The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 79 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Newmark denies Craigslist killed newspapers, blaming TV news, Google, and Facebook
“I, in the past, felt that Craigslist did have a substantial effect on newspaper survival, but until
No one had done any of the numbers.
I'd spoke to industry analysts like Ken doctor and Rasmus Nielsen, who said it was ridiculous to think Craigslist had that b…”
Nirav Tolia predicts AI action platforms will completely replace multi-link search
“Particularly in a world of AI, where most consumers are going to go to one place, ask a question, and everything's going to be taken care of behind the scenes. It's not going to be, You go to Google, you get 15 links, you click on all of them, you hit back, yo…”
Startups Only Compete Against a Tech Giant's Specific Division
“You're not really competing against the whole company. You're competing against the section that's making a competitive product.”
Gilboa: Warby Parker unit economics are comparable across retail and e-commerce
“We find that the economics for us are pretty comparable regardless of channel that, that customers are shopping in.”
Kaufer: Fake review farms target Google but explicitly exclude TripAdvisor
“We see these review places offering to write fake reviews on Google and some other sites. And then they say, except TripAdvisor. Cause like, yeah, if like, if they try, we catch them, we shut them down.”
Mullenweg accidentally invented an SEO spam technique using hidden CSS links
“And I unintentionally invented a new way to spam. I basically was able to use some code called CSS to have the code on the website, but if you visited it in a browser, it would be invisible. But if you visited as a bot, like Google, it would look like the word…”
Pat Brown: Impossible Foods Will Not Risk Its Mission by Selling to Acquirers
“The mission is to eliminate the need for animals as a food technology, and by doing so, to save the planet from an environmental catastrophe. Nobody cares as much about it as I do and my colleagues do. And I don't want to put the mission at risk by putting it …”
Patrick Collison: Money cannot be mechanically turned into great software products
“And this is one of the great facts about our industry is that you cannot turn Money into great products as a kind of mechanical operation. If it were possible, there would be many more great iPhone competitors. Facebook would have been long since eclipsed by M…”
Steve Jobs called Stoppelman urging Yelp not to sell to Google
“You know, he said, don't sell to Google. We think you're a great company. We think what you're doing is really interesting. He didn't say, oh, well, Apple, you know, is interested in you, but he did say, is this about money? Because Apple has a lot of money, a…”
Google licensing clash led directly to Yelp acquisition talks
“We started by licensing our content to them in a way that we thought was reasonable, and then over time, it became clear that they really wanted to compete with us directly and collect information. Reviews themselves. And so then they said to us, well, we're g…”
McKelvey: Google offering free AI tools could threaten ChatGPT
“When you have big players who are competing, you know, it can be a race to the bottom, and that's scary, too, because if Google wants to give their AI tools for free, what happens to ChatGPT?”
Nirav Tolia claims Google, Meta, Apple, and Amazon have failed at local
“I also think no one has won local. Google hasn't. Meta hasn't. Apple hasn't. Amazon hasn't, right?”
OpenAI realized Google's Transformer architecture scaled far better than anyone appreciated
“Another company, OpenAI, latched onto the idea that this is, in fact, extremely scalable, more scalable than anybody had appreciated. And they just basically scaled it up and scaled it up and scaled it up.”
Google, Android, and Chrome Inherently Benefit From Maximizing User Screen Time
“At the end of the day, Android and Chrome, you know, and Google benefit the more overall screen time there is. Versus not.”
Google pivoted to full autonomy after test drivers slept at the wheel
“One was what we learned from people using the driver assist system. They would overtrust it. They, you know, would put on makeup and, you know, text and, you know, one guy actually fell asleep.”
Google de-indexed WordPress.org after discovering hidden CSS spam links
“Then Google came in, and of course, they were pretty mad that this code had outsmarted their search engine. So they actually removed WordPress from Google.”
Mullenweg joined CNET because it allowed him to retain code IP
“And the job I took, which was for CNET, I took it for a few reasons. First, they allowed me to retain the intellectual property to the code I was creating. So normally when you join a company like Google, you sign over the rights to everything you create there…”
Reffkin: Traditional brokerages pocketed profits instead of investing in R&D
“This has been a model for over a hundred years where brokerage firms had taken the profits from the agents, split it between the manager, the manager's manager, and the owner, and on balance that owner put in their pocket and then they went on vacation. But wh…”
Jeremy Stoppelman claims Google takes a lenient stance on fake business reviews
“Google, for instance, doesn't take as harsh a stance on, you know, allowing people to solicit reviews or fake reviews or what have you, like ratings tend to be more positive and business owners love that.”
Collison: Google possessed every advantage and should have beaten Facebook
“Google should have beaten Facebook. Google had every advantage against Facebook. They had you know, more people, more money, more distribution, more brand recognition, more of kind of any of the obvious inputs, and yet somehow there was something missing.”
Warby Parker is partnering with Google to launch AI smart glasses
“We're working with Google to launch AI glasses. They're sort of Warby Parker branded intelligent eyewear.”
Google and the Gates Foundation each granted Khan Academy $2 million in 2010
“And by fall of 2010, both the Google and the Gates Foundation each gave about two million dollars. So we had a four million dollar initial funding for that first two years to hire up a team, internationalize, and start scaling Khan Academy.”
Von Ahn: CapitalG partner warned Duolingo had to start making money
“And at some point, we raised money from Google. Capital G is one of their investment arms. And the partner from that firm sat me down and she said, nobody else will invest in this company if you don't figure out how to make money. You know, you're not going to…”
Rubin: Does not know the alphabet and gets stuck around M-N-P
“I don't know the alphabet. I get stuck. Around MNP, and I've never, and I've kind of decided that I'm not gonna relearn it, because I kind of like that I could not be able to do the alphabet legitimately.”
