Fridge is Joining Google+ Team

[nadam]

Funny 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.)

[pg]

(money aside)

That's the mistake in your reasoning. The money makes a talent acquisition significantly different from getting a job.

[rdl]

I'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.

[timxpp]

True. 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?

[hristov]

I never really understood talent acquisitions. They are still puzzling to me. If you only need the talent why pay for the company? A huge chunk of the money you are paying for a company goes to the investors.

Why not just offer the people that you like multi-million dollar signing bonuses and have them join you. But what if they want to stay in the company and believe in their product, you say. Well if that were the case why would they agree for their company to be acquired in a deal that shuts down their service?

I don't know, I must be missing something.

[revorad]

Years ago, PG also wrote "Hiring is obsolete" - http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html

[badclient]

Nowdays talent acquisitions are seen as huge successes

Citation needed.

[ma2rten]

Quite ironic, I just watched their promo video.

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]

Maybe 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.

[rdl]

Wow, 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!

[happyfaces]

Didn'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

[fourk]

The 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-c...

[ryanb]

Austin and the Fridge team are super sharp. I'd say this was a great move for Google+.

Congrats!

[bconway]

Congrats to the Fridge team on being hired by Google!

[dennisgorelik]

Yet another startup is chewed by big-co.

[Robin_Message]

A 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.

[SimpleConcepts]

Congrats 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 :)

[puredanger]

Man, 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.

[pge]

you're not alone:) I thought Google+ had found a new front man...

[zackattack]

Hahaha

[cookiecaper]

It'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]

How 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.

[ehc]

Quite ironic since Fridge markets itself on not sharing your data with Google:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/TRYntzWLJ7Q?iframe=true&wid...

[watty]

So do they need more staff or were they buying out the competitor who did "circles" before they did?

[cemregr]

Another article mentioned frid.ge had 40.000 uniques and 20.000 groups. Does that say something?

[gpp]

Any idea how much Google or other companies pay for acquisition like this?

[riordan]

Fridge 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?

[cemregr]

I 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.

[nakajima]

Looks like they'll be moving to Mountain View: http://allthingsd.com/20110721/frid-ge-acquired-by-google-to...

[ianb]

Since 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?

[phodo]

Does anyone know what languages / technologies they used?

[kfir]

php not sure about the rest.