Internet startup acquisition prices keep trending upward. A few years ago, Myspace sold to News Corp for $580 million. Then YouTube sold to Google for $1.6 billion. At that point, that $1.6 billion price tag was unheard of. That came shortly after Facebook rejected an offer from Yahoo! for $1 billion.
More recently, Groupon supposedly rejected a rumored $6 billion acquisition from Google. Then Foursquare rejected an offer for $140 million. Heroku just got acquired by Salesforce.com for $212 million in cash. It's pretty incredible that these websites have managed to create such a large perceived value in such a short amount of time. The companies that have chosen to stay on their own - mainly the more "fringe" web apps like Groupon and Foursquare - make me wonder if it will be worth it for them in the long run. It makes sense for a company like Facebook, who has managed to put themselves in the center of the internet, but for companies like Groupon or Foursquare, I'm not so sure. Sometimes I wonder if they rejected these large offers because of an inflated sense of self-worth, or because they think they'll be able to make themselves worth 10x that in a few years. Time will tell. I'm sure the hot shots like Groupon and Foursquare have great plans for their companies, but it will be interesting to watch them, and to see if their multi-million dollar - or in Groupon's case, multi-billion dollar - gambles pay off. As much as startups are the culmination of dreams that these founders have, if I was offered a large sum of money for something I built, I can't say I wouldn't cash out, go buy a mansion and a yacht, and enjoying life for a little while. So I guess kudos to these companies who believe in themselves, think they'll be able to accomplish greater things in the next few years, and to those who don't see money as the end goal in life.
So it's true. iOS 4.2 was released today, and as rumored, the iPad version changes the orientation lock switch into a mute button. I have to say, this was a pretty stupid move.
While nobody knows why Apple made this change, it's safe to assume they made it a mute button to be more consistent with the iPhone's ringer/vibrate toggle switch. But this makes absolutely no sense, and here's why: BECAUSE THE IPAD DOESN'T RING OR VIBRATE! You can easily mute an iPad by holding down the "down" side of the volume rocker for about a second. The only other thing I can think of is that they have something planned for future iPads that would incorporate a vibrate feature, or maybe video calling that would make the device ring. Regardless, Apple should make this decision an option, and not decide this for us. They especially shouldn't be taking away a feature that users have already grown accustomed to. And yes, I know the orientation lock is built-in to the software, but it's not nearly as convenient to get to anymore. And I'm not the only one who thinks this way. All you have to do is Google "ipad orientation mute button" to see how upset people are with this change (look at comments on every blog post written about this). It's pretty disappointing that Apple would make a move like this. It's one thing to not release a feature for a year or two. It's something totally different to take one away. I'm sticking with the old OS until Apple either makes this an option or the jailbreakers come to our rescue.