Unpopular ideas about social norms - <AUTHOR> https://juliagalef.com/2017/08/23/unpopular-ideas-about-social-norms/ <comment><USER2> Thoroughly agree that we should both encourage and train people to think more philosophically about societal questions and social norms - even if the outcome is just to say 'nope, I think the social norm is fine as is'.

One of the main reasons for this in my opinion is it drives empathy and understanding; by learning to genuinely consider an argument from an opposing viewpoint, one learns how another sees the world.

On a personal level, I've found it's been one of the most enduring and valuable skills from an undergrad degree in philosophy; it's much harder to hate someone, or even get annoyed or frustrated with them, when you're able to understand them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suspect that some of the ideas are just perceived to be unpopular, as opposed to be actually unpopular. People might like the idea but is afraid to say it out loud

<comment><USER4> I would _love_ to see a survey where people are asked both "how much do you agree" and "how likely are you to say so publicly". Given enough questions, it'd also be interesting to find out if the Left or the Right generally feels more suppressed. (I'm obsessed with the possibility that Clinton lost because the Left pressured people to deny that they supported Trump.)

<comment><USER5> That wouldn't work like you're hoping. You're assuming a (representative) respondent pool that's all of these:

1\. capable of switching off preference falsification for a survey

2\. introspectively active (and accurately so) over a long enough period to notice that they behave differentially in public and private contexts

3\. _interested in_ exposing this degree of candor for a survey, i.e. motivated to "show the researchers" (show themselves, really) their belly after collapsing across all the reasons they'd rather not.

Humans are primitive. Questionnaires have to be designed around that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think its really cute that an attempt was made to cite blog articles as references though, good job.

<comment><USER7> 1\. Create culture where anyone who steps outside the political or moral norm is fired/career limited.

2\. Sneer about no "professional sources" for positions, since few people value ideas over employment/tenure. Only people with nothing to lose publically air those opinions, those with things to lose keep them to themselves.

3\. Imply that anyone who thinks in the non-approved way must be like those people/undesirables with nothing to lose, despite the silent ones having a lot to lose.

You can say this is all tinfoil, but my engineering ethics professor told the entire class he's had to make choices between "speaking truth to power" and his career and that in the interest of full disclosure he chose his career + funding. 250+ people in that room at the time.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Zillow is trying to acquire my app + domain for "a couple hundred bucks", advice? - <AUTHOR>

So, I might get razzed for this - but I figured I'd come to a place where I would receive useful insight on my situation.
Dilemna
Zillow wants to buy the domain that a website (optimized for iPhone which uses their API) I've created resides on for literally "a couple hundred bucks".
This seems like an easy way to take advantage of the work I've put in to building the domain/ranking.
Additionally, they've threatened to cut of API access if I do not comply with their wishes.
Data
It's located at http://izillow.net
Since launch the site has received ~50,000 visitors + links from techcrunch, apple, google (appengine) and numerous blogs + recognition in the New York Times.
(also ~90k pageviews)
It's in compliance with Zillow's TOS & they've threatened to cut of API access if I do not comply with their wishes.
History
Last year in May I created an iPhone interface for Zillow's "zestimator" - it was all fun and games, got a little bit of blog coverage/mentions & an overall good response. Zillow seemed to be all for it.
Then the New York Times included it in one of it's articles - and Zillow asked me to very simply put the words "unofficial version" and a link at the bottom of the app.
No problem. Done.
Now
Zillow has launched their own iPhone app (which rocks) - but wants me to take down mine and hand over the domain for "a couple hundred bucks".
I dont feel this is fair and they're trying to stiff me with a measely $250. What would you do? What do you suggest? What are your thoughts? <comment><USER3> Disclaimer: Please don't take my (or anyone's) advice at face value without spending some serious time considering the best option for you.

I can't help but think there's something you aren't telling us, otherwise they've made a colossal error.

Let's look at your absolute worst case scenario. They cut off your API, put you completely out business, and end your app. Let's look at what they are offering you: $250. The worst case scenario + $250. What, exactly, do you have to lose, by rejecting their offer? $250. Put another way: nothing. Absolutely, nothing.

What is their worst case scenario? That you, oh I don't know, post around to bunch of places like Hacker News that they basically strong-armed you mafia style to shut down. Word spreads through dev circles that they are basically screwing their devs and abusing the trust of the dev community. They have to do all kinds of PR damage control.

The entire point of an open API is to attract devs to help spread your brand. If they want to turn around and start screwing the very people who help them, they'll find that dev pool dry very, very quickly.

In other words, the position they've put you in, you have virtually nothing to lose, and they have quite a bit. I'd respond accordingly. Save all their emails. Start working on the "zillow.com screws devs" website. Name your price, and tell them for both your sake, they should accept.

<comment><USER4> Worst case for zillow:

 _Since launch the site has received ~50,000 visitors + links from techcrunch, apple, google (appengine) and numerous blogs + recognition in the New York Times._

They let a well known company uses izillow for a while so they may have lost their trade mark by failing to defend it.

PS: It's a huge risk for company's to let others use their brands without defending them. They can get him to change the name or license the use of iZillow, but doing nothing is a really bad idea for them.

<comment><USER5> Since they where in contact with the app author and asked him to make a remedy to the issue (tagging it with 'unofficial version') they have effectively defended the trademark. Defense of trademark doesn't mean you have to prevent others from using it, but rather that you have to show that you are taking steps to control it to prevent it from running into the general venacular.

Also to lose the trademark your going to have to show that it's become a common synonym for a particular category (think Kleenex instead of tissue). Zillow is a LONG ways from that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Write them a thoughtful, well-reasoned letter explaining:

1\. How as an active member of he developer community, you have enjoyed building useful tools which expand the reach of the Zillow brand.

2\. How you have dedicated significant time and energy to this project, on the understanding that they provided the API to encourage enterprising and curious developers such as yourself to find new valuable ways to interact with Zillow.

3\. You are a reasonable person, and would be willing to sell the domain for a reasonable amount.

4\. What you think is a reasonable amount, and some simple calculations/reasoning supporting this number.

You might even say that you were surprised by the small sum the initially offered, but with the information given I don't think there's any reason to be too offended-they probably just threw something out there to see if it worked. I also think it's quite early to start talking about negative pr campaigns etc. as others are suggesting. That won't get you any extra money, which as I understand it is your goal at this point.

edit- to suggest maybe including something from their "about us" section to describe what you were doing; trying to "help consumers by giving them access" to information.

Also to note, while their tactics aren't particularly subtle or magnanimous, I do believe in giving some benefit of the doubt- especially until after you've seen their response to your thoughtful response.

edit2- in 1.) above, you probably don't want to say you're expanding the "zillow brand"- no reason to help their IP/trademark position. just say something similarly pleasant sounding.

<comment><USER7> I somehow feel this wouldn't work in negotiations especially when the other side is not playing fair. When they offered as low as $250 it tells they are playing it mean. All this nice idealistic talk is not going to move a blade.

I would suggest don't work on their sympathy or expect them to value your efforts. They will not. Be ready to lose the meagre amount and play it hard. If you lose, make sure it costs something for them to fix their bargain of $250.

<comment><USER6> The reasonable letter is not intended to win sympathy, nor does it cut off other options. If they maintain a firm, unreasonable position, OP's options are still open and he can intensify the conversation. Starting with a thoughtful explanation of his side of the story is evidence of a good-faith effort to work out a solution, which improves his position if other parties get involved (e.g. lawyers, the internet).

Worst case: you're back where you started, but have demonstrated for the record that you were prepared to work together to find a sensible solution.

Best case: you've kept things civil, and come to an agreement without any inflaming the situation further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Drew from zillow. I've been in contact with Mr Bunson about this issue. I don't think that it's appropriate to discuss our conversation in public, however, I will say that what is described here is not a complete representation of the conversation. He's welcome to continue to use the API as long as he doesn't infringe upon our trademark and use our brand name "Zillow" on his website.

<comment><USER9> why do you care about him infringing on your brand? He's helping you guys out.

<comment><USER10> The users of "izillow" might not understand that "izillow" is not affiliated with zillow itself. It has the potential to damage their brand.

<comment><USER11> There are people out there who will read "unofficial version" and still not know that it's not official. Those people will not be any more clued in just because it has a different name - if it looks/works like zillow, it is zillow. Targetting this level of understanding is futile.

<comment><USER12> I went and looked at it, and I would have probably assumed it was affiliated with Zillow if I hadn't read this posting first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi, it's David G from Zillow.com,

Auston,

I hope to speak with you about this later today but please update this post and correct the facts here. You have misrepresented your communications with Zillow. I have the e-mail on this; you asked for $250 for the domain. That was not Zillow's offer, it was yours! When Zillow accepted your offer, you rescinded it. Those are the facts.

I look forward to resolving this ASAP - please let Drew know when you are available to take a call on this. As others here have pointed out, we simply cannot allow you to misuse our trademark but you are welcome to continue to host the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is accurate.

Surely, I opened my mouth too early, you offered "a couple hundred bucks" - <USER2> said $250 would be sufficient, I clicked "send" and then thought - "Oh crap! wait... a minute..." and followed up telling you $250 is unreasonable.

<comment><USER14> So you offered to sell them the domain for $250 and they accepted your offer. I feel like you're not telling us the whole story, and "they're trying to stiff me" doesn't seem accurate at all.

