10 ms·

Is it time to break up Google?

93 points by Futurebot 9y ago

davidgerard 9y ago
> The third alternative is to remove the “safe harbor” clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act aha. > Jonathan Trumbull Taplin (born July 18, 1947) is an American writer, film producer and scholar yeah, this is an op-ed for Hollywood versus the Internet. Reducing or removing the DMCA safe harbour is their number one goal this year.
- joatmon-snoo 9y ago
  Ah, so that's why his suggestions make no sense.
  - mifield 9y ago
    That, and he's a adjunct communications professor with no experience in antitrust law
- bsimpson 9y ago
  This is first proposal I've heard to remove safe harbor. Where else have you seen evidence of this?
  - davidgerard 9y ago
    I follow music industry news, and it's been actively (rather than passively) on their wishlist for the past six months or so. It's their biggest gripe with YouTube, for instance. (That and that YouTube, unlike Spotify, refuse to give them money for nothing just because they demand it. https://rocknerd.co.uk/2017/04/03/record-labels-want-money-youtube-doesnt-earn-just-because-google-has-some-and-theyd-like-it/ https://rocknerd.co.uk/2017/04/03/record-labels-want-money-y... )
- gman83 9y ago
  Yeah I'm getting a definite Jack Valenti vibe from this guy.
resoluteteeth 9y ago
Despite offhandedly mentioning the hypothetical possibility of breaking up Google, this article doesn't actually discuss how this could be done or even whether it would be possible. I think because of how few products Google has that actually make money this would actually be quite difficult in that it would be surprisingly hard to divide up Google into multiple companies that still have sources of revenue, much less were still profitable. Even if rather than actually "breaking up" Google, you simply tried to force some type of debundling like with Microsoft, this would still be difficult. Take the case of Android being bundled with Google services for example. Android itself isn't what makes Google money, so preventing them from integrating it with sources of revenue would probably just kill Android.
- xigency 9y ago
  The example given is forcing them to sell DoubleClick. I think Android is a great example because that was an aquisition at one point. Google pays Apple for default search placement so a similar arrangement could be made. The article is a bit vague and hand-wavey (and the title is a bit off) but I would definitely say that Apple is hugely monopolistic, for a company sitting at #1. Apple has a stranglehold on iOS browsers by forcing App Store browsers to use Safari's renderer and web view. And being vertically integrated, the hardware and software are both locked-down in ways that restrict a consumer. Why can't I install macOS on non-Apple hardware? Why do I need macOS to develop for Mac/iPhone? Why can't I replace the battery or install memory easily on my Macbook? Each of these are shady, manipulative business practices, and lo and behold, Apple has the greatest market cap (and least competitive pricing.)
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    > Apple is hugely monopolistic Being a large company doesn't make you a monopoly, nor does anti-consumer mean the same as anti-competitive. In both product segments you mention (smartphones and personal computers), Apple has a minority marketshare. "Monopoly" isn't a catch-all phrase for "mean business"; it has a very specific meaning, and Apple isn't even close.
    - 9y ago
protomyth 9y ago
Let's just say the Mr. Taplin got his way. I cannot imagine any site allowing any user content without a heck of a screening process. I really cannot think of a scenario that would allow discourse on the internet except in private forums or irc channels with no logs.
fiatjaf 9y ago
It's time to stop breaking up any companies.
- smt88 9y ago
  That is absolutely ludicrous. Monopolies are terrible for everyone except the owners of the monopolies. I've never heard anyone argue for monopolies before.
  - themoonbus 9y ago
    Even in the game Monopoly, the whole point is to show how bad Monopolies are!
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    Being large does not imply being a monopoly.
    - smt88 9y ago
      You're attacking a straw man. Someone said we need to stop breaking up companies, implying that breaking up companies (even monopolies) is always bad. I'm not saying large companies are all monopolies. I'm saying that all monopolies are bad.
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        > I'm saying that all monopolies are bad. Including regulated, natural monopolies? (I'm speaking of utilities mainly). Sure they're not great, but I can't think of a better alternative.
        smt88 9y ago
        Yes, those are bad. Something can be bad without having a better alternative (wars can be examples). Also, there increasingly are alternatives, like home solar panels.
Hupriene 9y ago
> We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the “fake news” business to know that Brandeis was right. I couldn't really get any farther into the article than this. How exactly is "fake news" supposed to be a symptom of abuse of monopoly power? Are we supposed to believe that Facebook and Google's smaller competitors rigorously curate content to ensure factual accuracy?
