Apple bought the tech behind Siri for $200m in 2010.
MS bought Powerset (and their NLP-type search engine) for $100m in 2008. They also bought Farecast (travel pricing forecasting) for $75-115m in 2008.
Hunch for $80m is a steal, as far as talent acquisitions go.
EDIT: I'm not sure if they were product or talent acquisitions, but does it really matter? All companies listed above obtained state-of-the-art algorithms and the teams that developed them.
In all cases, those companies got the algorithms + the team that developed them. Are we really debating the difference? Or were you sitting in MS/Apple/eBay's boardroom?
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Apple bought the tech behind Siri for $200m in 2010.
MS bought Powerset (and their NLP-type search engine) for $100m in 2008. They also bought Farecast (travel pricing forecasting) for $75-115m in 2008.
Hunch for $80m is a steal, as far as talent acquisitions go.
EDIT: I'm not sure if they were product or talent acquisitions, but does it really matter? All companies listed above obtained state-of-the-art algorithms and the teams that developed them.
Everything you just listed wasn't for talent - it was for products... try again.
In all cases, those companies got the algorithms + the team that developed them. Are we really debating the difference? Or were you sitting in MS/Apple/eBay's boardroom?