

Google Developing Formal VC Arm - dkasper
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10003367-93.html

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swombat
Fantastic and ironic in a sweet way. I've never dealt with VCs myself (firm
believer in bootstrapping + angel funding), but I can imagine many VCs turned
down deals on the basis that the start-up was competing with Google, or that
Google was likely to move into the start-up's space... Now Google's moving
into _their_ space.

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ajju
One of Google's strengths is innovative strategies to counter employees who
are leaving just for the sake of novelty, also knows as their 20% projects
initiative. From what I hear, this is no longer enough to keep their employees
there, especially the ones who have already made their money from GOOG stock.
I posit that this move is as much to address that as to change how they buy
startups (they were already doing that a lot even without a formal VC arm)

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jmtame
I'll say the same thing from the other YC/Google post:

I'd much rather work with YC. I'm a big fan of PG, not really too intrigued by
anyone at Google. I guess Paul Buchheit has tainted my view of Google (or
maybe he's just more interested in recruiting for Friendfeed), but either way,
Google being in VC just doesn't hold the same appeal as YC.

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ambition
This is savvy. If I ran a big company that depended on smart people, this
would be a priority. For top technical talent, starting a company is the
alternative to working at Google. With a VC program, Google can say "Come work
with us, you'll become a better engineer, and if you later want to start a
startup, we're here for that too."

