Too Old For Silicon Valley: Age Discrimination in Start-Ups

Welcome to downLOADED, the show where opinionated tech pundits gather around to discuss issues and news impacting technology and its users. This week we're joined by Anthony Ha from TechCrunch and Rick Bakas the VP of Marketing at PressPay and the founder of Bakas Media.


The Future of the Internet in Doubt?

In recent stories from the BBC and AllthingsD Google "... has warned that a forthcoming UN-organised conference threatens the "free and open internet"." Is this sensationalism from the search giant or is there more there claims of potential censorship of the Internet.

http://allthingsd.com/20121128/google...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-...
https://www.google.com/intl/en/takeac...



Silicon Valley: People Under 30yrs Old Only

Is age discrimination rampant in Silicon Valley? Well according to a story by Reuters' Sarah McBride it is! Does the Silicon Valley and Tech industry place too much emphasis on youth and "fresh" faces and ideas over experience?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/1...


Groupon in Trouble: Is Social Commerce Bubble About to Pop?

Social Commerce and Daily Deal sites were the hot new category in tech funding but with the recent discussions at Groupon over letting go CEO Andrew Mason and expectations that LivingSocial will layoff 400 US workers is the social commerce bubble about to pop?

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington...


Is Google Screwing You: New Microsoft Marketing Campaign Win or Fail?

In the never ending battle to gain market share Microsoft has launched Scroogled. A website designed to expose Google Shopping policy of make all their shopping results paid ads! Plus the site also includes Bing links at the bottom asking you to "Try Bing" and "Make Bing Your Homepage". Is this a desperate attempt to throw mud on a competitor or is Google becoming to big for its own good?

http://scroogled.com/

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Pontus Welin]

I never even considered that the ads that pop up when you search on google, might be anything other than paid ads. To me it's obvious that they must be.

Is that just me?

[Tech Feed]

The story is reference to Google Shooping. When you run a search on items that results that are returned are paid ads rather that what was originally intended. A search engine for the best pricing.

[innodivergence]

ICANN isn't the Internet. They run the root servers, and do net allocation only. Everybody thinks they understand DNS because they think it is about naming conventions. The truth is quite a bit different. Further the network has NEVER been uniform in policy or even reliably contiguous. I do wish people would stop regurging the "the Internet is free" meme. There are many ways that it isn't, and it is becomming less so, and ICANN is the least of our worries in that regard.

[darthba11er]

very interesting topic and everyone makes good points on the age bias.

I don't think it's fair, but we as humans have to judge based on first impressions.

Fact is, a lot of lean towards younger and it's not just the tech industry.

Starting up the company, you go younger but when it comes to hiring a CEO, you go older. Attracting the investors as a young person and then building the executive leadership with older folks. You definitely want your lawyers and accountants to have as much experience.

[QN IX]

:D

[deebsboy]

Liking the show!

[Shaun Nicholson]

I think the age bias is in every industry, its not just a silicon valley p problem

[groman1988]

Good show. Business aspect of tech is an interesting topic