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  I couldn't make it to the end of your comment to know what points you were trying to make.
- noooodle 9y ago
  I think they meant Facebook and google being the ones who decide what's fake news and what's not.
- therpe1 9y ago
  I kind of marvel at such comments. You don't understand a single sentence so you give up on the whole article? And then you feel the need to announce your ignorance? The entire article is very much about "bigness" and it is interesting to see how a non-tech person views the state of the web. The reality is companies like Google and Facebook can and do leverage enormously powerful network-effects. This makes it very easy for them to completely and utterly dominate various ecosystems and turn them into mono-cultures. Especially with Facebook what we're seeing isn't any kind of real diversity but simply a cesspool of propaganda [1]. It's not really good for anybody. But then it's not clear that information monoculture that Google and Facebook produce could be broken up even if one were to break up the companies. Even if Facebook were regulated out of the "news business" competitors would emerge that leveraged Facebook's graph and you'd get the same issues. The problem is on the demand side. People want fake news, they want to be lied to, and they certainly don't want to hear any kind of in-depth, reasoned, factual analysis. Google and Facebook are just giving people the tools to create such toxic information ecosystems. This wasn't an issue a long time ago when everybody simply consumed their regional information sources but with the rise of cable news it can hardly be said that this is a new issue. In the long run rather than breaking up these companies they should be pressed to develop technological solutions. Similar to the way email was saved from the never-ending tsunami of spam by Bayesian filters and DNS-based black-lists and white-lists, Google and Facebook should be encouraged to develop measures that can at least identify and warn somebody when they enter a toxic information eco-system. [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo?utm_term=.fclOMBMzQ#.srqek8kGV https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became...
cidibe 9y ago
The threat of anti-trust to Google is good enough, I hope it's not acted on. It makes them try to play fairer than they would otherwise eg making customers can export their data. I feel like they've made more of an effort on things like GCP to make customers not locked in than their competition because they are the most in danger of getting busted up. It'd be too bad though to break up yet another company that does interesting long term projects with a comfortable cash faucet because it is too successful.
- xigency 9y ago
  The threat of anti-trust measures hasn't been great enough for the SEC to block the mergers that put them in control of the majority of Internet ads. It's astonishing to see how awful the ads that Google (Alphabet) serves are.
- shouldbworking 9y ago
  The only true monopoly Google holds is search. They have a lot of successful products in other venues but nothing that reaches 90%+ market penetration. The only other thing that's close is chrome browser. Chrome is already starting to get some "google only" features...Like hangouts and Chromecast support. If any of these become a necessity to browse regular sites it will be a defacto monopoly on the web browser market. Random thought, but one reason I don't like Angular is because it "shapes" your site exactly how google wants it. Much like AMP, this just makes it easy for Google to "borrow" your content for other purposes.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Chrome actually has higher desktop marketshare than I would have thought, about 60%. [1] But that's still pretty far from a monopoly. [1] https://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/firefox-overtakes-microsoft-internet-explorer-edge-browsers-first-time-statcounter/ https://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/firefox-overtakes-m...
    - shouldbworking 9y ago
      Consider the mobile market as well, it outnumbers desktop these days
Oletros 9y ago
Without Safe Harbour, what sites will survive?
- davidgerard 9y ago
  Wikipedia sure as hell won't stand for it, I can (I think reasonably, on my understanding of editor and Foundation viewpoints) tell you.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mtempleton 9y ago
