The article's main point is that the founders didn't do anything really noteworthy, technologically speaking, and so Yahoo overpaid for the talent in question.

A million downloads of a free app is not really that noteworthy. My friend made a simple, free iPhone game in a weekend where you tap on a soccer ball and keep it from dropping and routinely gets 10s of thousands of downloads a month with absolutely no marketing.

Your friend is a genius and might be the next pg.

1M downloads with 1M+ dollars in investment is not noteworthy. You can basically pay for that much downloads. Not to mention its a FREE app!

They got that through marketing, not technology. Have you seen the launch video for Summly?

I have some rather strong misgivings when purchased talent != high quality engineers where software product/company acquisitions are concerned.

There are some excellent professionals out there with a far more rigorously proven and solid track record of knowing how to reach an audience. You're suggesting the 17-yr-old & 2 compatriots have proven themselves to possess $30-million-worth of reaching-an-audience skill?

[edit: spelling]

This snot-nosed brat is a mere 27 years old, and I would say that if you could have grabbed him for $30 million it would be worth it: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1630529_138070...

Hahaha. Touché.

To be fair, however, I think we'd all agree that his accomplishments by that point were of a significantly higher caliber.

Well give that 17 year old kid another ten years and we'll see! : )

But if you're Yahoo in 2013, where are you going to find high quality engineers?

Which is why this acquisition was more about PR than talent or technology. It says (or tries to say), "You might think we're just dusty old Yahoo!, but we're hiring 17-year-old wunderkind too! We're hip to the next big thing! And remember we have a new CEO..."

All 2 of them.