This depends on the exact nature of the object being auctioned. The details matter a lot. Some good economists have worked on this problem both in theory and empirically for a long time.
Under independent private valuation (where the value of the object is completely idiosyncratic to you), your thought is (AFAIK) correct. Here think of art: ignoring resale value, how much someone else would pay for an object depends on how much he likes it, but doesn't have anything to do with how you should bid - your bid is a function of how much you like it. (To a first approximation - again the details of the auction format really matter.)
In a common value situation (where the value of the underlying object to any player is the same, but players _signals_ (an input to their beliefs) about that value contain an idiosyncratic component), you might learn something about the quality of your own signal by knowing something about the bids of other players in the auction. For example: are you about to overpay b/c you believe Hinton's time is worth a lot more than Google and Baidu believe it to be worth??
The phrase "the winner's curse" was invented for this problem in the context of bidding for offshore oil leases. The value to all players (the number of barrels of oil in the field) is the same, but they have different beliefs about what that number is. The winner's curse is that the highest bidder was generally the most optimistic about the value of the field. It's a "curse" b/c the optimism was frequently not justified.
What was actually being auctioned here is a little unclear - something like "the time and expertise of Hinton + two grad students", but it's plausible that Google, Microsoft and Baidu could have made equally good use of it. It reads more like a common value setting, that is. So knowing the bids can matter.
If you want to know more about auction theory (this comment may already be more than you want to know!), I can recommend Krishna's "Auction Theory" or Milgrom's "Putting Auction Theory to Work."
Under independent private valuation (where the value of the object is completely idiosyncratic to you), your thought is (AFAIK) correct. Here think of art: ignoring resale value, how much someone else would pay for an object depends on how much he likes it, but doesn't have anything to do with how you should bid - your bid is a function of how much you like it. (To a first approximation - again the details of the auction format really matter.)
In a common value situation (where the value of the underlying object to any player is the same, but players _signals_ (an input to their beliefs) about that value contain an idiosyncratic component), you might learn something about the quality of your own signal by knowing something about the bids of other players in the auction. For example: are you about to overpay b/c you believe Hinton's time is worth a lot more than Google and Baidu believe it to be worth??
The phrase "the winner's curse" was invented for this problem in the context of bidding for offshore oil leases. The value to all players (the number of barrels of oil in the field) is the same, but they have different beliefs about what that number is. The winner's curse is that the highest bidder was generally the most optimistic about the value of the field. It's a "curse" b/c the optimism was frequently not justified.
What was actually being auctioned here is a little unclear - something like "the time and expertise of Hinton + two grad students", but it's plausible that Google, Microsoft and Baidu could have made equally good use of it. It reads more like a common value setting, that is. So knowing the bids can matter.
If you want to know more about auction theory (this comment may already be more than you want to know!), I can recommend Krishna's "Auction Theory" or Milgrom's "Putting Auction Theory to Work."