>We have been transported back to the early 20th century >Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer Melvin Urofsky) “in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.” >Brandeis generally opposed regulation — which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption of the regulator Reading American Economic History has given me the idea that problems of corruption were taken more seriously in the past than they are today -- which this article seems to be alluding to. It seems to be an issue that isn't circulating today. I've never heard of someone mention Andrew Jackson with reference to how fiercely he seemed to want to fight against corruption. Lincoln gave the banks the finger and instead, empowered congress to take control of the nation's money supply, and won a war in which the banks had been betting against him by doing this. By contrast, it seems today people view big banks as a kind of mandatory evil that we should just shut up about and tolerate. Further, it does appear that most politicians, especially Presidents, must be subservient to the interests of lobbies and power groups in Washington. Perhaps also, today we take it for granted that a lot of good sense was taken in the past to build this country. I have a strong sense that today's political climate and social culture is ignoring growing problems of the bigness described in the article--concentrations of power. I have heard a lot of people say everything is corrupt, it doesn't matter, which at least in my reading, appears to have not been the case in the past. If that is true, I'm not sure if America would look the same today if it wasn't true.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  >By contrast, it seems today people view big banks as a kind of mandatory evil that we should just shut up about and tolerate. On the contrary, I think the population would LOVE to vote for a President that isn't owned by Goldman Sachs, but there just isn't one. We sort of almost kinda got there with Bernie Sanders, but the establishment wouldn't let that happen.
  - khc 9y ago
    s/establishment/votes of the people/
mg74 9y ago
The author states that "is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale", and then points to falling profits of music and newspaper industries as the victims of said stymied innovation, the very actors that have fought the innovation of the last 25 years the hardest.
- evdev 9y ago
  I laughed out loud at that paragraph. To be clear: obviously the assertion itself might be true but is very possible to deny. To make matters worse, the support for the idea is basically that services that charge the end user nothing have destroyed the revenues of services that had the ability to ransom themselves for money. Whether that's good or bad to the broader public is... complicated.
- candiodari 9y ago
  I doubt that it looks that way as a peon inside the newspaper and/or music industries. It is certainly true that there is more listening to music/movies and more reading of newspaper articles than ever before. And yet, journalists, musicians, and ... have it much harder nowadays.
surrey-fringe 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  That's it, I'm starting an article titled "Is Betteridge's law of headlines true?"
  - surrey-fringe 9y ago
    dun do it
raldi 9y ago
How could anyone possibly consider Google a monopoly? There's no lock-in whatsoever. If someone were to build a better search engine, you could switch to it in seconds. That's what separates Google from Microsoft in the 90's, AT&T in the 70's, and the oil and steel barons of yore.
rrggrr 9y ago
Self-serving. Google news has brought regional, independent and small journalists to the masses... much to the NYT dismay. Digital media by many, including Google, has brought with it digital journalism, journalistic data science, micro-news and multi-source real time news. It's brought readers print, video and interactive information, and machine consumable feeds. I learn more from HN daily than I do most news sources I consume directly. NYT can raise its journalistic and UI game, or it xpcan wither and die. Either way, there will be more alternatives than ever.
jtlienwis 9y ago
I think Intel had an 80% market share for all its days. Yet here we are 30 years past the 8086 days and transistors on the latest Intel chip are how many thousands of times cheaper than they were then? One big competitor in tech has to remain paranoid as Andy Grove said to stay alive. Look at what happened to Yahoo.
jtlienwis 9y ago
Lets see. Intel has had an 80% market share since the days of the 8086. Yet here we are 30 years later and the cost for a transistor on the latest Intel chip are THOUSANDS of times cheaper than then. Tech has a pretty slippery slope for competitors that are not paranoid as Andy Grove used to say. Look at what happened to Yahoo, the Google of its day.
scarface74 9y ago
1997 - Apple Computer Company might as well have been called "The Beleagured Computer Maker" and Microsoft had an "unbeatable" monopoly in operating systems and browsers. 2017 - Apple is the most valuable company in the world and now known as phone company while Microsoft is still dominant in operating systems for desktops it doesn't matter and a company that barely existed in 1997 has the dominant browser and becoming the dominant desktop OS in schools. Facebook is on top now, but so was Friendster and MySpace. Facebook is already seen as the place for "old people". In other words. In technology, no one stays on top for long no need for the government.
Ericson2314 9y ago
Why the hell is this flagged?
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  i second that. i don't see the sense in flagging this story.