Mason: Groupon found Google's 2010 acquisition interest far more exciting than Yahoo's
“Google got wind and came along, and that was more exciting. There, like, Google was the... The cool company.”
Founders should only sell for burnout, imminent failure, or undeniable money
“I thought about it very deeply, and I came up with this, like, okay, why would you sell a company? I think there are three reasons, and none of these meet that criteria. Three reasons being, you don't want to do it anymore, and so you need someone to do it for…”
Williams suspects Google has lost money running Blogger for 20 years
“Blogger, I'm happy to say, 20 years later, is still running. And anything written on Blogger 20 years ago, unless the author took it down or it was like a violation, is still up on the internet for free, and Google has, you know, Paid for that, and you know, p…”
Liu: Typical E-Commerce Companies Spend $50 to $100 Per Customer on Ads
“People, other e-commerce companies spend probably 50 to a hundred dollars to Google and Facebook to acquire a new user, right?”
Dolgov: Waymo never seriously considered manufacturing its own cars
“I don't think we ever seriously entertained building a car. It just never made sense, you know, to me, you know, or others to, you know, do that. Like we're not a car company. Building cars hard, right? There's many companies that, you know, spend a hundred ye…”
Orfalea: Strong consonants make brand names like Kinko's and Xerox unforgettable
“You want strong consonants. Google, Xerox, Kodak. Coca-Cola. So I wanted a business with a strong consonant. Once you heard the name Kinkos, you'd never forget it.”
Hollier: Early app business models prioritized time spent over direct monetization
“Well, there's kind of like a golden metric that was really what was most important, and that was how many hours a day someone spent with the product. So if you could make something that was sticky and You know, that people would use for hours a day. There didn…”
Media attention on autonomous vehicle crashes rapidly diminishes as incidents recur
“So I remember back when I was at Google, you know, the first time we had a crash, it made national news. The second time we had a crash, it made national news, the third time it made local news, and, you know, the fourth time people stopped reporting on it, ri…”
Levchin: Entrepreneurs realize their true nature when following others' rules
“For an entrepreneur, you get reminded you're an entrepreneur when you're not trying to run a company the most. You start realizing that sort of rules are written and you kind of have to follow them because you're in, in someone else's backyard.”
Pichai predicts tech industry will retain permanent workplace flexibility
“I think the future of work will definitely be way more flexible than what it's been in the past. And I think that's here to stay. And 10 years out from now, you will definitely see employees having a lot more flexibility.”
Pichai: A person's team makes them a leader, not self-appointment
“You don't become a leader of people. It's your people who make you a leader.”
Pichai: Most leadership decisions are inconsequential; simply deciding is what matters
“A lot of stress comes from, you know, you have to make a lot of decisions as a leader, but over time you realize most of those decisions are not consequential. And there are a few consequential decisions, but most of the times, it's more important to make a de…”
Pichai: Companies must reward ambitious effort over outcomes to prevent risk aversion
“You have to reward efforts, not always outcomes. I think most companies only reward successful outcomes, which means everyone becomes more conservative in their attempts. And so at Google, we've always had this feeling of setting ambitious goals, and we do fai…”
Google's New York and London offices quickly returned to 65-70% occupancy
“In our urban offices like New York or London, very quickly we get back to 65, 70% occupancy right away, so it's a strong sense of people wanting to come in.”
Default backlinks in early WordPress installs boosted developers' search rankings
“Every install of WordPress had links to all the main developers. So because these thousands and thousands of websites were all linking to the word Matt, that would make Google think, oh, these websites, you know, Photomat.net, et cetera, is the number one site…”
Lynda.com secured massive enterprise adoption entirely through organic employee demand
“A lot of people who taught web design and Photoshop were using our courses, and they were bringing it into their schools and into their companies, so we'd be installed in all of Apple, all of Adobe, all of Microsoft, all of Google, and the employees were start…”
Patrick Collison: Google had every advantage over Facebook and still lost
“Google should have beaten Facebook. Google had every advantage against Facebook. They had you know, more people, more money, more distribution, more brand recognition, more of kind of any of the obvious inputs, and yet somehow there was something missing.”
Gebbia: Top VCs behind Google and Facebook said Airbnb would never work
“I can tell you all the times and show you all the emails from really credible investors, like people that, these, they're investors that picked Google and PayPal and YouTube and Facebook and all of the kind of internet greats that came before us, and so sittin…”
Peretti: The best internet businesses align core products with native advertising
“I looked at the best businesses on the internet, and they tended to use some form of native advertising. So Google had a search engine, and you enter a keyword in, and it would give you a bunch of related links, but it would also give you a bunch of related pa…”
Co-founder Chrissy Holler snuck into Google Seattle to pitch the cafeteria chef
“Actually Google, the Google campus in Seattle was probably one of our first big accounts, and Chrissy snuck into their cafeteria, found the chef, and convinced him to bring the product in and offer it to their employees.”
Gordon: Early blogger SEO ranking drove Babylist signups for years
“One of them started to rank for best baby registry in SEO, so in Google, and that was also the steady stream of traffic that drove baby list registries for many years, but particularly in that first year, like a couple every day.”
Raz: Groupon's 2011 debut was the biggest internet IPO since Google
“You go public in November of 2011 and despite all of that, despite all of the negative press, it was the biggest internet IPO since Google in 2004.”