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IBM to acquire Confluent

(www.confluent.io)
443 points abd12 | 3 comments | 08 Dec 25 13:43 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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notepad0x90 ◴[08 Dec 25 15:01 UTC] No.46192971[source]▶
This is so fascinating to me. I mean how IBM keeps taking over other companies, but they consistently deliver low quality/bottom-tier services and products. Why do they keep doing the same thing again and again? How are they generating actual revenue this way?

Ok, so does anyone remember 'Watson'? It was the chatgpt before chatgpt. they built it in house. Why didn't they compete with OpenAI like Google and Anthropic are doing, with in-house tools? They have a mature PowerPC (Power9+? now?)setup, lots of talent to make ML/LLMs work and lots of existing investment in datacenters and getting GPU-intense workloads going.

I don't disagree that this acquisition is good strategy, I'm just fascinated (Schadenfreude?) to witness the demise of confluent now. I think economists should study this, it might help avert larger problems.

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1. prodigycorp ◴[08 Dec 25 15:30 UTC] No.46193377[source]▶
> Ok, so does anyone remember 'Watson'? It was the chatgpt before chatgpt. they built it in house. Why didn't they compete with OpenAI like Google and Anthropic are doing, with in-house tools?

Leadership in IBM also thought that Watson was like what what OAI/Anthropic/Google are doing now. It wasn't. Watson was essentially a ML pipeline over-optimized on Jeopardy, which is why it failed in literally every other domain.

Outside of Jeopardy, Watson was just a brand.

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2. notepad0x90 ◴[08 Dec 25 16:05 UTC] No.46193918[source]▶
Sure, but they were doing that stuff. They had ML people, infrastructure, marketing, branding,etc... already. Their product sucked, but they could have copy-catted OpenAI in 2022+ like everyone else.
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3. kedean ◴[08 Dec 25 21:10 UTC] No.46197689[source]▶
I don't think that would have gotten them much of anywhere. They already spent a decade trying to find markets for Watson to fit and generally failing at it. The problem with Watson wasn't technology, it was that it had no direction.