
Google is acquiring Kaggle - Perados
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/07/google-is-acquiring-data-science-community-kaggle/
======
kornish
This is obviously a talent acquisition in more ways than one (the Kaggle team,
but also their ability to source machine learning talent). I wonder to what
degree it's also a Tensorflow promotion move? It seems like Google is very
interested in growing a community around it.

For example: some friends who run a seed-stage biotech deep learning startup
were offered a considerable discount by the Google Cloud folks. Their ask?
That the company switch to Google Cloud, rewrite some proprietary software in
Tensorflow, and heavily publicize both moves.

I wonder if we'll see Kaggle gain a specific bent towards that ecosystem.

~~~
alex_dev
Last I heard was Kaggle runs atop Azure and is heavily a C# shop. It'll be
interesting to see the transition to Google Cloud if that's the case.

~~~
ofek
I can confirm that Kaggle runs on Azure because I block all Microsoft IPs (to
avoid the ninja Windows 10 upgrade) and must disable the blocker in order to
go on the site.

~~~
ifdefdebug
> to avoid the ninja Windows 10 upgrade

What ninja upgrade? You always had to opt-in. Yes, they were really pushing
the offer annoyingly hard, but I had no problems whatsoever to keep one of my
machines on Windows 7.

Anyway, you can stop doing so now, the time for a free upgrade is over.

~~~
Strom
This is incorrect. There was an opt-out phase where the Windows 10 install
started automatically in the middle of work. I've experienced this myself,
there's a moment where Windows 7 just shuts down and starts installing Windows
10 and I had to wait 30 minutes until I could press "I disagree" to the EULA
and then it would start rolling back the Windows 10 it just installed.

------
jboggan
I have a soft spot in my heart for Kaggle. I was motivated to get into the
software industry 5 years ago when they ran their first Facebook hiring
challenge. How else to break into an industry I had no degree in?

I didn't do so well in the competition but it got me coding every day and it
gave me enough to talk about that I figured I could sell all my things and
ride a motorcycle to California and start knocking on doors. It worked, after
a fashion.

I also have a soft spot in my heart for Kaggle because I interviewed there
during my first month in San Francisco and it was absolutely the worst
interview of my life.

~~~
xaa
I can relate to the "bittersweet Kaggle memories" phenomenon.

I participated in their first-ever competition, which I thought I would have a
good shot at because Kaggle was brand-new (thus not much competition), and
because it was in my wheelhouse, a biological application of ML. And at that
time, c. 2010, ML was not all that well-known.

I did OK (placed somewhere in the top-middle IIRC) but it was quite humbling.
Now it's not really worth doing except for fun or to be recruited by someone
because the competition is so fierce and there are people with a lot of time
to devote to it. The difference between 1st and 25th place is often measured
in the 3rd decimal place of performance, making success kind of random. But
the postmortems by winners are always good to see some real-world best-
practices and different workflows.

As for the business model, I'm pretty ambivalent about it. My wife is a
graphic designer, and in that field, "compete to see who has the best design"
is a somewhat common thing. But it's scummy and designers hate it because it's
a way to basically get free work out of lots of people and it erodes salaries
in the industry.

Work should probably _not_ be gamified, especially when the gamification takes
the form of "you only get paid if you win". And "hey, you might get recruited
if you do well without winning" is not a lot of consolation. It's pretty
exploitative for anyone not A) doing it purely for fun/learning or B) willing
and able to assume the risk of making their money from competitions. (Just to
be clear, I've never done Kaggle except for fun, but I know others do it for
serious career purposes or money, as those are obviously express intentions of
the site)

~~~
tomaskafka
> Work should probably not be gamified, especially when the gamification takes
> the form of "you only get paid if you win"

Wanna join a startup? Huge equity! :)

~~~
xaa
Good point. I work in the "relatively safe" area of academic research, but the
point still holds.

Even more broadly, your thought has made me wax a little philosophical about
capitalism: we believe that 1) everyone should work, 2) I only want winners to
work with/for me, and 3) not everyone can be a winner. I guess you can't have
all three, but we sure try.

If you put it in that light, maybe Kaggle isn't so bad. But OTOH, we do make
the distinction between employees and entrepreneurs for a reason.

------
conjectures
Kaggle is a great idea, but it's steadily getting more annoying to use.

1) Cruft on all landing pages and having to click through to get to the comps
page which _is_ the site.

2) Annoying focus on exploratory notebooks. Inevitably they aren't powerful
enough and people link through to external sites.

3) _Forcing_ the use of 3rd party compute platforms to enter comps. Half the
fun for me is messing around with my own ideas and this just gets in the way.
These should be optional rather than required.

4) Poor incentives. Many of the comps have tiny prizes for the value of work
that gets done. They're also concentrated way too much at the top. Unless
there's something I want to try out, the expected value of participating is
way too low to do it just for the giggles.

