

Google acquires Postrank.com - zmoazeni
http://blog.postrank.com/2011/06/postrank-has-been-acquired-by-google/

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mey
This is the first time I've ever heard of Postrank. Can someone provide a
brief of what they do and why google would buy them?

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subbu
One of the reasons could be its founder/CTO, Ilya Grigorik. Check out
<http://www.igvita.com/>. He is brilliant.

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grandalf
Ilya is amazing. I wonder if this means that some Ruby will be creeping into
the Google ecosystem.

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DanielRibeiro
Congrats to Ilya. His personal blog has some of the most inpiring articles in
Ruby/AI and technichal stuff in general: <http://www.igvita.com>

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igrigorik
Thanks guys! Rest assured, I have no plans on retiring from keeping the blog
going -- it's what got me here in the first place!

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subbu
I don't use PostRank but I read all of Ilya's articles. His articles are
awesome. He is awesome. Congratulations. You deserve a pay day.

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troymc
Wow, congratulations PostRank! I remember hearing your pitch at one of the
WatStart meetings when I lived in Waterloo, back when you were AideRSS.

This is also seems like a smart move by Google. They want to "get more into
social" (whatever that means), and PostRank has been aggregating and analyzing
social interactions across the web for longer than most.

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chrisbaglieri
Not to mention they have a solid team. Lots o' technical chops there.
Interestingly enough, they're mostly a Ruby shop if I'm not mistaken.

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maplealmond
We are indeed!

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gnufied
Will it be now, you will be rewriting everything in Python or Go? :P

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OmarIsmail
Wow!! This is amazing!

Huge congratulations to Ilya and the crew at PostRank. Consistent and best-in-
class execution. Awesome job and hope it was a huge pay day :)

I know it's hypocritical for me to say but rather unfortunate they're moving
to MV. Would be nice to have some rich young people in Waterloo to act as
investor/mentors.

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igrigorik
Thanks Omar! Definitely couldn't have done it without all the support from the
local community and friends - Waterloo is an awesome place.

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ultrasaurus
Who`s going to host our hackathons now?

Also, congrats!

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renaudb
Congrats! Keep pushing for Waterloo interns hiring ;-)

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rapind
Congratulations Ilya. I first saw postrank (aiderss) at an Amazon AWS meetup
years ago and grabbing a beer with you guys. Google's a great company of super
smart people and you guys will fit right in.

And please continue blogging!

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andrewcross
Great to see a company out of Waterloo get some well-deserved recognition.
Definitely agree that it's sad to see them all get moved to MV, but such is
life. We still have Kik and RIM though :)

Kudos to them!

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dimmuborgir
Well deserved. Postrank has been the best example of usage of EventMachine.

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summitpush
Is this the same guy who made vimgolf? And is it in any way related to
<http://www.vimgolf.com> being down right now?

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igrigorik
lol! No, apparently vimgolf _just_ hit the limit on the free mongohq account.
Upgraded - back to normal. Enjoy the golfing! ;D

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jbellis
It was only a matter of time before Google started using Cassandra... :)

(Re [http://webpulp.tv/post/4184040219/scaling-postrank-using-
rub...](http://webpulp.tv/post/4184040219/scaling-postrank-using-ruby-and-
eventmachine-with-ilya))

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ronnix
I hope their first job will not be to rewrite it all in C++ or Java on top of
some proprietary Google storage. :)

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uriel
Hopefully they will be rewriting in Go ;)

Interestingly many rubyists seem to be joining the Go community lately.

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zitterbewegung
What will this mean for the users of the service? Will it be shut down in the
future?

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igrigorik
We've suspended new signups for the moment, while we figure out what lies
ahead. Having said that, for all existing users, the service will continue as
is! Stay tuned for more.

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nakkiel
So you sign an acquisition deal without discussing what "lies ahead"? I guess
a "We can't give much details for now, ..." would be sufficient.

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bergie
There is something reasonably similar to PostRank in PHP:
[http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/want_to_do_something_similar_to_po...](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/want_to_do_something_similar_to_postrank/)

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lem72
Nice to see another Canadian Company get acquired!

Go Canucks Go!

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cal5k
Really? It's nice to see our best engineers moving down to California?

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thomasgerbe
Meh. Maybe Canadian companies should do a better job at retaining talent. I
love my country (Canada) but so few startups and creative agencies are
appealing. That's not to say they don't exist but there's just so much more
opportunity and money down south.

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cal5k
If you don't find startups and creative agencies to be appealing, why not
start your own rather than complain about it?

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thomasgerbe
I did. I moved to the U.S. and started my own.

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cal5k
Suffice it to say you don't _really_ love your country, you just like the
_idea_ of it/

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rsingel
Anyone have a API key from Postrank they don't use and wouldn't mind parting
with? Really need something like this.

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erikpukinskis
Shouldn't the headline be "Entire Postrank team quits and is hired by Google"?

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xentronium
You're assuming that it's a talent acquisition, while I think their product is
a great cultural match for google, which had always been about data. Guess,
time will show.