<comment><USER15> They offered a couple hundred bucks and he thought fine, $250. Then he realized the pagerank, publicity, link backs, and worth of the domain far exceeded $250 after he sent the message. That's probably what he isn't telling us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who did the trademark dance let me add this. If you deny their offer and try to keep running your site, it will be trivial for them to file a complaint with ICANN and simply confiscate your domain name because of the trademark.

-BUT-

If you immediately switch over to doing something legitimate with that domain, you can keep it indefinitely and there is little they can do about it. Fortunately a criticism/parody site qualifies. I'd be more than ready to turn it into a "zillow screws devs" site.

Personally, I'd counter with a $12,500 offer and hope to settle for around $9500. That really is nothing to them. $250 is nothing but an insult. They must think you're 12. Its just plain bad taste to pair that with a naked threat.

I can't help but think of Monty Burns saying, _"hey there young pup, if you give me that fine domain you've got there I'll give you a shiny nickel of your very own!"_

<comment><USER17> It will cost them around $2000 to file a UDRP complaint. They will most likely win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> * get a new domain name and

* 301 redirect all request to it FAST

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection#HTTP_status_cod...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection#HTTP_status_codes_3xx)

</comment><comment><USER19> So, they're definitely giving you the short end of the stick. It's unfair. It's terrible. But there might be nothing you can do about it.

Most sites with an API have in their API agreement that they can cut you off at anytime with or without reason. Zillow states:

 _Zillow.com may change, suspend or discontinue the Zillow API and suspend or terminate your use of the Zillow API, Zillow Data, and/or Zillow Brand & Links at any time for any reason, without notice._

They've decided that you were great when you were adding value to them, but now you're a competitor and they're going to shut you down. This is the unfortunate circumstance of relying on services that can change their terms at any time.

I don't agree with the extent that RMS takes the free software argument all the time, but when he talks about cloud computing, this is what he's talking about. Providers are saying, "Don't worry. Leave everything to us. It will be nice and you don't have to maintain anything." It also means that you have no recourse when they decide to change their terms. You become beholden to them and their good graces - sounds like a feudal relationship in a way. Cross your lord and you'll live to regret it.

Really, the worst you can do to them is get them a lot of bad press. Maybe that will swing the power to your side - "attention developers: zillow will just cut you off from their API if they see you as competition." Might make Zillow more amenable to paying you a little more. Lots of sites would jump on publishing such a thing. The FSF or other FOSS advocates might write up stuff as a "warning: don't let this happen to you" about cloud computing. Zillow, I'm sure, would like to avoid their name in that mess - probably to the tune of more money than they're offering now.

Just remember. Enemies threaten; friends warn. Be very nice with Zillow and kinda casually mention that you think you might pitch TechCrunch on the idea of a story about the situation - cutting off API access and all. Remember, you're happy to sell and not mad at them, but that they might not come off looking so nice in the press at $250.

<comment><USER20>
Be very nice with Zillow and kinda casually mention that you think you might pitch TechCrunch on the idea of a story about the situation - cutting off API access and all. Remember, you're happy to sell and not mad at them, but that they might not come off looking so nice in the press at $250.

By posting everything about the situation on HN, isnt it possible that somebody has already caught wind of the story :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It isn't. If they e-mailed you that they didn't have a problem with it and their API is still accessible there's nothing they can do about it.

It's obvious that since they now have their own iphone app they want yours down, or merged into theirs. You're basically a competitor. And they're trying to buy you out. And their tactic seems fairly obvious: "let's see if we can get the guy to hand ot over for a couple of hundred bucks, if it works fine if it doesn't we'll have to get into real negotiations"

Now you've got to play the negotiation game...

Note: This is just my opinion, and it could of course easily be wrong.

<comment><USER22> You put the disclaimer at the end so I won't critcize but what you're giving is bad advice. I quote from the Zillow API Terms of Use...

</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Acceptable Use. You agree not to use the Zillow API, Zillow Data, or Zillow Brand & Links in any way that is unlawful, or harms Zillow.com, its service providers, its suppliers, your end users, or any other person. Further, pursuant to Section 10 below, Zillow.com may terminate your use of the Zillow API, Zillow Data and Zillow Brand & Links if and when Zillow.com determines that your use is inappropriate.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

So there is something they can do. Blocking API calls is painfully easy and they've outlined their right to ban anyone they consider to be doing harm to them (which a competitor would clearly qualify as).

To Auston: I do agree that $250 is a really low bid and you might want to engage in a little friendly negotiation but in doing so realize they don't have to give you anything. So when choosing a tactic I'd avoid the hard negotiation and instead try to "charm" more money out of them.

<comment><USER23> Fair enough, but Zillow can't be the only company out there. I'd go looking for a competitor of theirs and access the competing APIs if they cut off his access to their service.

<comment><USER24> Zillow owns the trademark and can still take down his site legally, I believe.

<comment><USER25> Can he legally redirect to his new site?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> $250 is certainly a lowball but their registered trademark for Zillow gives them almost infinite leverage. They can just take your domain if they want to. The sweet spot price is just below what it will cost to sue you for trademark infringement. I'd hope for $5k.

Also, www.izillow.net goes to a different site than izillow.net.

<comment><USER27> The thing is, they let him use their site for a while. They even opened a line of communication with him and requested that he include "Unofficial Version" on the site. Their only communication to the poster should have been to stop using their trademark. The fact that they endorsed the site and didn't protect their trademark puts them in a bad spot if they try to leverage their trademark in any way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Don't sell -- certainly not for $250. What cheapskates. You probably know Frink and Barton capitalized zillow with $57,000,000, part of their profits off Expedia.com: if zillow is doing so swell, if you believe all the self-hype you read on that blog, izillow is not only worth more, but Frink and Barton can afford to pay you much, much more. I like the idea someone suggested of "parody and criticism." That's not hard to do with zillow -- so easy and fun to make a "comedy" out of all the bs they've pulled on homeowners and agents alike since they've been running. A number of people have been working on a future site called zillowclassaction.com, a data collection tool. We may decorate the site with a Z upsidedown and backwards. There are sites like zilo, I've been told, and no one has copyright on the letter "Z" -- to my mind it still stands for that horseman who rides "out of the night, when the full moon is bright" ... that bold renegade making ZZZZs with his blade, Z's that stands for A LOT MORE than zillow. "Stand sure" on principle -- and give em hell. Th

</comment><comment><USER29> Tell them you want a job at Zillow for $150k/year. You win, and they don't give in to your negotiations.

<comment><USER30> A full-time job? Sounds more like punishment than a prize. Mental freedom is worth more than $150k/yr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> You're in negotiations (They offered, didn't demand). Counter with an offer of $X0,000. Divide and conquer from there.

<comment><USER3> Threatening to cut off his API access if he doesn't acquiesce sounds, to me, more like "demand" than "offer".

To the OP: looking at the pulse of just this thread, don't underestimate the size of the PR shit-storm they'd set off by strong-arming you out of the way. Try to help them understand that.

<comment><USER31> I'll correct my statement. They're in intense negotiations.

<comment><USER32> Nice ... he should counter with an 'offer' to put suggestive pictures of not so attractive females in his app. We all know how THAT goes over in the geek community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Negotiate a better price. If you can't agree on a price and Zillow cuts you off spread the word about that fact.

<comment><USER34> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=588098>

<comment><USER33> Tangurena/micks56 provide extremely useful tactical information. But that information does not change my point. The objective is still to raise the $250 number. The strategy is still negotiation. Disclosure of bullying to the world at large is still an available tool.

The trademark/cybersquatting issues increase complexity of that negotiation moving it more towards the realm of a legal rather than a business negotiation. Some additional legal research/advice is probably needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is TERRIBLE UNETHICAL business practice

1) Determine a fair price 2) If they insist on being AS ridiculous like cutting off YOUR API access... \- Prepare a Twitter / Blog campaign (#zillowfail) \- Get the NYtimes reporter aware of this. They will listen to you if your email subject is "Unethical, unfair behavior from Zillow" 3) Negotiate further.

The HN hacker/Twitter community will help out. This is ridiculous

<comment><USER36> Oh come on - why seek to hurt/destroy a viable business in these dark days just because you personally don't like how you're treated?

Determine a fair value for your work and negotiate. It's a shame they opened with a low-ball offer backed by a threat (if this is truly how this all unfolded), but be the bigger man here and forge some cooperation! Maybe then they can learn a lesson about dealing with API devs without first seeing them scared off by a personal vendetta campaign

<comment><USER37> All that scorched-earth stuff is a _backup_ plan, so the power in the negotiations isn't completely one-sided. It's good to have leverage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> So you are using their API for your app. I assume their TOS allows them the ability to turn off service for you at their discretion.

If that is the case you don't have any legal recourse regarding the API. I would certainly not give up the domain for chump change, and would look at a different source for your data.

I would also look into any copyright issues, but selling for a small amount is absolutely not worth it to you. I would hold onto it just out of principle at this point.

<comment><USER39> Others may be interested in buying the domain as well, now that it's known that Zillow has their eyes on it.

Keep spreading that info around. Maybe the best offer will come from elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Very interesting discussion, so I followed up and asked Zillow for their thoughts on the matter.

Here's what their spokeswoman just told me:

"He misused our trademark and we had to follow up. He's welcome to continue using our API as long as he doesn't infringe upon our trademarks and use the brand name Zillow. As per his post - it's not a complete representation of our correspondence with him. This is about defending Zillow's trademark, nothing else."

