Hahahaha~‌ If it's any consolation to you, I‌ also cringed reading the part that made you cringe while writing it. More than enough cringe for all of us to share around!

Yeah, you actually said out loud what I was just thinking to myself when I wrote my previous reply. Not exactly what you wrote, but I was thinking that if it worked for others, it's good enough for himself. Why think of a good idea when you can just copy others'? Something along those lines. However, copying ideas actually does take some work as well. It's not enough to just copy what they did and apply it to your situation. You've also got to think about whether or not what you're copying is a good fit for your circumstances.

About the third point though, the way I see it is that Huffman tried his best (the key word is ‘tried’) to increase the profitability of his site to entice potential buyers, which even though it'd detract from immediate profitability, would add to the money he'd cash out at the IPO in the end—or so he imagines. Agreed with how things didn't happen according to how Steve anticipated them though. And in fairness to Huffman, other flareups have ended in a similar way. What he didn't anticipate is how these changes (the API changes) will affect how a lot of people (and the ones that contribute a lot of content) would interact with his site. So, yeah!