Gmail Creator: Facebook Has The Potential To Be Worth More Than Google
I love Quora. I don't know what it is about the service, but something makes interesting people give very interesting answers to a huge range of questions. Take Paul Buchheit, for example.
Context & Ripple Effects
Paul Buchheit has spent 2010 making himself a quotable insider rather than a builder of products: back in February he shut down talk that he was developing a new email platform, and by May he was speaking as a Facebook employee defending the company's push toward more openness and less privacy. His Quora habit — detailed answers on whatever question strikes him — has become the venue where these views surface first.
That habit now intersects with Quora's own moment. Benchmark's $86 million valuation bet in March made the young Q&A site the most-watched social property of the year, and answers like this one are precisely the content its backers are paying for: a Gmail creator, drawing a Facebook salary, ranking the two companies' long-term worth in public.
First-order effects
- Buchheit's Facebook-versus-Google verdict carries weight precisely because of his position: he built Gmail at Google and now works inside Facebook, giving the company's bull case a credible internal voice at a time when its valuation is the industry's open question.
Second-order effects
- The answer feeds directly into Quora's growth story — celebrity technologists treating the site as their public notebook validates the format Benchmark priced at $86 million in March, and each such answer becomes evidence in the argument over whether that number was cheap.
Third-order effects
- If prominent operators keep using Q&A platforms as their venue for valuation calls and strategic predictions, those sites evolve from consumer communities into a recognized channel for insider sentiment — a barometer investors and press watch alongside earnings and funding rounds.
The trend: Insider commentary is migrating onto Q&A platforms like Quora, turning individual answers into data points in 2010's escalating Facebook-versus-Google valuation debate.