John Cook TechFlash

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill I would say that if they pursue a legal option it will cost them no less than $5-10K. Thus your minimum price should be about $15K. If they cut you off, figure out what competitor they might not want traffic to go to and set a landing page to point to them.

I would suggest you talk to an actual lawyer and see if you can get them on strong-arm tactics or anti-competitive practices.

</comment><comment><USER24> What I would do is counter with some reasonable offer to show you're willing to play ball for the reasons below.

IANAL but I seem to remember in my business law class that even if my last name was "macdonald" in US courts I would have trouble keeping "macdonalds.com" because of trademark issues. I imagine the same would be true for izillow.com. On top of which, as other posters have mentioned, their Terms of Service likely gives them the right to cut you off at any time. Your leverage is low.

For them it is a business decision where they would rather avoid legal expense and bad PR.

Keeping in mind that the lower of legal fees + PR damage or the dollar value in harm your app does to their brand and sales sets the upper bound for what they would likely pay.

If the site is getting about 2500 visitors a month, I would probably respond mentioning how much work and time you put into it, and emphasizing that you want to work with them on this, then ask for $4,000.

</comment><comment><USER41> In my opinion the domain alone is easily worth a couple thousand dollars.

<comment><USER42> Since the domain is "izillow" and it's playing off your knowledge of zillow, it seems like zillow could get the domain legally if they wanted to spend the effort.

<comment><USER23> Unless he puts something else up on the site. If they give him enough grief, he could easily stop referring to the Zillow service and put up something unrelated. Depending on how bad the negotiations go, the owner could be quite creative in what he posts up on the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'll give you $275.

<comment><USER44> $500.

Maybe we'll have an auction here in the comments? Of course, the later bids will take longer to show up with the new reply rules.

At least the poster can tell them he has better offers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Change your brand name NOW and contact the media everywhere explaining what has happened.

1\. You get tons of traffic. 2\. Lots of people know about you. 3\. Zillow's competitors are now interested in acquiring you as well. 4\. Zillow is now in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation - exactly where you want them.

If you need access to the Realtor.com guys, let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> How can I get a hold of you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Just be sure to bcc TechCrunch on all negotiation emails.

</comment><comment><USER47> Move the domain, and diversify to other data sources, but in doing so try to keep your user base.

And, if you're really good, try to do it in such a way as to maintain friendly relations with zillow. If that's possible. It would be tricky. Stalling tactics are your friend, I would guess.

My gut feel would be, do not try to make money from a sale to them, if their (TM) name is on your domain. Give them the domain free, AFTER you get your users moved away. Take it down now and start redirecting people asap, because they sure aren't going to do you the courtesy of doing that, even if you're on good terms.

But... I'm just some random guy on HN. My advice is worth every penny you paid for it.

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't have experience with this, but I would say that if the site is successful enough, hold out until they serve you with something real--either a lawsuit or a more serious offer.

</comment><comment><USER49> Play hardball and counteroffer with a higher #. Worst case scenario they'll try to take the domain by force, so you'll be out $250. Best case scenario, you'll get a larger payout.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is very interesting. Please follow up on this story when it comes to a conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER51> Take a look at trademarks for Zillow and derivatives: <http://bit.ly/jrJ8v>

Zillow could argue that your domain is confusingly similar and violates their trademark. They are probably offering you a few hundred bucks because it would cost more than that for them to send you a cease and desist.

Not sure how much you can squeeze out of them given this.

<comment><USER52> I don't agree, but in most cases where its cheaper to pay for a domain then go through the courts that magic number is around $3000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I would just send them the link to this thread if I were you...

</comment><comment><USER52> Don't take it, $250 is peanuts. You're providing a valuable service for them, and clearly they were aware of and encouraged it. I doubt they'd take you to court, but I doubt they'd win anyways. There's no reason you can't own a domain with their trademark in it, as long as there's no confusion that you represent their company.

Call their bluff, let them cut off your API access. They'll lose customers, you'll lose $250. Not even close.

All that aside, I still wouldn't sell it to them just based on principle. You spent your time enhancing their product with their API, and they have the audacity to try and bully you into taking this ridiculous offer.

FWIW, that's it for me ever using Zillow. I won't do business with a company with such low ethical standards.

</comment><comment><USER54> You've done a good job building ranking but frankly the site is primarly just a hook into their data and they can do as they please with it. In essence, you're value is selling the SEO and traffic, which they would have arguably have built themselves anyways. They do likely have a solid ICANN action against you to take the domain since it incorporates their trademark and the use is demonstrably a complementary function to their site.

I'd determine the actual _cost_ of time you put into the site and ask them, nicely, to purchase it from you based on that (and the goodwill you've generated for them by making the site available). Estimate, fairly, the cost you've incurred and a fair amount for your hourly time efforts and counter offer them that.

</comment><comment><USER55> Here are some ideas:

1\. Use the publicity that this controversy generates to drive traffic to your new site. Since you already have the software: you could set it up on a different domain. Then as this story spreads use it to get page views to the new domain. Publicity like this is the best thing that could happen to a small site.

2\. Offer to sell Zillow your software. You can sell them the domain for $250 and then change them 10k or 100k for your software. Or could you customize your software to suit some particular need that they had? As someone else mentioned you could offer to work for them -- if they hire you they won't have to wait till you ramped up on the API.

</comment><comment><USER56> It's an interesting scenario, as several people have pointed out: In one sense they have supreme leverage in that they have power over the API etc. At the same time, they have a reputation/brand to protect (damage to which could cost a whole lot more than $250). They've clearly come on strong, adding the threat of discontinuing your access to the API as a pressure cooker.

Ignoring the artificial pressure that they've added, what real incentive is there to accept this deal straight off? $250 isn't a game-changer -- Zillow knows that too. Fight for what you think it's worth.

<comment><USER47> $250 is absolutely a game changer in another sense, though. They can use his acceptance of payment to show that he is (arguably) making money off of their trademark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> IANAL...but fuck that. I assume your previous communication about the 'unofficial version' was in writing, at least by email. So legally, they don't have a leg to stand on because they've already folded and accepted your right to supplement their service with your little app. I(f they had strenuously objected straight out of thegate that would be a different situation, but they've already committed to a course of action and now they're backtracking. You can show you dealt with them in good faith (I presume) so I think you're quite safe with 'thanks, but no thanks'.

</comment><comment><USER28> ps. Just saw something I DIDN't like: don't use their zillow logo on your site: modify it -- make it the Z upsidedown and backwards if you like: that's what I mean by "parody."

</comment><comment><USER58> This sucks, and I feel for you, but I think it is the risk you take when building an app around someone else's API and trademark without establishing an agreement with them first.

From other comments, it looks like they can legitimately cut off access to the API and get the domain. All you really have going for you is that you can make some noise about it, because if Zillow values their developer community they need to demonstrate that they won't try to pull stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER59> They have literally stolen your idea and are now trying to pretend you never existed by stealing your identity, you're obviously worth a lot more than $250

</comment><comment><USER60> I was just looking at your app earlier today as I was browsing AppEngine apps. Lots of talk about the domain name and ICAAN, but there is no way they can take izillow.appspot.com and Google is not likely to roll over easily.

Also, your app proved the business case for their iPhone app. I think that makes the lowball offer even more offensive. I like #zillowfail

</comment><comment><USER61> You're using their name in your URL. They're being nice by giving you a fair price for the domain, and not sending lawyers after you.

<comment><USER62> $250 is not a fair price - for a domain and an app it's a kick in the teeth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Well posting here is a good step and even better if high profile blogs/sites picks this up. Such may force their hand and offer you a better deal.

Though looking at it from another perspective and the site's current rankings on the web and you using their name in your app might not be much you can do. You might want to consult with a IP lawyer!

</comment><comment><USER64> I think the general consensus here is to enter into a friendly negotiation. First rule of Negotiation 101 is to not accept the first offer. So given your history with them, state your grounds for why you feel your site deserves more than just a "couple hundred" bucks.

</comment><comment><USER65> If they have an open documented API and you are using it, then I would stand your ground. What are those 90k pageviews worth to them? What are they worth to you? I imagine they're worth more than a few hundred bucks to you.

How many hours have you put in?

</comment><comment><USER66> Without knowing the other side of the story, without getting into the legalities or ethics of them cutting of API access like you say they are and going only on what you've said I would refuse them... easy. $250 is an insult, not an offer. Turn it down.

</comment><comment><USER67> Sounds like they are trying the cheapest way to get something they really need. Don't even think about just handing it over to them without a fight. And yes, selling it for "a couple hundred bucks" is worse than just handing it over to them :P

</comment><comment><USER68> The domain itself may be worth a couple hundred bucks, but your app and the time you put into it is worth much more, so you're on solid footing negotiating a better deal.

It would be a PR nightmare for them to just pull the plug on you.

</comment><comment><USER14> If the domain is infringing on a trademark and the app is thus violating the API's TOS, being able to walk away in a new pair of shoes might be a good deal.

They aren't being heavy-handed, you just have no leverage.

</comment><comment><USER32> Make a huge stink (email every top tech blogger), and use the publicity to launch your new app (you do have something waiting in the wings don't you?) and shame Zillow into spending more money to 'acquire' you.