93 points by Futurebot 9y ago

> The third alternative is to remove the “safe harbor” clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act aha. > Jonathan Trumbull Taplin (born July 18, 1947) is an American writer, film producer and scholar yeah, this is an op-ed for Hollywood versus the Internet. Reducing or removing the DMCA safe harbour is their number one goal this year.

joatmon-snoo 9y ago
Ah, so that's why his suggestions make no sense.
- mifield 9y ago
  That, and he's a adjunct communications professor with no experience in antitrust law
bsimpson 9y ago
This is first proposal I've heard to remove safe harbor. Where else have you seen evidence of this?
- davidgerard 9y ago
  I follow music industry news, and it's been actively (rather than passively) on their wishlist for the past six months or so. It's their biggest gripe with YouTube, for instance. (That and that YouTube, unlike Spotify, refuse to give them money for nothing just because they demand it. https://rocknerd.co.uk/2017/04/03/record-labels-want-money-youtube-doesnt-earn-just-because-google-has-some-and-theyd-like-it/ https://rocknerd.co.uk/2017/04/03/record-labels-want-money-y... )
gman83 9y ago
Yeah I'm getting a definite Jack Valenti vibe from this guy.

resoluteteeth 9y ago

Despite offhandedly mentioning the hypothetical possibility of breaking up Google, this article doesn't actually discuss how this could be done or even whether it would be possible. I think because of how few products Google has that actually make money this would actually be quite difficult in that it would be surprisingly hard to divide up Google into multiple companies that still have sources of revenue, much less were still profitable. Even if rather than actually "breaking up" Google, you simply tried to force some type of debundling like with Microsoft, this would still be difficult. Take the case of Android being bundled with Google services for example. Android itself isn't what makes Google money, so preventing them from integrating it with sources of revenue would probably just kill Android.

xigency 9y ago
The example given is forcing them to sell DoubleClick. I think Android is a great example because that was an aquisition at one point. Google pays Apple for default search placement so a similar arrangement could be made. The article is a bit vague and hand-wavey (and the title is a bit off) but I would definitely say that Apple is hugely monopolistic, for a company sitting at #1. Apple has a stranglehold on iOS browsers by forcing App Store browsers to use Safari's renderer and web view. And being vertically integrated, the hardware and software are both locked-down in ways that restrict a consumer. Why can't I install macOS on non-Apple hardware? Why do I need macOS to develop for Mac/iPhone? Why can't I replace the battery or install memory easily on my Macbook? Each of these are shady, manipulative business practices, and lo and behold, Apple has the greatest market cap (and least competitive pricing.)
- bdcravens 9y ago
  > Apple is hugely monopolistic Being a large company doesn't make you a monopoly, nor does anti-consumer mean the same as anti-competitive. In both product segments you mention (smartphones and personal computers), Apple has a minority marketshare. "Monopoly" isn't a catch-all phrase for "mean business"; it has a very specific meaning, and Apple isn't even close.
  - 9y ago

protomyth 9y ago

Let's just say the Mr. Taplin got his way. I cannot imagine any site allowing any user content without a heck of a screening process. I really cannot think of a scenario that would allow discourse on the internet except in private forums or irc channels with no logs.

fiatjaf 9y ago

It's time to stop breaking up any companies.

smt88 9y ago
That is absolutely ludicrous. Monopolies are terrible for everyone except the owners of the monopolies. I've never heard anyone argue for monopolies before.
- themoonbus 9y ago
  Even in the game Monopoly, the whole point is to show how bad Monopolies are!
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  Being large does not imply being a monopoly.
  - smt88 9y ago
    You're attacking a straw man. Someone said we need to stop breaking up companies, implying that breaking up companies (even monopolies) is always bad. I'm not saying large companies are all monopolies. I'm saying that all monopolies are bad.
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      > I'm saying that all monopolies are bad. Including regulated, natural monopolies? (I'm speaking of utilities mainly). Sure they're not great, but I can't think of a better alternative.
      - smt88 9y ago
        Yes, those are bad. Something can be bad without having a better alternative (wars can be examples). Also, there increasingly are alternatives, like home solar panels.

