Little bit off-topic; at least you get interview call from GOOG. I've never had that privilege of interviewing with Google. Though I've always applied for their design positions. And I was always referred by someone working at Google (and that too stellar recommendations). I've interviewed with all the biggies (including some of the hottest companies) but never with Google.
I think part of the problem with Google's hiring process is the attitude you're demonstrating here, where somehow even just interviewing with them is some sort of "privilege". Yes, I know they have to deal with a stupendous number of applications, and much of their process is a direct result of that sheer volume, but so long as people walk around with that kind of attitude towards them, they're given all the excuse they need to be imperious about it, to boot.
Agreed. By the way I remember talking with Google recruiter when recently I was in school (one of the west coast elites) doing my masters; he told me the best way to get into Google is via internship. I was interested in working at startup for internship and told him the same. He bluntly told me that its impossible for me to get a job at Google then.. :)
P.S. His prediction was true and I never interviewed at Google. However, I got job offer from one of their biggest rival :)
I've never had that privilege of interviewing with Google.
GOOG is just another company... it's not some special privilege to interview with them. In fact, not everybody would want to work for them... I, for one, turned down a chance to interview with them a few months ago. I don't see much that strikes me as particularly appealing about working for Google, especially compared to the opportunity of doing a startup of my own.
If anything, based on sheer size, I'm fairly confident that I wouldn't enjoy working at Google. Some of us just like smaller companies, with less bureaucracy and what-not.
Something must be there in their product that everyone is willing to pay top dollar. And these are all smart people who are ready to pay btw, not any average joe investor
There are always 3 things: idea, team and execution.
Color had a genuinely interesting idea: make a social network via implicit information rather than deciding whether or not the a person is a "friend".
I can see this being of particular interest to Google as they built themselves on a similar premise: ranking web searches via implicit data (links, etc.) rather than a hand built index.
So, with an interesting idea and a strong team they secured both acquisition interest and a huge funding round. The idea being that they would release a series of applications and products that would deliver on the promise of implicit social network creation.
Then their PR got ahead of them (no doubt purchased with a chunk of the $41 mil) and expectations got built to a level that could never be delivered on with the first iteration of their first product - an iPhone photo app.
So, now there is a big backlash as people feel "duped" by the gap between the hype and the product and it is crushing the company.
Investors act irrationally all the time and it doesn't help when their coffers are so overfull with other people's money that $40 million becomes chump change and not even noticeable in the ledger.
I suspect there might be some pretty heavy use of computer vision as related to those images -- perhaps to pick out brand preference or otherwise personal/private information that could be rolled up/anonymized such that marketers would buy in aggregate.
If the product was released differently, it very likely could have been successful. It seems to me that once they got all that VC funding, they were desperate to release something to prove their worth. But, since their product depends on tons of people all using it in a geographically tight area, it crashed and burned. I think had they started releasing at events (ala twitter @ sxsw), they could have had some success.
That sounds like a great co-branding opportunity. Color could also sell/host conference services such as preloading conference-related photos/ads or providing additional Color photographers to "augment" the conference's Color photos when the app's adoption is still low.
I feel like their target market should not have been the US but rather Europe or Japan. Both much higher population densities where location/presence based technology does much better (see 3DS Street pass feature).
I too feel like there something there people think has value but the average person doesn't see. But maybe there is nothing and this is really as irrational as it looks.
Who says there are no extremists in Hinduism? Every religion has its fair share.
And its true our neighbor is a failed state and made everything terrible. Given a choice about living in India or any of our neighbors, everyone will choose India. Because we are pluralistic society where every religion is respected, which is not true about our neighbor!
And this article doesn't appeal India's self conception, this article speaks reality!
Our last president was not Hindu. By the way, He is one of the most celebrated intellectual in India. Some of the most popular actors/actresses in Bollywood are not Hindu. People like Azim Premji are not Hindu. I can cite many more such examples.
I have bunch of my friends who are not Hindus and asked about situation like partition once again, they always say they will choose India come what may.
The whole idea of our neighboring country is based on the myth that in Hindu majority country no other religion can flourish. On contrary, every other religion flourished in India but same cannot be said about our neighbors.
Just to add this, I'd like to point out that the OP fails to consider the fate of the Mohajirs in Pakistan. It doesn't seem like migrating to Pakistan from India worked out all that well for them.
There is no doubt that Muslims in India lag behind on developmental metrics, but I sincerely doubt this is due to any large-scale systematic discrimination against them. Sure, there is a fair bit of casual "micro-discrimination" against Muslims but that happens to a LOT of demographic groups in a huge and diverse country like India.
This might be an unpopular and politically incorrect view, but I believe that the thing that is holding back Indian Muslims and (perhaps Muslims elsewhere) is their religion. Believing that women shouldn't step out of the house alone, or that women should wear a burqa all the time or that several important formative years of a child's life should be spent studying the Quran or an insistence on studying Arabic and Urdu instead of the local language are IMHO not conducive to succeeding in a cut-throat capitalist economy. My unscientific survey of successful Muslims that I know leads me to believe that the most successful ones are not that religious.
However, the OP makes a good point that Hindu fundamentalism might be polarizing opinions in the country. Unfortunately, you can get away with being a Hindu fundamentalist in India, but being a Muslim fundamentalist mostly leads to career suicide.
P.S. By the way, I have undergrad in CS too