</comment><comment><USER69> This may not help you in the short term, however, I was recommended a great book called "Secrets of Power Negotiating". The information contained in there is useful beyond this specific dilemma you have.

</comment><comment><USER17> Zillow does not need to go through the courts. They can just file a UDRP complaint for $2000, and there is a very good chance that they will win. After that they can just take your domain away.

</comment><comment><USER70> How much are you making from it? Maybe $250 is a really good offer.

Regardless, you're using their brand, and they should be able to take the domain easily enough if they want to.

</comment><comment><USER47> One more thought: it's a trap. Do not take money from them. They can then prove that you are making money from their (TM) name.

</comment><comment><USER71> Go to the press!

</comment><comment><USER72> I think you were really asking for trouble by registering/using a domain name with their company's name in it.

</comment><comment><USER73> Tell them make the 250 250K and I will consider.

</comment><comment><USER74> I would set a price of USD $75000 for your website/business.

</comment><comment><USER75> The only way to deal with these people is the same way you'd deal with the Soviets: through MAD. Explain to them that without API access, the only possible use of the domain to you would be as an anti-Zillow news site.

<comment><USER14> How is this not blackmail? What's to stop me from registering ezillow.info and doing the same thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I would consider the creative approach of immediately changing izillow.net to a rallying cry.</comment>


David MacKay, FRS died today, his diary is remarkable - <AUTHOR> http://itila.blogspot.com/2016/04/index-for-first-23-cancer-chapters.html <comment><USER2> I had no idea he was ill. A big loss.

I will post again his book on sustainable energy, Without Hot Air: [http://www.withouthotair.com/](http://www.withouthotair.com/)</comment>


Coronavirus has conspiracy theorists and anti-5G campaigners working overtime - <AUTHOR> https://www.codastory.com/waronscience/coronavirus-has-conspiracy-theorists-and-anti-5g-campaigners-working-overtime/ <comment><USER2> In a world full of confusion and cynicism, I'm not surprised. This will only continue unfortunately.

<comment><AUTHOR> With conspiracy theorists, it's always: if something big and bad happens, OBVIOUSLY someone is behind it.

they don't accept that real life isn't about good/bad dichotomy, that there sometimes isn't a villain. bad things happen, and sometimes there isn't really anyone to blame.

not an interesting story, so they retcon it

<comment><USER3> But your comment may make you sound like a conspiracy theorist on conspiracy theorists, making them the villain.

<comment><AUTHOR> touche</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Skyim breaking Steam record -- a singleplayer game has 240,000 users online - <AUTHOR> http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ Almost twice the former record keeper -- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, released in 2009 <comment><USER2> Wow, Counter-Strike is still number three, over ELEVEN years after release?!

<comment><USER3> It has been developed and revamped over time. Counter-Strike today has not much to do with the original HL mod.

<comment><USER4> The original Counter-Strike is no longer actively developed is it? Yet, surprisingly, it seems to be ahead of Counter-Strike Source, the newest addition.

<comment><USER5> CS:S has higher requirements, and the gameplay changes pissed off a lot of the hardcore CS crowd. I know people who still kvetch about Valve nerfing deagle- hopping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That'd be "Skyrim"

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for that...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't know what skyrim was, beyond a vague awareness that it was a game, so I went to elderscrolls.com, only to encounter a flash-wrapped video with _no volume control_.

I see this particular usability faux pas way too often. If you roll your own flash video player rather than host videos elsewhere or use one of the mainstream well-designed open/commercial flash video player apps, _let viewers control the volume_.

Binary On/Off sound toggles on flash apps are ridiculous. Furthermore, a custom flash video player app should remember the volume setting (per-domain) so viewers don't have to monkey with the volume every time that flash app appears.

<comment><USER8> Anyone that picky about a Flash video would know perfectly well that an "official website" is the last, least useful place to look for information on a topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If it weren't for those damn spiders, it'd probably be double that number.

</comment><comment><USER10> Those are great numbers for PC gaming. I wonder what the ratio is for playing vs. bought.

Todd Howard, the game director at Bethesda Game Studios, has recently claimed that consoles make up about 90% of their overall game sales. If this is still true for Skyrim it means this game likely has massive sales #s for a single player RPG, or any other game for that matter.

</comment><comment><USER11> what's trippy to me is how smooth and recognizable that cosine wave is

<comment><USER12> No, it's totally a sine wave.

<comment><USER13> Yes, those pesky dudes who see a cosine are +pi/2 heretics and should be burned at the stake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is that really a Steam record? The table shows the number of people who are playing NOW and the peak in the last 24 hours.

<comment><USER15> It seems so at least according to <http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php>

For a chart with these numbers have a look at [http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php?action=graph&...](http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=72850q10q440q42690&jstime=1&from=1296518400000&to=)

<comment><USER16> I don't think those are quite correct...for instance, today's peak counter strike player count is only 6000 fewer players than the "all time" peak count on that site. Counter strike players are stubborn, but not that stubborn.

If you go to the graph screen, the graph only goes back to mid march 2011 and won't go back any farther, no matter how far back you request. It probably began gathering stats then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On the subject of Steam can someone answer this question for me regarding Steam's pricing...<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3229558> I used to get around the problem in my country by using a VPN, but that no longer seems to work/

<comment><USER18> Use Entropay to pay. Use store.steampowered.com/?cc=us and a browser and a VPN and a US steam account to buy, then gift it to your actual account. Works like a charm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was surprised to find people still go for the single player RPG genre. I've been playing Skyrim after its midnight release here in New Zealand.

On another note, I've also noticed the Mac App Store is selling the new Batman Game. Is the Mac App Store a viable competitor to Steam?

<comment><USER20> That doesn't sound right, Batman: Arkham City isn't out on PC yet. Do you mean the old one, Arkham Asylum?

<comment><USER19> My apologies, you're right. It's Arkham Asylum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What does "online" mean when talking about a single player game?

I am thinking about playing oblivion on xbox360 and I can not understand what being "online" would mean.

<comment><USER22> It just means that they are playing it right now. Since most people stay logged in while playing SP Steam games, they can tell how many people are playing any given game at any given time.

In other news, I'm proud to be one of the 240k. :)

<comment><USER23> For Xbox players this would be akin to being logged into a live-account whilst playing a single player game. I regularly see what my friends are playing when I check who's online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is MW3 Steam-only? If so, it would be a lot more impressive.

<comment><USER25> Is Skyrim Steam-only?

<comment><USER26> Yes, the pc version is a steamworks game.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Credstash – A tiny python utility for managing secrets in EC2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LuminalOSS/credstash <comment><USER2> Why DynamoDB and not, let's say, SimpleDB? I'm sorry but isn't this "tiny" utility coming with huge requirements indeed?

<comment><AUTHOR> SimpleDB is deprecated, more expensive than DDB, and kind of weird to use. Backing your keystore with a deprecated service just sounds like a road to many sleepless nights ;)

The utility does depend on three external services: DynamoDB, KMS, and IAM (for permissioning). This might sound like a lot, but the target usecase for something like this is a fleet running in the cloud. If you're already running in EC2, then using IAM roles to distribute AWS creds is a no-brainer and very simple. KMS and DDB are also not arduous things to depend on if you're already in the cloud.

For credstash, you need to set up your KMS key (and set whatever policies around it make sense for you). Once you do that, there's nothing to manage. Sure, you depend on DDB, but credstash creates the table for you, and unless you need to dial up more throughput (which is a mouse-click operation), you never have to touch it.

<comment><USER2> I am sorry, but how can DynamoDB be cheaper when I have to pay to provision capacity and SimpleDB is practically free for low-volume stuff like this? S3 is probably an even better option, which seem to be on the roadmap, thankfully.

<comment><USER3> DynamoDB is quite inexpensive at low usage levels. The Free Tier gives you: "25 GB of Storage, 25 Units of Read Capacity and 25 Units of Write Capacity – Enough to handle up to 200M requests per month"

DynamoDB's free tier doesn't expire after 12 months. (Source: [http://aws.amazon.com/free/](http://aws.amazon.com/free/))</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mars in 4K - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/ZEyAs3NWH4A <comment><USER2> This has been posted twice already.</comment>


Will Amazon Kill Off Publishers? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/24/will-amazon-kill-off-book-publishers

<comment><USER2> "At the end of the day, all that Amazon is doing is this: helping readers and writers find each other."

I like this idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> Will Amazon Kill Off Publishers? Not the big ones. Did Apple kill off record companies? Not the big ones. Did Walmart kill off the other merchants? Not the big ones.

Large companies at some point suffocate the smaller ones. The big fish eat the little fish and there is talk of the government needing to step in and trust bust. Then the little fish comes along that can outdo the big fish and the big fish gets hurt and the little fish propagate again. This is the circle of life in capitalism, and there is nothing wrong with it.

People would benefit from studying history, but I don't think that "history of business" is taught. It should be.</comment>


Louis C.K. experiment results: over $500,000 in 4 days - <AUTHOR> https://buy.louisck.net/statement <comment><USER2> I'm glad he made some money on it. His mind will be blown when the 'long tail' kicks in (people buying this video 3 years from now, still). He mentions "This [$200,000] is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video."

Here is the part where this can go off the rails. So the long tail will hit, people will 'discover' him (maybe on his second or third video) and will download this one. There will be many copies out there in circulation. The temptation will be to think "Gee if people couldn't just get one of those copies out there already I would be making _even more_ money!" Completely losing sight of the fact that the videos out there are an agent for discovery and 'tasting' which is bringing more people to his web site.

