRAGEQUIT
- ColinWright 15y agoYup. I've taken the opportunity to review my HN usage, and I get significantly less out of it now than I used to, and it just sucks my time to nearly no benefit. I may keep posting links - the bookmarklet makes it easy - but the discussions here now seem to add very little, so I'm not bothering any more.
- 18pfsmt 15y agoIf it makes any difference, I appreciated your efforts. I hope veterans of HN don't become discouraged because they were the most influential in causing me to finally create an HN acct (oddly enough, I don't take that action lightly), and try to contribute to a group I've learned so much from.
- rdl 15y agoWow, congratulations! I'm really impressed by how successful Google+ has been so far, and I'm sure you guys will help make it even better. It will be interesting if you can post in a year or so about what it was like going to work for Google as a talent acquisition in a related space to your own startup (i.e. what was better and what was different). I'm sure the food will be an improvement, but it will be interesting to hear how it was learning to use the google internal deployment environment (in general, non-NDA terms). Also, thank you so much for extending data availability on frid.ge until the end of the summer!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- watty 15y agoSo do they need more staff or were they buying out the competitor who did "circles" before they did?
- happyfaces 15y agoDidn't know what fridge was so I watched the video on their website, funny thing is at some point the speaker goes like: "share whatever you want without worrying of other people or google seeing it!" that made me smile
- plannerball 15y agoFridge? Never heard before
- puredanger 15y agoMan, I was really disappointed to click this link and find that it was not a news story about William "Refrigerator" Perry from the Chicago Bears joining the Google+ team.
- zackattack 15y agoHahaha
- pge 15y agoyou're not alone:) I thought Google+ had found a new front man...
- nadam 15y agoFunny how the startup scene changes. Years ago, Paul Graham wrote essays like 'You weren't meant to have a boss'. Nowadays talent aquisitions are seen as huge successes while (money aside) we are celebrating that some former founders found jobs at big companies. (I am also more pragmatic in this question than years ago, so I am not criticizing anyone.)
- badclient 15y agoNowdays talent acquisitions are seen as huge successes Citation needed.
- AlecSchueler 15y agoSee: the congratulations that are invariably offered in threads like these.
- badclient 15y agoSorry if its just me but I always thought that if you've spent some time around HN, you can tell between talent acquisitions that occur out of need(other option being going dead) and talent acquisitions that occur from a position of power(ie. friendfeed). In the former case, congratulations are still in order for the founders not coming out completely empty handed, but I would not term it as "huge successes". Congratulations != huge success(in the big picture sense)
- timxpp 15y agoTrue. If they would go and work for IBM, would it still sound so good? How come getting a job at Google is seen as a small Nobel price?
- rdl 15y agoI'd draw a distinction between talent acquisitions to go join the general pool of people at a big company, and talent acquisitions to work on the big new focus of a "sleeping giant", in something similar to what you were doing before.
- Robin_Message 15y agoA shame they are not migrating the content into Google+, in some form, for customers who want it. But then I suppose fridge was a group thing, so getting consent could be tricky.
- phodo 15y agoDoes anyone know what languages / technologies they used?
- kfir 15y agophp not sure about the rest.
- SimpleConcepts 15y agoCongrats guys. Google+ saw a trend within small groups and decided to enter that market. However, I would assume small groups aim to limit your time spent with those who aren't as close to you. Now, I have tons of circles, and connecting with even more people than ever. Its organized well, but whats the point? Facebook has Lists right? Buying out Fridge and growing a community from the ground is a much better/sustainable strategy for google. Just an opinion :)
- ma2rten 15y agoQuite ironic, I just watched their promo video. http://www.youtube.com/embed/TRYntzWLJ7Q http://www.youtube.com/embed/TRYntzWLJ7Q It literally says: "You don't have to worry about other people seeing what you posted, not that random person from school, not Google"
- 18pfsmt 15y agoMaybe this acquisition will bring the interests of someone like myself, that are non-public personas and wish to keep it that way, to the table where we can participate publicly. We would be able to use a single handle in our Circles marked 'public', so we could be blocked but still not be stalked.
