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If one of the competitors cared to address the issue, yeah, it would have gone down. When there's a choice, there's (more) incentive to address things that will give you bad press.


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Agreed that it’s not a panacea but it would have worked for the companies complaining the loudest during e.g. the Cogent spat.

Maybe, but then this debate would have been happening in media.

I guess some of them thought it wouldn't be good for the stock price and others just believed the outrage without reading for themselves?


What ...encouraged the initial decision to increase the price? Because I can think of a few examples of discouragement, such as the backlash against Reddit, that should have given the executives an idea of what could happen as a result. Yet they went through with it which makes me think:

a) the company truly believed people would pay;

b) They believed that the fallout would not be that bad; or

c) Worst case, they did not consider fallout at all and just said raise it.


Much more likely is that they studied the situation, understood the problem, and concluded that the trade off was worth it.

We may disagree—I think that surely there must have been some way of solving the problem—but it seems very unlikely to me that they missed it.

They just exercised judgement that I think was suboptimal.

Of course, they are selling millions of products and making billions of dollars doing it, so not sure I can claim I’m unambiguously right.


Yes, that's my point. The company "didn't do well" by the standards of the previous round they raised. But had they raised a round that valued them more appropriately, they may have "done well".

Even if it didn't hurt sales, it would still have been shitty and embarrassing if the big reveal of this massive multi-year investment had been torpedoed by the risers, and (to the story'd point) after the risers had been explicitly called out as a problem.

Yes, as they would have lost less stock price if a fix had been prepared and released along with the announcement.

Yes, if options purchases were made before the market found out.

Yes, if their intentions were to change stock prices with the announcement in any respect whatsoever, whether up down in price and/or in volatility.

No, if they were not intending to change the stock market with the announcement, regardless of the fact that they did. (Naïveté happens. So does unconcern. Still, No.)


Given #deleteuber, it clearly matters to some consumers. I suspect that it matters enough to give competitors another few % of the market per major fiasco, but not enough to alter the overall trajectory of the market.

This seems like a pretty big misstep for which any sensible person could've predicted the outcome. Companies should think twice before deciding to retroactively change their terms.

Applying public pressure towards companies is good.


Exactly :)

A lot of larger companies affected needed a wake up call regardless.


They almost did. Market owners decided they won’t have it that way, as they should or there would be many more losers.

Yeah you're right, above is a bit sensationalized. I think it still probably had a (positive) impact on pricing and time to market though

I'm sure all the bigger ones had looked at the possibility before, but it's only natural to revisit it when something horrible like this happens to a competitor.

The compromised product's competitors would publicize the failure--at least, if the free market worked perfectly.

Overall I agree. But these companies would have scalped any free supply on the market anyway so I don't think there was any way to avoid the outcome.

The interesting question is whether it was a mistake. Just because it was eventually rolled back, doesn't mean it wasn't worth it to win the large customer.

no, that'd hurt shareholders.

I felt that was an odd omission in the article. Maybe it didn’t have a huge market impact outside the local crowd, but it was a big deal then. I seem to remember the CEO posting in the threads apologizing, etc.

I don't know, your comment seems to be overcomplicating an argument that appears to boil down to "there is no such thing as bad publicity" and we should know that isn't true in terms of stock prices or else they would never go down based off bad news.
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