~~~
carlmcqueen
I do analytics for a huge corporation and have been quite happy however some
of my peers who are unhappy with the pay here participate in Kaggle for the
opportunity to do well and get a better (higher paying) job.

Some of the inherent value of the work for the small prize pool is more the
opportunity of doing well and being recognized for that work.

Data Science, or trendy statistics, is inherently fun which is also what makes
kaggle fun. Discovery in data will always be popular among people who love to
solve problems.

To your other points, I don't disagree with you-- all the steps just to
participate are becoming more work than its worth, at least for me. I do a lot
of the same problems asked in kaggle naturally at work.

~~~
gedrap
>>> participate in Kaggle for the opportunity to do well and get a better
(higher paying) job

Obviously it's anecdotal data at best, but still curious, what are the
results? Because it sounds very similar to the frequently given advice for
software engineers 'push code to github to land a great job'.

~~~
jonathankoren
I've hired many people, and I don't know anyone that's ever looked at either
kaggle, or stack overflow, or github commits for anything. I've seen them on
resumes before, but only from very junior people, and typically from people
outside of the US.

Quite frankly it's a rather bullshit signal, since it's presence only tells
you that the person spends all their free time on the computer. Maybe the know
something, but a traditional interview will tell you that and more.

~~~
rocho
I disagree. From junior people, it shows that they can actually do something
in practice, and it's not all theory that they don't know how to apply.

A person just outside of university does not have heaps of past jobs to show.
So they should just leave it blank and describe their hobbies?!

~~~
jonathankoren
No one cares about hobbies, and Kaggle is a hobby.

An NCG should write more about class projects. Everyone has class projects.

If an NCG wants to put it down, fine. But don't color me impressed. Why should
I select someone that spends their evenings alone tweaking out an extra 0.001%
on a AUC curve, when I could conceivably get a more rounded individual with
better team skills?

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marcelsalathe
[https://www.crowdAI.org](https://www.crowdAI.org) is an open source
alternative. Disclaimer, my research group at EPFL started the platform,
because we think there should be a community-based open source version that is
open to anyone. Always looking for contributors!

Edit (1): Github
[https://github.com/crowdAI/crowdai](https://github.com/crowdAI/crowdai) Edit
(2): We're currently re-designing the whole site to look & feel better.

~~~
wapz
I just looked at the site and it sounds real exciting (but way too difficult
for me). Can I ask how you guys are funded? I saw that there is a ~$2000
payout for the winner of the most recent challenge.

~~~
marcelsalathe
The platform itself is funded by institutional research funding we get at
EPFL. For some of the monetary prizes, these typically come from the
corresponding projects.

------
iamseiko
That's disappointing. Google will probably keep the service alive for
recruiting and the consumer base, while most of it's technologies will
probably be shut off. Being owned by Google might also mean that some
companies might not want to post challenges on Kaggle anymore, like Facebook
or Microsoft.

~~~
inlined
I really don't understand this assumption that all acquisitions are going to
lead to disaster. I work in the Firebase team at Google and couldn't be
happier that they've joined (it's what got me to return to Google). Google
doubled down on the product and it's grown in ways that Firebase could never
have achieved on its own. All while integrating into the broader ecosystem of
Cloud.

Firebase then acquired DivShot and people cried doom. Yes DivShot was shut
down--after completely rearchitecting Firebase's CLI and Hosting to have
DivShot's open source web hosting framework with the features of both product
lines. The CEO of DivShot now runs Firebase Hosting's product line and has
massive resources at his disposal to push his (great) agenda of simple and
speedy static web services.

------
codesternews
This is worst news I read today. Kaggle independently serve more purpose to
community than a baby of some large giants. I love kaggle and I am very
disappointed that google acquire everything we love.

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soheil
I'm a little sad about this, what will Google do with this? Are they going to
drain its soul? I think at a minimum the people behind Kaggle won't feel the
same urge to keep building , maintaining and growing it the same way as
before, specially as the $$$ flows in their pockets. It will probably change
direction by people at Google in control and I'm not sure if that's a good
thing since they didn't just built something like this on their own or a
better version of it if they were really good at doing stuff like this
themselves.

