He compared engineers he's worked with to engineers he hasn't worked with (Viaweb) and said they were better. How did he know they were better? Is he just better at assessing engineering talent than the rest of us?
You're assuming he knew they were better. Based on all of us (esp. here) not trusting technical interviews to determine engineer quality, I suspect he did not know they were better and was simply trying an off-the-cuff comparison to get Yahoo to acquire both of the companies.
What he really gave was an opinion. It wasn't truth.
