Timeline for What will happen to Stack Overflow now that it has been sold to Prosus for $1.8 Billion?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
31 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 7, 2021 at 16:01 | comment | added | TheTechRobo the Nerd | Nah, they're doing it. However, people like me don't like it and so hold off. | |
| Nov 6, 2021 at 19:21 | comment | added | jrh | @TheTechRobo36414519 Checking in about 6 months later, so much for "early 2021", looks like that migration did not happen. | |
| Jun 5, 2021 at 23:15 | comment | added | TheTechRobo the Nerd | Yeah, if you login with a username you should migrate your account. They're deprecated and probably will be removed once Microsoft accounts are finalised. account.mojang.com/migrate | |
| Jun 5, 2021 at 16:01 | comment | added | jrh | @TheTechRobo36414519 you're probably right. In the Minecraft client it's listed as a Mojang account. I'm not completely sure when I bought it, but I think it was in 2011, Beta 1.3 I think? I don't log in with an email, I log in with a username. I play the game so infrequently I might miss the window (oops). | |
| Jun 5, 2021 at 14:29 | comment | added | TheTechRobo the Nerd | @jrh offtopic but you may have an old Minecraft (NOT MOJANG) account help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/… | |
| Jun 4, 2021 at 19:58 | comment | added | jrh | @forresthopkinsa funny enough, I wasn't able to play Minecraft for a long time due to some kind of login problem (I have a really old Mojang account that wasn't recognized for several months). It works now, though. | |
| Jun 4, 2021 at 19:09 | comment | added | 10 Rep | @forresthopkinsa In the minecraft community nobody cares about who owns them, whether it's microsoft or notch or mojang. So I think this worry about "things will change under prosus" is trash. | |
| Jun 4, 2021 at 5:33 | comment | added | forresthopkinsa | Considering the recent Microsoft-SSO auth madness going on with Minecraft, that's maybe not a great example | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 18:56 | comment | added | Zoe - Save the data dump Mod | @BSMP No clue, first time I've ever been on a site that got bought by an investment company. Still though, more money means more stuff that can be done, and that may have side-effects. /shrug | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 18:48 | comment | added | BSMP | @Zoe Do investment companies typically change things that quickly? I've worked for two companies that got acquired and "not much this year" is spot on based on my experience but in my cases the acquiring companies were large businesses that already had their own products/services. As far as I can tell, Prosus just owns stuff. Maybe that matters? | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 17:05 | comment | added | Makoto | @Trilarion: Anyone could copy the questions of Stack Overflow and republish them so long as they abide by CC-by-SA. There's dozens of copycat sites that do that today. But that's not where the profitability in the site lies. It's the fact that people come to Stack Overflow at all to do their technical Q&A which makes it the household name and juggernaut it is today. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 17:04 | comment | added | Makoto | That's the beauty of it @Trilarion. The products with actual price tags are their hiring portal and Stack Overflow Teams, not the main site. The main site is really what gets people to the front door and what gets people to talk about the site as a whole. The reputation of Stack Overflow allows it to carry on through other product chains and other product ventures, which is what brings the revenue in. So it's technically not us professionals that are directly turning them a profit, but without us professionals, those products would never have been possible. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 17:01 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Makoto "it's probably best for us to not kid ourselves about what had made the site so profitable." The countless hours of unpaid labor of experts in their field, I guess. But is the site really that profitable? My impression was always that volunteers here rely on the site to remain essentially free to access. Doing work for free that results in a product that is available for free can probably be justified. But who would do free work for a purely commercial product? That might limit the profitability. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 15:15 | comment | added | Makoto | Maybe this is an affirmation that commercial things will be launched soon, but it's probably best for us to not kid ourselves about what had made the site so profitable. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 15:15 | comment | added | Makoto | @Gimby: Unlike Stack Overflow, which has made its business on the work of free or volunteer labor, Minecraft is something that people can buy and have an immediate investment in. We have literal essays and mountains of prose written about "the best way to ask a question" and trying to dissect those is no small feat for the average passer-by. The products that Stack Overflow wants to sell us are its enterprise Stack Overflow edition and the hiring portal, which...okay, they might work, but there's already a crowded space for those. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 15:13 | comment | added | Makoto | @Gimby: If I recall that story correctly, Microsoft acquired the company Mojang and also Minecraft. Microsoft didn't just take the brand with it, they brought the company with it and invested in it so that it could continue to grow. All of its myriad editions (yes, even Java edition) are supported and maintained and updated by Mojang. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 15:12 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | @Gimby But Minecraft is something one can buy. How do I buy a StackOverflow? Can I maybe buy visitors to my questions or reputation, a question ban breaker maybe? It seems much less straightforward to make money out of SO than out of Minecraft. SO, the company, tried that for years. I understand the value of the brand though. If I talk with others they call SO only the site who has all the answers and where everyone goes to. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 14:33 | comment | added | Gimby | I compare it to Minecraft; Microsoft paid an exorbitant amount of money not for Minecraft: Java Edition but for "Minecraft" - the brand name that the entire world knows, and made sure to expand on the amount of products that can be bought related to that brand. But Minecraft: Java Edition is still there, going strong. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 14:30 | comment | added | Gimby | Let me put it this way: they paid a handsome amount of money for the right to claim that they own the Stack Overflow brand. That was not charity, there is going to have to be a return on investment. I can't really believe that with the way the site is now that amount of money is going to be made back and turned into profit in a timeframe that investors are comfortable with. That does not imply that StackOverflow.com is going to change, but I am pretty darned sure that different very commercial things are going to be launched under the brand name. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 6:21 | comment | added | Peter Mortensen | @Tinkeringbell: But big changes often happen about 2 years in, either disastrous (euphemism "restructuring") or much-needed innovation (like expanding into the learning part). | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 17:40 | comment | added | Makoto | @KevinB: Anything not officially stated by the company in explicit and unambiguous language is all otherwise rumors and innuendo. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 17:37 | comment | added | Kevin B | so, keep on destroying the community to funnel paid products, business as usual | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 17:32 | comment | added | Zoe - Save the data dump Mod | @rene ah, but weeks is too optimistic, and days is too small a scope :p | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 17:31 | comment | added | rene | @Zoe a missed 6 to 8 opportunity .... | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 17:22 | comment | added | Zoe - Save the data dump Mod | I give it a week, two weeks tops, for this to change | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 17:13 | history | edited | Makoto | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 4 characters in body
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| Jun 2, 2021 at 17:00 | comment | added | Makoto | The qualifier is that nothing for now will change. I can't forecast the future so I'm going to just rely on the moment here @Tinkeringbell. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 16:58 | comment | added | Tinkeringbell | joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announcement also seems to confirm not much change for now: "the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now" | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 16:54 | history | edited | 41686d6564 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Added a link to the CEO's page.
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| S Jun 2, 2021 at 16:50 | history | answered | Makoto | CC BY-SA 4.0 | |
| S Jun 2, 2021 at 16:50 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Makoto |