~~~
ehsankia
They just officially announced it at NEXT. It was presented by Fei Fei Li, who
is known for the ImageNet project, which one one of the first big open
datasets that really helped advance this field.

The way she presented the news is that they will aim to advance that vision,
but we'll have to wait an see how their vision pans out.

------
jph00
Why does the article say that Ben Hamner was involved in the founding in 2010?
He joined years later. Some basic fact checking would be nice, even in tech
articles...

(Ben has been a great contributor, mind you.)

~~~
redcalx
Yeh as I recall Jeremy Howard was chief boffin at the start, and left some
time later to start his own biomedical data analysis company (also in SF).

~~~
kornish
Funny thing: the comment you're replying to was posted by Jeremy Howard.
Pardon if I'm missing some tongue-in-cheekiness.

~~~
redcalx
heh. I was unaware :)

------
throw_away_777
Congrats to the Kaggle team! One great thing about Kaggle was that the team
listened and sought out feedback from users (even if they didn't always follow
the feedback). I hope that doesn't change with the acquisition.

~~~
nojvek
It's amazing how focused Google is on AI compared to the other giants. I think
it's a great investment on Google's part and congrats to Kaggle.

I hope the mission of the site doesn't change. I think Facebook did a great
job with whatsapp and instagram. I expect the same with Kaggle.

------
chis
DrivenData.org is a solid competitor without much publicity. Maybe they'll
take over some of the traffic if Kaggle changes for the worse.

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dthal
Well, supposing this is correct...Congratulations to Anthony and the rest of
the Kaggle team! Those guys do a great job. Hopefully they get rewarded for
it.

------
macca321
Congrats to Jeff and the rest of the team. I'd be interested to hear how much
.NET survives the transition!

------
nstart
This could well end up being a fantastic move for Google to also acquire
customers in its platform. If Kaggle moved large pieces of its competition to
be automatically hosted on GCE it might be a good win for Google. So like
Kaggle's "kernels", GCE machine learning tools would become an extension
that's usable with it in a really simple way. Not entirely sure what that
might look like, but it feels like this kind of integration would be the best
for both parties.

------
alantrrs
Since we're sharing alternatives:

[https://empiricalci.com](https://empiricalci.com) is a dashboard to keep
track of your experiments & compare them on public benchmarks.

------
luckystartup
> Kaggle, which has about half a million data scientists on its platform, ...

Are there really that many data scientists? I thought it was a niche
specialty. Is there enough work for that many people?

~~~
rcar
Think they maybe put a 0 in the wrong spot. Kaggle's leaderboard only shows
~50k: [https://www.kaggle.com/rankings](https://www.kaggle.com/rankings)

------
outericky
Best of luck to the Kaggle team. We attended a data scientist conference they
presented at in 2012 which led to our YC application, and formation for
SimpleLegal. Hats off...

------
qkhhly
Google probably want to use Kaggle as Google cloud entry point for the data
scientist community. Kaggle has a lot of student and entry level data
scientist. Getting those users to start to use Google cloud could potentially
drive the growth of lots of potential customers.

~~~
leblancfg
I think you hit the nail straight on the head. Sure, Tensorflow will also
probably get pushed in the form of tutorials, etc. but I certainly think it's
rather related to bring a way to popularize GCS.

------
Nydhal
I'm not sure if this is good or bad news. I wonder what google motives are and
how they will influence kaggle if this becomes reality.

~~~
seangrogg
As with many of Google's hires chances are they see it less about acquiring a
"product" and more about getting access to what that product produces - an
extremely large number of leads in a high-demand space that they're currently
trying to ramp up themselves.

~~~
leblancfg
Interesting, though, as they never needed to own that platform to mine it for
hiring leads.

------
deepnotderp
Only Google can spend this much on what's ultimately a recruiting project.

~~~
soheil
They have 500,000 developers, do the math at 30% commission for each assuming
a $180k salary that's $50k even if they hire 0.1% of them that adds up to $50k
* 500 = 25m they probably paid a few times more than that but not a few
hundred times, which therefore makes this a pretty sweet deal for Google
assuming the community keeps growing.

