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Or Nintendo. 126 years.

lazaroclapp 10y ago
"Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889...", sure, but then by the next century FB main business model will probably be about gene engineering, not software. In all fairness, I listed IBM and I can't imagine people referred to it as a "software" company in 1911, even if it was within the 'computing industry' such as it was back then.
- celticninja 10y ago
  Nintendo were in the game business the whole time, the type of game changed due to technology. IBM were in the computer business, they still are its just that the industry has changed so now we think of what theybdo as software and what e.g. Dell do as the computer business
  - kbenson 10y ago
    > IBM were in the computer business Specifically, in the business of selling items to help "computers", a job title for people who computed values.
    - hughw 10y ago
      When I was young, an old oil company geophysicist told me, "I remember when a computer was a person."
    - btilly 10y ago
      Nope. Its machines were doing tabulation of data stored on punchcards. Humans were not involved in doing the calculations. Human computers were needed for more complex mathematical operations.
      - kbenson 10y ago
        I think that qualifies. Accurate and efficient storage of values through a machine is of help to the people that were operating them. Or perhaps are you implying they were computing as well as tabulating?
        btilly 10y ago
        They were doing calculations that could be done by keeping a running total. Which meant that you could take a stack of cards and count, say, how many were men in Chicago between 25-50 years old. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine#Operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine#Operation for more.
- abvdasker 10y ago
  My speculative money is on VR really taking off to the point that Oculus and Oculus content become Facebook's primary source of revenue. The reason tech companies that live for so long become unrecognizable when compared to their original business is because the ones that don't pivot die.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

"Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889...", sure, but then by the next century FB main business model will probably be about gene engineering, not software. In all fairness, I listed IBM and I can't imagine people referred to it as a "software" company in 1911, even if it was within the 'computing industry' such as it was back then.

celticninja 10y ago
Nintendo were in the game business the whole time, the type of game changed due to technology. IBM were in the computer business, they still are its just that the industry has changed so now we think of what theybdo as software and what e.g. Dell do as the computer business
- kbenson 10y ago
  > IBM were in the computer business Specifically, in the business of selling items to help "computers", a job title for people who computed values.
  - hughw 10y ago
    When I was young, an old oil company geophysicist told me, "I remember when a computer was a person."
  - btilly 10y ago
    Nope. Its machines were doing tabulation of data stored on punchcards. Humans were not involved in doing the calculations. Human computers were needed for more complex mathematical operations.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      I think that qualifies. Accurate and efficient storage of values through a machine is of help to the people that were operating them. Or perhaps are you implying they were computing as well as tabulating?
      - btilly 10y ago
        They were doing calculations that could be done by keeping a running total. Which meant that you could take a stack of cards and count, say, how many were men in Chicago between 25-50 years old. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine#Operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine#Operation for more.
abvdasker 10y ago
My speculative money is on VR really taking off to the point that Oculus and Oculus content become Facebook's primary source of revenue. The reason tech companies that live for so long become unrecognizable when compared to their original business is because the ones that don't pivot die.

deleted 10y ago

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