
Getting acquired by Google isn't always that great - natrius
http://flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/460987802/
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acgourley
Dodgeball had an early lead and a decent idea. If they had written an
(optional) java interface and really pushed the "no gps, but free" angle, I
really think they would have had a strong hand to play.

As they are now, they seem to have been stagnant for a long time. When I was
trying to enter the space against them I always assumed it was because they
had a big play coming down the pipes, but I see now they just failed.

I also don't have a lot of sympathy for those guys, those two alone should
have been enough to engineer the product they needed. From the outside looking
in, it seems like they had more than enough time, and they wasted it being
complacent.

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mattjaynes
I briefly tried Dodgeball. Wow, what a buggy mess. I don't know if that is
their fault or google's, but I quickly switched to something that would
actually work and made sense. Anyone else have a good or bad experience with
Dodgeball?

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staunch
Google can frustrate me with a few million dollars any time they want.

~~~
natrius
I'm sure they got decent paychecks out of it, but I doubt it was "fuck you"
money. They're still going to have to start another business or work for
someone else in a scenario where making money will still be important. If I
was really passionate about an idea and Google bought it just to let it
stagnate, I'd be pissed. If someone is going to buy something that I've put my
heart into, they're going to have to either pay me enough that I'll never have
to worry about money again, or ensure that I'll get to see my vision through.
The Dodgeball guys didn't get either of those.

For an example of a situation that I'd like to be in, look at Thawte. By
selling it, Mark Shuttleworth got enough money that he could do things he was
passionate about but might not be profitable in the near future, like paying
people to write open source software. For me, it would be investing my time
and money in the education of others to make sure more people could reach
their full potential.

So if someone swindled me out of a business I wanted to see actually change
the world in exchange for a couple of million dollars and the expectation that
I'd be able to keep developing that business, I'd be pissed. It just puts you
in a middle zone where you don't have to worry about money that much, but you
still can't do whatever you want. That's lame.

~~~
staunch
Looks to me like they got FU money _from_ Google and then said FU _to_ Google.

If they really are so passionate about this grand vision why couldn't they
push it through Google? Then they give up and start doing totally different
things. Doesn't seem like the dogged determination of visionaries to me.

I suspect they realized how little incentive there is for them to bust their
asses pushing the product through Google bureaucracy, and that no one was
pulling for them, so they quit.

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rms
So why do you think Google more or less abandoned Dodgeball, especially as
competitors like Loopt took off?

~~~
staunch
My guess is it just got lost in the noise of Googleplex and these guys weren't
able to navigate the bureaucracy well enough to cope.

~~~
JMiao
They were also based far from HQ out in New York.