People sometimes go all green with greed when that happens. Money can do that to people sadly.

That being said, the really cool thing is it adds another 'success' story to Trent Raznor's Radiohead (I don't think they were ever this transparent with the numbers there but I may be wrong) and makes it harder to dismiss the successes as 'anomalous' rather than 'reasonable expectation'. It is the presence of success stories that will get more and more people to move this way.

I wish it wasn't like water eroding a rock though, progress will be rapid when the flood starts but for now it is just a trickle.

<comment><USER3> I'm all for this model.

But a major challenge remains, and it's this: Trent Reznor, Radiohead, and even Louis C.K. were all hugely popular and successful _before_ they employed this model. Can the model work for lesser-known artists attempting to capture an audience?

In theory, sure. If anything, I could see this model's working out quite well for the proverbial little guy. But first, that little guy faces a big challenge: how to get himself noticed. How to turn himself into a Radiohead without the tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars that EMI spent marketing and promoting and touring Radiohead, over 20-odd years, prior to the band's online release of "In Rainbows." How to turn himself into a Louis C.K. without two major HBO series deals, a bevy of TV roles, sponsored tours, and a movie role or two.

In looking at the majorly successful artists in pop culture today, we see that 99.99% of them were "made" by a big company or series of big companies. They were self-made in the sense that they quietly worked in the trenches, perfecting their craft, sometimes for decades, before they hit their big breaks. But big breaks were necessary conditions of becoming superstars. And becoming a superstar seems to be a necessary condition for big success in this model.

[I don't want to get onto too wild of a tangent, and start discussing the philosophical meaning of "success." For some, success might mean simply making a living as an artist. I get that, and I respect that. I'm putting that aside for the moment, however, and focusing on the top of the game.]

<comment><USER4> The current model does not work for less popular artists, so I have trouble seeing the downside.

<comment><USER3> I'm anything but an apologist for the current model. But if it disappears, we haven't necessarily made life any better for lesser-known artists. So if we are to remove one of the critical steps to success (i.e., the marketing and promotional spend of traditional labels, publishers, networks, and studios), we should hope that there's a viable replacement. Or we should try to build one.

In our haste to cast out the old guard, we tend to lose sight of the fact that the old guard still fills what appears to be a necessary purpose: the breaking-out of artists. I'm confident and hopeful that their crucial role in that purpose will, eventually, weaken or fade. But for now, it's still a strong reality.

Ultimately, we have yet to see indications that this new model is any kinder to small-time or nascent artists than the old model is. That's the big problem. The winners of the new model (Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Louis C.K., et al.) have first been winners of the old model. So it's very premature to say that the new model is better for the little guy.

To put it in financial terms: the new model holds bigger theoretical upside (share of profits) for artists and consumers (reduced costs). But it does nothing about the downside (risk of never breaking out, financial burden of building a fanbase, etc.), and may even make the downside worse for most artists. At least the little guy in today's model has a _chance_ , albeit extremely slim, of getting discovered and catching a big break. But will the same thing be true in a pure long-tail environment? The jury is still out.

<comment><USER5> There are lots of examples of artists blowing up without labels (though some subsequently start their own or get signed) in the past few years by distributing their music on the internet for free. See: Pretty Lights, Girl Talk, Odd Future, The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, etc. It won't be viable for every artist/band but neither is the music industry of old. You must bring something special because otherwise nobody will care.

<comment><USER6> It's not clear the internet has actually improved the odds, though. There are plenty of examples of artists DIYing their way to at least moderate prominence decades ago as well; particularly common in punk-rock, where you've got Bad Religion, Fugazi, Crass, etc. You didn't have blogs to promote your music, but did have zines, flyers at shows, college radio, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Devil's advocate: In the post, he himself says he would've earned more by doing a show for HBO/Comedy Central/other (also note that he mentions, but doesn't factor in the cost of his own time in putting this all together).

Given that a lot of people purchased this only to support "the experiment" (i.e. they might not buy the next time he or someone else does this), does this really demonstrate the success of selling independently?

Yes, he still owns the material and can resell it to Netflix or whoever. Yes, he will continue to earn money from it. But I imagine most of his true fan base will have already purchased it by now, so how many people are there really left to reach?

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this all become the standard way of distributing content. I think it will _eventually_ happen.

But what does it say that today's most most popular working comedian makes less money selling independently?

EDIT: Based on these numbers, yes, Louis CK will end up making more money this way. But to say he hasn't done any publicity to this point is stretching the truth - he's promoted it all over his Twitter, gone on Reddit, did an interview on NPR, etc. It's not like he just dropped this out of the blue without warning. But my overall point isn't whether it will work out financially for Louis CK (clearly, it will) - it's that the circumstances of this business model work for Louis CK, but not necessarily others following in his footsteps.

EDIT2: Also, it's not as if others going the traditional route wouldn't make money in perpetuity. Maybe Eddie Murphy only got a standard fee for his Raw standup special, but surely he's getting residuals from DVD sales.

<comment><USER8> I don't think there is any evidence to support the notion that "a lot of people purchased this only to support the experiment." Sure, some folks on a HN thread commented to this effect, but I think that the vast majority of the 111000+ people who bought this probably like Louis CK. I recognize that I don't have any data to support my assertion either, but given the options of "buy this because I like Louis CK" and "buy this because I like alternative distribution models," I am fairly confident that more people are on the side of the former.

I also don't know why you think most of his "true fan base" would have bought this already. I love Louis CK and only found out about this because I am an HN reader. Why would you think most non-HN readers even know this is available? I mean really, I think you should at least wait a week before decreeing that "today's most most popular working comedian makes less money selling independently."

<comment><USER9> Well, almost all of the facebook shares about this that I have seen are exclusively about the novelty and experiment. I didn't see anything that just left it at "Oh, Louis C.K. is awesome. Check out his new thing."

So at least anecdotally, a lot of people around me bought this because of novelty and to support this business model instead of because they like standup or Louis CK.

<comment><USER10> I think that says something about his target audience. People are capable of more complex thought than "funny man is funny" and the usual base instincts that marketers have exploited to great effect. This marketing ploy adds an extra layer to customer involvement, just mildly stimulating the slightly higher faculties of the consumer base cognisance. As sentient biological super-computers that human beings are, they easily comprehend the concept and gladly exchange money to support it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really hope people don't turn this into a "Louis CK did it, so you should publish without DRM!". I agree with the anti-drm sentiment a lot of people hold, but this experiment only worked _because_ it's "rare". Every time something like this is done people use it as evidence of the viability of the idea (Radiohead's pay what you want comes to mind too) and that really shouldn't be done. The only reason I heard about this experiment was _because_ it's an experiment and I would personally bet that if this wasn't an _experiment_ a huge portion of these sales would never have happened, I hope in the ensuing celebration of the success of this people don't forget this important fact.

"Louis CK published without DRM and made $500,000 sales in 4 days, therefore if you publish without DRM you too will break your own sales records"

<comment><USER12> Isn't iTunes all DRM-free MP3 these days?

<comment><USER13> To be pedantic: DRM-free AAC and Apple Lossless.

<comment><USER14> You can buy Apple Lossless from the iTunes Store?

<comment><USER15> No, you can't. Only AAC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Louis C.K. deserves all credit for showing that you don't need a label, that non-DRM distribution's benefits outweigh its costs, etc.

Yet to me the real lesson is about the remarkable PR he's built for this story around being the "purple cow" and his ability to market to his audience (holding a AMA on Reddit even).

<comment><USER17> > _for showing that you don't need a label,_

you mean: for showing that Louis CK doesn't need a label.

<comment><USER18> Also, another guy doing this won't get that much attention as it won't be so new.

<comment><USER19> Though since Trent Reznor, Smashing Pumpkins etc. have used the same model for 4-5 years now I wouldn't exactly say that Louis CK was 'first'.

Of course, he's sort of a 'pet project' and lovechild of Reddit etc. But I'm pretty sure that there are many comedians, film makers, musicians etc. that would be happy to make 1/5th of 'traditional revenue' and keep 80% instead of the 5% they keep being signed to a major label.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think by releasing the sales figures he actually runs the risk of decreasing sales. I think there is probably a segment of the population that would feel bad about not paying for the video but now that he announced how much money he made their guilt over stealing from a poor artist will subside. It's a bit hard to keep people sympathetic if you've announced that you just made a nice profit. I'm sure at this point he's satisfied either way but it's a thought I had.

<comment><USER21> You're missing the price aspect: at $5 it's hardly even worth it to torrent it when I can have a zero hassle download experience.

<comment><USER22> You would think that, but in an interview I heard, he said it's already been torrented.

I would be interested to see if the increase in torrents over time has a correlation with a decrease in sales. This also might depend on who the artists is. Some demos aren't that tech savvy.

<comment><USER23> I bought it and then downloaded it with torrent because it went faster that way. I think the server were overly busy, so maybe the correlation you speak of is negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it just me, or is Louie sounding more and more like a part of the hn/reddit crowd? He went from "I don't know what this 'torrent' thing is" (implied: "I'm not a nerd or anything") to being excited about online distribution and avoiding DRM. I've been a fan of his for some time and this seems unlike him. I think it's pretty cool to see someone's geeky side being exposed publicly.