~~~
gpawl
do you have buy kaggle to hire kaggle members?

~~~
soheil
Well I'm not sure if they expose their members' contact info or if it'd be
easy for Google to advertise on their site as effectively.

------
jader201
Official announcements:

Google: [https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/03/welcome-
Kaggle-...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/03/welcome-Kaggle-to-
Google-Cloud.html) (HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822635))

Kaggle: [http://blog.kaggle.com/2017/03/08/kaggle-joins-google-
cloud/](http://blog.kaggle.com/2017/03/08/kaggle-joins-google-cloud/) (HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822727))

------
alxvio
Just announced at Google Next '17\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_K1YoMHpbk&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_K1YoMHpbk&feature=youtu.be)

------
rochak
Good luck to Kaggle's employees. They have done a phenomenal job.

------
EternalData
I think having a dataset on who is really interested in machine learning and
applying it in practice can only help Google. Plus, if they kind of lurk on
the side, you don't get enough of the Google brand overwhelming Kaggle so that
it disrupts the community, but in the back of the minds of people going into
competitions and who are in the know, it might help incentivize people who
think "Hey, Google is really interested in this".

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sullyj3
How could a company called "Google" _not_ acquire a company called "Kaggle"?
This makes me giggle.

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gumboshoes
The Kragle has been sold?!
[http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/evil/images/c/c0/Kragle....](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/evil/images/c/c0/Kragle.jpg/revision/latest/scale-
to-width-down/250?cb=20150810035915)

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ebbv
Guess that means Kaggle users can expect it to be shut down in the next five
years.

~~~
sireat
Sadly I think 5 years to sunset is an optimistic estimate.

------
huula
Don't know why. Just don't think this is going to happen.

------
pizza
Deep Mind keeps acquiring appendages

------
moizsajid
Really excited about this acquisition! Might open new avenues for the data
science community.

------
nafizh
This must imply Kaggle has some internal software that Google want?

~~~
deepnotderp
Nah, they just want a good recruiting station.

------
tzs
I wonder if that's the only one they want, or if they are also going to try to
get other relics such the Knife of Exact Zero, the Fleece-Crested Scepter of
Que-Teep, or the Orb of Ti-Teleest?

------
inopinatus
Hopefully there will be no uncertainties in the acquisition. If not they can
form a team to fix them. But I'm joking around: this is a Google-Kaggle niggle
gaggle giggle.

------
maverick_iceman
Anyone knows what was the price?

------
danaliv
Whoever named this company has literally never spoken to a woman.

~~~
ScottBurson
I think the name is a little odd too. Does anyone know how they came up with
it?

~~~
Danylon
> I didn’t have any money when I started the company to purchase a domain name
> so I built an algorithm that iterated phonetic domain names and printed out
> a list of what was available. My wife and I went through the list and
> “Kaggle” was the one we picked. It’s algorithmically generated.

> It’s a terrible name because most Americans pronounce it “kagel” [rhymes
> with “bagel”] which sounds like the pelvic floor exercises. Australians
> pronounce it “kaggel” [rhymes with “haggle”].

\-- Anthony Goldbloom, [http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/a-marketplace-for-
data-sc...](http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/a-marketplace-for-data-
scientists/5256/)

~~~
jacques_chester
As an Australian living in the US, it never occurred to me that it would be
called anything but the latter.

~~~
cr0sh
As a self-described redneck in Arizona - the latter seems most appropriate.

Why anyone would pronounce it to rhyme with "bagel" makes no sense to me (same
as pronouncing "gif" with a soft "G"); IIRC (and I am no linguist), in english
there's a rule about how something is pronounced based on surrounding letters
- and I think that double consonant vs singular consonant preceded by a vowel
is one of those rules.

I'm sure there are exceptions, after all (it's english...) - but I have a
feeling that if you looked at such words you would find the general pattern to
fit.

Again - I am willing to admit that I really don't know what I am talking
about; I'm not a linguist, I'm not an expert in english. I'm just some guy who
last studied english in high school years ago...

~~~
ScottBurson
I feel the same way about "GIF". Alas, the inventor of the GIF format insists
on the soft "G" [0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Pronunciation_of_GIF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Pronunciation_of_GIF)

------
joelthelion
Yuck.

------
mostafab
good news, I did not like the whole Kaggle concept anyway: thousands of people
over-engineering solutions for one problem, paid peanuts, while there are more
rewarding problems than talent available. It was a huge waste of scarce
brainpower. I am launching my Kaggle alternative, landing page here:
[http://startcrowd.club/](http://startcrowd.club/) Thanks Google for
eliminating my competitor.