- cemregr 15y agoAnother article mentioned frid.ge had 40.000 uniques and 20.000 groups. Does that say something?
- gpp 15y agoAny idea how much Google or other companies pay for acquisition like this?
- ianb 15y agoSince Fridge itself is shut down, I'm not curious exactly how their model worked. Anyone know of (or care to make) a technical description of how it works?
- dennisgorelik 15y agoYet another startup is chewed by big-co.
- iphoneedbot 15y agoIm a little mad.. because.. products back by YC such as Fridge and JustSpotted have asked us as consumers to believe in their efforts and adopt their products early.. NOW, it appears that these companies just seem like a way to get hired and acquired.. -- You ("the startup") asked us to believe in you and adopt your product and approach -- only to be left with a defunct product Seems like: "If the going gets tough, --> you sell out" (Literally) Im not hating.. Im proud that another YC company is moving on to better things.. . but -- seems like a slight break in the trust placed on startups.. how can consumers adopt early if theres a seemingly greater reality that the startup is actually "built to be hired/acquired" /.
- cookiecaper 15y agoIt's funny that places like Google even perform talent acquisitions. I guess when you're controlling billions of dollars a few million here or there is a comparative "drop in the bucket" but it really has to be about covetousness or something, because there is a large supply of talented engineers that would be willing to work at Google as normal employees, and certainly many of these would have the same capabilities as the Frid.ge team. Does it really cost anything close $5M-$10M to find a handful of employees with that skillset? I'd say Google is definitely doing it wrong if so -- I can understand a premium for demonstrating competency with something like Frid.ge, but it just seems quite inflated when all Google ends up with in the end is a few employees for a few years (if that). I have to say I'm pretty skeptical that talent acquisitions are a decent deal from the acquirer's side of things. No offense or displeasure to the Frid.ge team of course, if they're happy with it that's fine. I just don't see it as an economically effective investment from Google's end. Perhaps part of it is the extra headlines that are inevitable when a YC company gets acquired? Just doesn't seem like a good value to me.
- roc 15y agoHow much would Google have to spend to hire a complete team to add and expand fridge-like features for Google+? It's got to be in that same ballpark. Surely it's worth the premium to hire a cohesive, motivated team that's already learned the domain and has a proven ability to execute. Particularly considering the benefit Google can realize from getting a better solution to market faster.
- cookiecaper 15y agoWhy would it be in that same ballpark? Google has a notoriously silly hiring process so its costs are probably higher than the costs of some other companies, but really 5-10MM to hire 3-4 people? I guess if they're willing to spend that on a "talent acquisition" it may not be that far out of line with normal hiring costs but I'd say there's certainly a problem there. As I stated in my post I understand that demonstrating ability via Frid.ge can certainly be valuable and worth a premium. It just seems to be much higher than one might expect Google to spend on normal hiring processes.
- bconway 15y agoCongrats to the Fridge team on being hired by Google!
- jasonwilk 15y agoCongrats Austin!
- ehc 15y agoQuite ironic since Fridge markets itself on not sharing your data with Google: http://www.youtube.com/embed/TRYntzWLJ7Q?iframe=true&width=640&height=360&rel=0&wmode=Opaque#t=00m30s http://www.youtube.com/embed/TRYntzWLJ7Q?iframe=true&wid...
- fourk 15y agoThe wording on this article makes it sound as though this was NOT an acquisition of the company, but a "job offers for everyone on the team" sort of deal. To be clear, was the company acquired, or did everyone quit and join Google? How do investors generally react to deals of the latter form? Edit: The Techcrunch article [1] states that the company as a whole was acquired, in this particular case. However, how do these deals work out for investors when the company is not acquired, but the entire team quits and joins Google? Note, this is seemingly what occurred with YC Summer 08 company Scoopler yesterday, as mentioned in the TC article. [1]: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/21/g-google-acquires-privacy-centric-social-network-fridge/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/21/g-google-acquires-privacy-c...