<comment><USER25> I am also cynical - I suspect it's clever marketing. Targeted.

<comment><USER26> If someone marketing to me is providing me with a cheap, DRM-free content that I WANT to purchase.. then I'm a happy person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So this is why Big Media is freaking out. Anyone with a MacBook and a Shure SM58 mic can record a studio quality album, and anyone with a Canon 5D on a shoulder rig can produce professional quality video. The Internet replaces the studios' giant duplication and distribution networks. And now Louis proves that this applies to full features as well, and that the artist can make really good money with this model. Reminds me of Kina Grannis of YouTube fame, who won a major record label deal, but decided to keep self-publishing, probably for her own best (even financially). Too bad Big Media is barking up the wrong tree (piracy). They can't stop technology.

<comment><USER28> That's not really true, there's a lot that goes into 'professional' recordings, video or audio.

Mostly, experience is a huge part of it.

There's also a world of difference from a shure 58 on a macbook line-in, and high quality mics on a protools rig.

that said, my band recorded a 4 song ep for about 600$ at a local studio start to finish recently. (i linked to the album on my about page) I don't think any of us expect to make our money back on this one, unless everyone on here decided to go buy a copy on itunes, so we're giving it away.

Were we to do it all ourselves, the investment in equipment would have been at larger than that, and then amortized of a small amount of sales. The resulting quality also would not have even been close.

It's also hard to do promotion on a national scale without some kind of built in audience. Hows a small local band or whatnot going to reach people on the other side of the country, or in other countries entirely?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love that this worked, even though I'm not buying. For me it's a value-for- the-money thing. I'm sure I can spare the $5, and I'm sure I would enjoy it, but still, I get a huge amount more value from my $8 monthly-fee-for-a- limited-selection Internet streaming service (yeah, that one, I still love it even after the bumps).

It's really great for our freedom from DRM that this worked, and I almost bought it just to support that cause, but ultimately I think prices have to be even lower for me to do outright purchases of content. But then, maybe that's just me. A lot of other people voted differently this week, with their wallets, and that says a lot.

<comment><USER30> So if $5 is too much for a show, how much would you pay? $1? 25 cents?

Just curious. At those prices, only the very mass-market stuff will make any money. Anything niche just won't pay for itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm glad it's worked out for him, and unless I'm misunderstanding, it seems he's double-counting his production costs in working out his (pre-tax) profit, so he may have done even better than that:

"the production of the video cost around $170,000. (This was largely paid for by the tickets bought by the audiences at both shows)"

"12 hours [after launching] we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website."

Surely one or the the other covered the cost of production, not both?

"As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000"

(170K + 550K) - 250K - paypal fees != 200K

Which makes me wonder if this statement is correct:

"This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you"

On the other hand, whilst in the other front-page article on HN he says "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special", I only heard of Louis C.K. from watching one of his stand-up shows on TV on an airline, so even if he didn't get payed directly, there's still publicity value in them.

[Edited for clarity]

<comment><USER32> I was more concerned that he paid $35K for a paypal-powered commerce site that sends plaintext passwords by email.

<comment><USER33> 4 reasons the plaintext password is OK in this situation:

1) They generate the password for you, how else are they supposed to get it to you?

2) Just because they email it to you in plaintext does not mean they are storing it in plaintext (they could easily send the email at the time the password is generated)

3) You won't reuse this password on other sites because you didn't choose it. The primary reason why it's bad to store passwords without proper hashing is that a leaked password database means hackers can tap into everybody's email/bank accounts which are using the same password.

4) All the password gets you is access to download a video (no other personal info available). Not a huge risk.

<comment><USER32> The correct way to handle this is to email an authenticated link that prompts password setting on the store.

<comment><USER34> That's _A_ way. For a virtually costless good, this is just as fine a way that has a much smaller chance of capturing a password anyone gives a shit about

<comment><USER32> Look, my point is that for $35K, a newly-built commerce site should follow basic best practices. It isn't exactly hard to implement, esp. if you're worth $35K. It isn't about someone stealing my account info – it's about evaluating what he got for $35K.

<comment><USER34> I disagree that's a best practice for all cases.

For a commerce site _that you will not use or necessarily maintain for years_ , a system where you don't ever _get_ passwords that other people give you can certainly serve better than one where you do, as the logins are only useful for the content.

This could be more useful to him as his security matters less, as he has less valuable things stored in his site. It may also work better to lower support costs (as many people are pretty bad about keeping track of passwords), and this approach means they can just look at their email to start.

I agree for many cases (say, HN), that it is a good practice, but it's not gold in all cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I dislike how it says "if anybody stole it". Piracy isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement.

I'm still curious about the bandwidth costs. 110, 000 people is 110, 000 gigabytes which is 110 Tb of bandwidth. How much does that cost??

Also, since some of the torrenters did indeed pay for the video, they can be included as profit and they didn't add to the bandwidth costs. They were also a small amount, 10k is listed as the number of downloaders on one site. That's 10,000 out of 120,000 people who downloaded using torrents. That's around 8.3% That's really not bad at all and I'm thinking that this is the case for many things. And like I said, some of those people did pay for the video which bumps that percentage down; I would say down to 8% if you're a pessimist, and down to 5% if you're an optimist ;-)

Anyway, piracy isn't a problem here. I hope other people do this because it cuts down on the middlemen who are a constant drain of society.

<comment><USER36> It's on S3, so rounded up to 200TB (multiple downloads, etc) it's around $15k.

You could distribute it for significantly cheaper than that, but it's still a relatively low portion of revenue.

<comment><USER35> $15k extra might make him bitch less about piracy, especially when it's bittorrenting that saves those costs! ;)

It looks like lots of companies are using it for software patch distribution (Blizzard, Facebook, Twitter).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I bought In Rainbows and this, as well as Harvey Danger's album (one of the first experiments from an established band) and Saul Williams's 2007 "Niggy Tardust." This is not to mention lesser known pieces that I've bought from independent artists online.

What I will say is that I wouldn't have bought any of these had they not been promoted online or DRM-free -- that isn't because I wouldn't have heard about them, or because I needed to support a particular model, but because in each case the artist both presented a genuine interaction with the fan and because the work was good. To the extent that the artists showed their humanity, provided an appealing product, and supported values that aligned with my own -- that was what drew me in.

It goes back to being a human rather than a faceless corporation, and it's a great tool of marketing niche products.

</comment><comment><USER38> Can anyone comment on the $170,000 cost to produce the video? He says he edited it himself so that pricetag must cover only the recording side of it. Is this cost a reflection of the price that large studios normally pay, or would he have gotten this rate from a smaller shop as well?

<comment><USER39> My interpretation is that this was the cost of the cameras, cameramen, and venue (tickets, box office, ushers, sound setup, soundboard, lights, spotlights, advertisements). Basically, all the costs associated with getting people in the seats and the show on film (or whatever the cameras record to)

<comment><USER38> Yeah maybe. I think the numbers are a bit weird then. He talks about making a profit of 200k, but then admits that ticket sales largely covered production costs, so is his total revenue around 750k with profits closer to 500k?

I wonder if HBO or CC paid for the special, whether he would still get 100% of ticket sales.

<comment><USER40> i can say with near complete certainty that if HBO or CC paid for the special he would receive substantially less than 100%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Just throwing this out there, but if I can buy a Louis C.K. comedy special for $5 each year, I'm going to buy a Louis C.K. comedy special for $5 each year.

It's probably a self sustaining model. I only just heard about it now, and bought it just now. I don't think he's tapped 100% of his potential market in the 4 days it has been available.

I look forward to the next batch of statistics released. Hopefully in ~4 months?

</comment><comment><USER42> And then Paypal freezes his account for suspicious activity...

<comment><USER18> I hope that handling these issues is in the $32,000 he paid for a website (&co).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if he would have made more if he had let users choose the price.

<comment><USER13> Or without even choosing the price, going Bandcamp-style and setting a base price while letting you choose to pay more. He also could have made more by providing a link to send the special as a gift, both giving a fans a way to show support, and perhaps growing his audience at the same time.

Very happy for his success, and I hope other artists are paying attention.

<comment> X-Istence Sending it as a gift is going live tomorrow ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The show wasn't anywhere near as amazing as his previous shows.

<comment><USER44> I haven't seen his other shows in their entirety, but the last half of his material wasn't as good as the first half.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> So what day does PayPal freeze his account? That's what _I_ want to know.

<comment><USER46> Haha good question. I didn't buy one - did he use PayPal exclusively? Someone should tell him about Dwolla - he wouldn't have had to pay anything in fees!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Girl Talk's been using an even more beneficent form of this model since day one, which means far before getting popular. Gregg Gillis has achieved enough success to be touring and making money. There's still a couple caveats though:

1) Girl Talk is remixing bits of other songs that people already know, thus there's familiarity. 2) Trying to go through any label and traditional distribution model very likely would not have succeeded anyway, so trying something different wasn't really a choice.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is it me or do I find $32,000 for that website a bit too much?

<comment><USER49> Indeed. I thought the same thing, but I suspect he's including a design firm that tested out multiple versions of the site, backend infrastructure to handle potential load, support to handle issues in a timely manner should they come up, and maybe his personal time.

<comment><USER48> When you put it that way, sounds about right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> While I think this is great, and am just like (nearly) everyone else in our (nearly) universal disgust with the big content-owning conglomerates, I wonder about the part where he's justifying selling the video for $5, when through traditional channels it would have cost $20.

