Mark Zuckerberg: "Ship the app"
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Mark Zuckerberg: "It's a really big deal that we ship this photos app"
On Sep 11, 2011, at 2:06 PM, Mark Zuckerberg wrote:
Just to follow up on this again, I think it's a really big deal that we ship this photos app quickly.
One theme in many of the products we're about to launch -- News Feed, Timeline, Open Graph -- is that people love nice big photos. A lot of the time people don't even understand how the new News Feed or Timeline work, but they love those products because of the bigger and richer photos. While this is nice in the short term, I view this as a big strategic risk for us if we don't completely own the photos space. If Instagram continues to kick ass on mobile or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what we're doing now, and if they have a growing number of people's photos then that's a real issue for us.
They're growing extremely quickly right now. It seems like they double every couple of months or so, and their base is already ~5-10m users. As soon as we launch a compelling product a lot of people will use ours more and future Instagram users will find no reason to use them. But at the current rate, literally every couple of months that we waste translates to a double in their growth and a harder position for us to work our way out of.
I get that there are also team issues and we'll need to work through those, but if there are actually people available who could build this more quickly then I think we'd be crazy not to do that. I don't know if there are actually people available or what the costs of that would be though, so it's hard to give you a clear answer here. The message I got from your note though was that you care more about fixing the team than shipping the app. I think we need to do both, but I do think it's a crisis that we don't have a mobile photos app out and I'd prioritize pushing that out as much as possible. Getting the team to a good state is not a milestone by itself that I care about.
Separately, I just don't understand why this app is so hard to build. It basically seems like a camera view, some filters, controls for deleting/tagging/captioning your photos, integration into a composer that already exists, and a skin for a photos feed whose infrastructure should already exist. We've had designs that I've been fine with for months. The only piece that seems technically new for us is the filters, but it seems like we're doing okay on those now after a long parallel track. What is so hard about the camera view, feed filters and composer integration? Are we building other unnecessary features?
I guess my basic point is this: I get that your team has issues, so fix them and ship the app. I don't see why this should be so hard, and I don't think we should accept any excuses for not getting this done in a short period of time.
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2024).]
Previously: Instagram cofounder on Mark Zuckerberg: “will he go into destroy mode if I say no” (February 13, 2012)
Previously: Mark Zuckerberg tries to buy Instagram (Circa March 2012)
Previously: Mark Zuckerberg: “I wonder what we could do to move a lot faster” (March 30, 2012)
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Mark Zuckerberg emails WhatsApp cofounder
From: Mark Zuckerberg
Sent: Saturday, April 6, 2013 9:48 AM
To: Jan Koum
Subject: Rumor
I assume this isn’t true, but can you confirm?
http://m.digitaltrends.com/social-media/google-acquiring-whatsapp/
If you are thinking of having WhatsApp join another company, we’d of course love to talk at this price range and are almost certainly a much better fit than Google!
Separately, we should hang out again sometime soon, I never got back to you about last weekend since I was busy getting ready for the Home announcement. But let me know if you’re around in the next couple of weekends.
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2024).]
Previously: Mark Zuckerberg on strategy for Messenger (December 9, 2013)
Google decides to buy DoubleClick
From: David Drummond
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 9:56 PM
To: Google Board of Directors
Cc: Jason Harinstein; Matt Sucherman; Salman Ullah; Donald Harrison
Subject: Project Liberty- CONFIDENTIAL
Dear Board Members:
I wanted to give you a heads-up about EMG's decision to enter the process to acquire DoubleClick, a leading online ad serving company owned by the private equity firms of Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity (the transaction is codenamed Project Liberty). As some of you know, we have been interested in this company for some time, but have been pursuing a "build-it-ourselves" strategy. Our interest became more acute after learning that Microsoft has already made a serious offer. The team believes that this is an important transaction for us, for both offensive and defensive reasons.
I have attached the deal review presentation for Project Liberty discussed at EMG. I have also provided a quick summary below of the background to the deal as well as our and Microsoft's potential rationale for acquiring DoubleClick.
We have heard from reliable sources that that Microsoft has made a bid in the $1.8B to $2.0B range. This weekend we plan to make a competitive bid by means of a non-binding term sheet/indication of interest. Of course, we will come back to you for formal approval as the process unfolds.
Background:
EMG has given approval to pursue the acquisition of DoubleClick, the leading online ad serving company.
Hellman Friedman and JMI Equity began shopping DoubleClick early last week after receiving an indication of interest from Microsoft.
Google product, engineering and corporate development teams met last week with Double Click management for preliminary due diligence.
Acquisition price is expected to be at least $2B, based on Microsoft's current bid of near $2B (a Microsoft executive told a friend of the company they they were buying Liberty for $2B). We expect that the seller will prefer cash.
The process is moving quickly.
Google's Rationale for Acquiring DoubleClick:
Own DoubleClick's customer footprint to accelerate time to market for our own advertiser and publisher ad serving products
Acquisition of DoubleClick by Microsoft would make it very challenging for us to win customers for our own advertiser ad server, which would impair our opportunities in the brand ad market
A Microsoft-owned DoubleClick represents a major competitive threat to our AdSense for Content business (see Microsoft Rationale below)
Microsoft’s Potential Rationale for Acquiring DoubleClick:
Access remnant inventory from Doubleclick's publisher ad server customer base to quickly scale its ad network.
Use DoubleClick's advertiser ad server position to harm Yahoo!'s business, driving down its valuation ahead of a potential acquisition (as relayed by Microsoft executive to friend of Google).
Feel free to call me with any feedback, questions or concerns.
Thanks,
David
[This document is from U.S. v. Google (2024) (1:23-cv-00108).]
Thanks for reading!
-Internal Tech Emails