I feel like it's not uncommon to see stories on hn that basically say we should do the opposite with our products. That is, charge more, because the difference between increased revenue vs. customers lost will still result in a net gain.

Now, obviously Louis CK is a pretty widely-known comedian who already probably has a lot of money, so I don't think he conducted this experiment as a way of becoming _that much_ wealthier, and I applaud him for not taking advantage of his fans. If he had sold it for $20 and billed it as "cutting out the middle man" I'd wager his total revenue probably would have been higher, but he chose to cut his fans a better (for them) deal.

That said, for lesser-known folks with smaller audiences who aren't already wealthy enough to cut their fans some slack, I'd imagine they'd do better charging $20 rather than $5.

<comment><USER51> I think the arguments you bring up are usually mentioned in the context of subscriptions and salaries. LCK's product is a one-time purchase, so the psychological limit sounds like just about $5, which is a price so low that you don't have to debate with yourself whether you want to buy it or not.

Use Steam videogame and iOS game prices as a corollary instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> While this is great for Louis CK, whom I find to be hilarious and wish only the best, it doesn't strike me as a truly generalisable model. I mean, it's basically a restricted version of NPR's 'pledge' model, right? The copies are effectively free, but you can choose to donate some money to the artist. Sure this can work for someone with a lot of name recognition, but that's because he was already discovered.

I think the problem is that Louis CK isn't in the business of distribution, he's in the business of producing comedy. The NPR model does disaggregate the two. You don't pay for the distribution, you pay so that they keep producing content.

I think the Kickstarter model is more generalisable, in that it more directly solicits payment for the production, not the distribution. But it still depends on people wanting what you will produce, which means they have to know who you are already. Which, I think means that people are going to have to produce things for free until there's enough demand for continued production to be able to solicit payment.

</comment><comment><USER53> Only 4 days in and over $500k. Very impressive. But hey, this is Louis CK. I wouldn't be surprised if he hits $3 million within 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER54> Am I the only that finds it odd he spent $32,000 on a website that features small, dark red text on a black background? I had to highlight the text to read it.

Otherwise, I'm glad his experiment worked out for him as in a small way it proves new business models can work if only tried. My question is whether the related industries will learn anything from this?

My guess is no.

<comment><USER55> I was relieved to hear hear he only spent $32,000. He's clearly not heavily involved in the web, and I'm glad he wasn't drawn in by some flashy firm trying to charge him $100,000. It may seem like a lot to anyone on HN that could put something like this together in an afternoon, but I feel he could have done much worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I have said for the past 10 years or so that I would gladly pay a small fee directly to an entertainer instead of having them get an even smaller fee from a middle-man. For example, torrent the latest Rush album + give the band $5 directly = everyone (who matters) is happy. I have the satisfaction of supporting my favorite artist and Rush has quite a few more $$$s directly in their pocket.

All we have to do if find a way to send money directly to an entertainer and keep the (MP|RI)AA off our backs. Maybe this would be a good startup idea. Provide a "Pay Me" button (implemented with Stripe :) for artists to stick on their site. Joe consumer torrents their work then visits their site and clicks the button. Neat and easy. Of course, then you become the middle-man...

<comment><USER57> I started out with that idea (adding a "contribute to me" button), and tried to validate it.

It turns out that the people I approached weren't interested in a service to accept contributions if said service had significant fees, and I couldn't find a way to make those cheaper (moving money has a significant cost) and couldn't compete with Paypal Donate.

I still believe there's a market for it (you're an example :) ), but it's going to be tough to convince the content owners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> _"If anybody stole it, it wasn't many of you."_

Searching for "louis ck beacon" on The Pirate Bay gives 7 hits, with a total of 886 seeders, 152 leechers.

<http://thepiratebay.org/search/louis%20ck%20beacon/0/99/0>

<comment><USER46> Unfortunately there isn't a reliable way to know how many people have pirated it.

<comment><USER59> It really doesn't matter how many people pirated it, as long as he makes enough money for it to be worth it to him to have made it in the first place. If it was 10 people but 40,000 bought it or a million pirates and 40,000 consumers, it's all the same to him.

<comment><USER60> I tried to download it using my 3 free downloads - failed miserably (got about 10k/s for the first 100MB).

So I'll be one of those leeches shortly...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm sure that most big production/distribution houses are not panicking because it's still a new way to distribute content and it's a niche product, but I'm wondering what they are thinking of this right now. Do they view this as an emerging trend or just as a fad?

</comment><comment><USER62> My favorite part of that whole article is the gigantic "buy the thing " button at the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER63> Wow. I expected positive results, but not that fast. Is there any precedent for this sort of thing? Hell, did Radiohead or Trent Reznor release sales statistics when they tried schemes like this for CDs? I'd love to see the numbers if so.

</comment><comment><USER64> Although I'm really happy for him doing this, and it working out so well; Trent Reznor / Radiohead did this exact thing years ago and made millions from it, so I'm confused as to why this got such large publicity.

<comment><USER65> It got a lot of publicity because that's what he was trying to do. He was on NPR's Fresh Air today and he did a AMA on reddit the other day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> He spent that much on the website, and still has unreadable red-on-black text?

</comment><comment><USER67> Devil's advocate (another in a long list of threads here): I really like this model, and that the people actually creating contents receive good benefits cutting out the middle man..

 _however_

There's this (I think correct) assumption that big labels are getting richer and richer by sucking a good portion of the money off the content creators, and providing almost no value in return. But they also create lots of jobs for other people, which in this model is reduced to a minimum. Could there be some way to _fix_ the current model without losing all of those jobs for lots of people?

</comment><comment><USER68> Chrome warns of an SSL error when I try to visit his site, and when I click proceed, I see an OpenDNS page about nameservers failing.

And yet, isup.me says it's up. Interesting.

<comment><USER69> It works fine here. Why use OpenDNS? They mess with your DNS results. Instead, try 220.127.116.11 or 184.108.40.206: <http://code.google.com/speed/public- dns/docs/using.html>

<comment><USER70> Google DNS makes for a suboptimal Netflix CDN load-balancing experience. :(

<comment><USER71> Would OpenDNS be any better in that regard?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Kind of surprised by the amount of people in this comment thread saying "yes it works for him but no one else". Why operate from this as your default? How sad. Examine this for how it can work for you, or someone else. Examine how it can work for a nobody. A small somebody. A first CD release. A "reunited after 10 years" cd release. Put that effort into how it can be done people!

</comment><comment><USER73> This is great news. I know Radiohead and Trent Reznor had similar results, but to avoid selection bias[1], does anybody know of an artist/musician/producer/etc that tried this and failed[2]?

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias>

[2]: or at least wasn't as enormously successful as these three

</comment><comment><USER74> I bought it since its DRM free, if it still remains the same i would buy stuff all the time. DRM is evil..

</comment><comment><USER75> When Trent Reznor released Niggy Tardust, 28,322 paid $5 for it, which was 20% of the total who downloaded the album freely. Were there any other albums he released for $5? Granted, this was Saul Williams' album and Trent appeared on it; it wasn't a Halo album.

<comment><USER64> GHOSTS I-IV (Halo 26) and The Slip (Halo 27) were both hugely successful.

<comment><USER75> I forgot he released those in that format, and you're right; he really hit some impressive numbers with that experiment: "A week after the album's release, the official Nine Inch Nails site reported over 750,000 purchase and download transactions, amassing over $1.6 million in sales." (Ghosts I-IV)

<comment><USER14> I bought both Ghosts I-IV and The Slip. I also spent $300 on the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack that he put out last week.

And I downloaded Niggy Tardust for free. I did this because I had never heard Saul Williams and wanted to support an artist who I had never heard of. But after listening to it, I honestly just didn't like it, so I did not go back and buy it.

I wonder how many people were like me and downloaded it for free because of the experiment and Trent Reznor's involvement but didn't pay because it wasn't their style of music.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I also wonder what may have been different if this was not placed in the context of a very public experiment. How many of the purchases were political statements?

I think the same model needs to be employed, without any commentary, to get a true measure of the mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER77> I have no idea who the guy is, but I've just bought it - thanks to HN. I hope I enjoy it. :)

<comment><USER78> So it's been 7 hours. Did you like it?

<comment><USER77> Only got to watch it today. That were some of the most well-spent $5 I remember!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> "I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money"

I'm buying it now for this.

</comment><comment><USER80> Awesome to hear and hopefully this encourages more content creators to distribute directly to fans through independent sites or apps. Loved the direct and blunt nature of the site. Price wasn't too shabby either.

</comment><comment><USER81> It's a great "experiment" but let's be honest - this only worked because it's Louis C.K.

If it was an unknown or less popular comedian - they would have had a fraction of the sales and lost money.

<comment><USER82> Doesn't mean it would't be worth it for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Louis, welcome to the meta-data effect.

Would love to hear how the releasing of this info has further affected sales. Based on the upvotes here, I wouldn't be surprised if it doubled them again.

</comment><comment><USER84> Disintermediation FTW.

Congrats to Louis.

</comment><comment><USER85> Did anyone else notice how good the copy is on the purchase page? Makes someone like me (who's been trying to get this right on my own projects) weep.

<comment><USER86> For sure, but man did that color scheme hurt my eyes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> A case someone made about Louis C.K. being an asshole. Downloading his content and watching it without paying != stealing. Stealing is a +crime+ punishable by heavy fine/jail time (depending on how violent), watching his stuff and not paying is just not supporting future versions. It's like going to a website and blocking all ads. This is not stealing. It is not supporting, consuming without desire to help the producer succeed.

However, this goes to show: If you are well known, it's more profitable to self-publish.

</comment><comment><USER88> This seems more like the success of novelty than a viable longer term, broader implemented model.

</comment><comment><USER89> Good for him. Louie is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER90> downloading my purchased copy now.

</comment><comment><USER91> Louis! Best $5 I ever spent.

Keep them coming!

</comment><comment><USER92> $32K for a site that does checkout with PayPal!? That sounds nuts to me, even with over-planning for high traffic.

FYI I recently posted a RoR app that lets you sell a file with Stripe: <https://github.com/2tablespoons/Thylacine>

<comment><USER93> You're thinking from the perspective of "geek who could actually implement this." Try thinking from the perspective of "entertainment personality who doesn't want their personal brand tarnished when their website blows up in their face and _is willing to pay for surety of that._ "

<comment><USER26> The comments are full of people proclaiming that the cost was too high, but then every time someone asks for an estimate on working as a freelance everyone says to charge as much as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Is it funny? I didn't like the comedy special of his that is on Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER94> And I was thinking, from the title, that it was a great success...

</comment><comment><USER95> I wonder how much he had made from us talking about him here?

</comment><comment><USER96> For kicks, request a new password on the site. Funny stuff.

</comment><comment><USER74> DRM free for the win!!

</comment><comment><USER17> Yes, nowadays you can easily record video and audio and edit both very comfortably on your home computer and if you know a bit what you are doing, you will get pretty good results.

Yes, nowadays there are a lot of ways of easily distributing music, especially online and yes, as the artist you will be keeping more per sold unit.

Yes, "surprisingly" your fans will want to pay for your albums - is it really so surprising? They also buy your merch and pay good money for seeing you perform live. So the whole "people aren't paying for music anymore" is nothing but propaganda.

Now here is the thing: this has been done a couple of times before, e.g. by Radiohead and then by Trent Reznor and NIN and probably a few others.

The point is: Reznor, NIN, Radiohead and Louis CK can do that kind of thing because they are ridiculously famous and successful. But for any other bands or musicians, I doubt they would have remotely that much success with a stunt like that. A lot of bands publish music online but come on, that is more a way of presenting themselves than it is a super easy and fast way to make half a million for them.

</comment><comment><USER97> This is clever marketing, and it worked - Although it is not innovative, new, or even news, it's top of HN.

The story here is how to market to Reddit/HN rather than anything else.

IMHO It would also be a stretch to call him a comedian.

</comment><comment><USER98> Why did it cost $200,000 to produce and host the video? That seems way too expensive. $32,000 on the web site and hosting? Are you kidding me?

Bandwidth shouldn't cost more than $100 per TB. Seems like he got ripped off big time.

<comment><USER99> Using your bandwidth price, his bandwidth costs alone will have easily exceeded $10k. Assuming $22,000 as a top end estimate for design, development and somewhere to host it sounds quite reasonable to me. If he hasn't chosen a bargain basement designer and developers, it's not uncommon to pay $1k+ per day for an agency. 20-22 man days if we exclude hosting costs, from concept, through proper design, content, development, testing and deployment isn't much at all.

<comment><USER100> yeah I just don't understand the whining from some people here at HN about the cost of the website.

I suspect they are freelance guys with inadequate skills to charge the proper rate. This website would have taken at least taken $32k to design, build, test, approve, test etc. (test allot)

Of course some hackers could whip it up in a day - but I wouldn't trust the best hacker to have dotted all the i's and crossed the t's. Payment testing, S3 testing etc.

Doing something right is different than just doing it.

<comment><USER98> Well, I guess I was wrong then. It's true I'm not a technical guy, but I've run a site that did 1TB of bandwidth each month and never paid more than $130/month for hosting (back in the early 2000's), so I figured he should have gotten better pricing these days.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can Microsoft really build a better browser? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/can-microsoft-really-build-a-better-browser.ars/

<comment><USER2> The elephant in the room here, and one that is completely ignored by this article (AFAICT) is corporate web apps.

A constantly moving target, which auto-updates silently, is anathema to the average half-baked corporate web app. They're half-baked for a reason: they have a limited budget, a limited customer set whom they mostly trust, and need to be maintained in parallel with lots of other apps by understaffed development teams working in companies whose main business is not software.

Perhaps MS needs two browsers, or some other solution. But I can't see them moving to a fast-iterating model without a radical shift in where they make their money - i.e. their business model.

<comment><USER3> I think that's the "compatible mode" (i.e. an old IE6 engine) ?

<comment><USER4> it doesn't work all that great on my corp intranet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can [sadly] substitute IE9 for quite a few different products from MS where the demo come out so early that by the time of release, competition is well ahead.

ZuneHD was initially announced cheaper than the comparable iPod touch - by the time it shipped (9 months later), apple had dropped the price on its product. HP Slate announced before iPad but available after.

Microsoft really doesn't understand how to market themselves.

<comment><USER6> They do understand how to market themselves. They try to appear more competitive than they really are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And why not? IE6 was released in August 2001! Its competition was something like Netscape 4.8. Mozilla was barely alpha, and not really usable yet. In this light, IE6 was a good browser, better than any competition back then. Of course. IE6 was mostly irrelevant few years later, but that wasn't because it was crappy browser, but because it was simply obsolete (but without a replacement from Microsoft).

<comment><USER8> Microsoft decided to kill IE, with 6 being the final version, in order to integrate the browser into Windows. Five years and a few major court cases later and they changed their tune and began work on IE7.

<comment><USER9> Wow, this is very interesting if true. Is there public information backing up the assertion that Microsoft wanted to kill IE as we know it and integrate it into Windows?

<comment><USER8> I heard it from Molly Holzschlag during a presentation at Microsoft Mix last week. There were members of the IE team all over the place and I think someone would have called her on it if it wasn't true. Or maybe Microsoft leaked the fake story as a cover for an outdated browser :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, Microsoft can definitely build a better browser. They just need to put their hearts to it. And cut off all support for IE. They envisioned a Chrome- OS like system before Google did, and I think they even have a team to work on it (not sure though).

<comment><USER11> I agree that they have envisioned a Chrome-OS like system before Google (right after Netscape mentioned that they will turn Windows into set of poorly debugged device drivers). But this vision was not "Wow! Let's do that!" - instead it was more like "Oh my God! If this ever going to happen it will kill our business. Let's kill Netscape then.".

<comment><USER10> No, I wasn't referencing that. I was talking about the Gazelle project[1], which if I remember correctly came about a very long time after Netscape's death.

[1] <http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/79655/gazelle.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope not.

For them to kill Trident and move to WebKit would be a git from heaven. of course it will never happen, though. Having a top-notch browser doesn't fit their corporate plans at all. The web platform is a threat to Win32 as it always has been, more now than ever, and it would practically be disregarding shareholder interests to promote a standards based web app platform.

</comment><comment><USER13> To be perfectly honest, I don't want IE to iterate very quickly, because then there would be 30 quirky, borked versions of IE to code around rather than 3. Granted, the last few may actually be standards compliant, but dealing with the 25 intermediate stages that aren't would be the seventh circle of development hell. Even though conditional stylesheets means you wouldn't have to rely on CSS selector hacks, that would make QA an order of magnitude more onerous than it already is.

I guess it's a chicken-and-egg problem, they aren't compliant because they don't develop iteratively, and they can't iterate often until they're more compliant unless they want to saddle everyone with a dozen inconsistently non- compliant browser versions. Even if they tried, all but the very largest web properties probably wouldn't QA for all versions of the browser. The drop in IE support from websites would result in a worse experience for their users.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think having a more iterative release cycle for Internet Explorer would put Microsoft in a better position. Having small releases adding new functionality would be much better than having to wait 2+ years between browsers. This tactic seems to work in the Windows & Office world, but not so much in the quickly changing browser market.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does it even want, or need, to? That's probably a more interesting question, though this is still a fairly sophisticated argument he's making, not the "Microsoft sucks!" article that you might guess from the headline.

<comment><USER16> Since MSFT entered the Web search market, it is in their interest to maintain a solid presence in the browser market. The only way they can achieve this (besides having a large OS market) is by making a superior browser.

As long as they adopt open standards I have no problem with it.

Personally, I will never use IE browser even if it is the fastest, most compliant browser around. IE have scarred me too much during my web design days to ever fully trust them. I will stick with Chrome & Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Microsoft can build better browser. But it will be zero-sum for them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes they can. No, they don't want to.

</comment><comment><USER19> Microsoft doesn't want to follow standards, their browsers are made to access stuff built by software they license and the only reason they are willing to adhere to some standards now is because they have fallen behind. So in essence their shitty browsers are a kind of DRM.

<comment><USER20> Their browsers have to be as broken as to make companies dismiss web applicatios as immature and unfit for the enterprise, but not broken enough as to make companies ditch IE in favor of other browsers.

It also has to be broken enough so that stuff built with their development tools work better with IE and developers have to choose between supporting IE and supporting other browsers.

To be fair, it's a very difficult task to maintain IE in the just enough broken zone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> No</comment>