Hupriene 9y ago

> We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the “fake news” business to know that Brandeis was right. I couldn't really get any farther into the article than this. How exactly is "fake news" supposed to be a symptom of abuse of monopoly power? Are we supposed to believe that Facebook and Google's smaller competitors rigorously curate content to ensure factual accuracy?

anigbrowl 9y ago
I couldn't make it to the end of your comment to know what points you were trying to make.
noooodle 9y ago
I think they meant Facebook and google being the ones who decide what's fake news and what's not.
therpe1 9y ago
I kind of marvel at such comments. You don't understand a single sentence so you give up on the whole article? And then you feel the need to announce your ignorance? The entire article is very much about "bigness" and it is interesting to see how a non-tech person views the state of the web. The reality is companies like Google and Facebook can and do leverage enormously powerful network-effects. This makes it very easy for them to completely and utterly dominate various ecosystems and turn them into mono-cultures. Especially with Facebook what we're seeing isn't any kind of real diversity but simply a cesspool of propaganda [1]. It's not really good for anybody. But then it's not clear that information monoculture that Google and Facebook produce could be broken up even if one were to break up the companies. Even if Facebook were regulated out of the "news business" competitors would emerge that leveraged Facebook's graph and you'd get the same issues. The problem is on the demand side. People want fake news, they want to be lied to, and they certainly don't want to hear any kind of in-depth, reasoned, factual analysis. Google and Facebook are just giving people the tools to create such toxic information ecosystems. This wasn't an issue a long time ago when everybody simply consumed their regional information sources but with the rise of cable news it can hardly be said that this is a new issue. In the long run rather than breaking up these companies they should be pressed to develop technological solutions. Similar to the way email was saved from the never-ending tsunami of spam by Bayesian filters and DNS-based black-lists and white-lists, Google and Facebook should be encouraged to develop measures that can at least identify and warn somebody when they enter a toxic information eco-system. [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo?utm_term=.fclOMBMzQ#.srqek8kGV https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became...

cidibe 9y ago

The threat of anti-trust to Google is good enough, I hope it's not acted on. It makes them try to play fairer than they would otherwise eg making customers can export their data. I feel like they've made more of an effort on things like GCP to make customers not locked in than their competition because they are the most in danger of getting busted up. It'd be too bad though to break up yet another company that does interesting long term projects with a comfortable cash faucet because it is too successful.

xigency 9y ago
The threat of anti-trust measures hasn't been great enough for the SEC to block the mergers that put them in control of the majority of Internet ads. It's astonishing to see how awful the ads that Google (Alphabet) serves are.
shouldbworking 9y ago
The only true monopoly Google holds is search. They have a lot of successful products in other venues but nothing that reaches 90%+ market penetration. The only other thing that's close is chrome browser. Chrome is already starting to get some "google only" features...Like hangouts and Chromecast support. If any of these become a necessity to browse regular sites it will be a defacto monopoly on the web browser market. Random thought, but one reason I don't like Angular is because it "shapes" your site exactly how google wants it. Much like AMP, this just makes it easy for Google to "borrow" your content for other purposes.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Chrome actually has higher desktop marketshare than I would have thought, about 60%. [1] But that's still pretty far from a monopoly. [1] https://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/firefox-overtakes-microsoft-internet-explorer-edge-browsers-first-time-statcounter/ https://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/firefox-overtakes-m...
  - shouldbworking 9y ago
    Consider the mobile market as well, it outnumbers desktop these days

Oletros 9y ago

Without Safe Harbour, what sites will survive?

davidgerard 9y ago
Wikipedia sure as hell won't stand for it, I can (I think reasonably, on my understanding of editor and Foundation viewpoints) tell you.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mtempleton 9y ago

>We have been transported back to the early 20th century >Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer Melvin Urofsky) “in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.” >Brandeis generally opposed regulation — which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption of the regulator Reading American Economic History has given me the idea that problems of corruption were taken more seriously in the past than they are today -- which this article seems to be alluding to. It seems to be an issue that isn't circulating today. I've never heard of someone mention Andrew Jackson with reference to how fiercely he seemed to want to fight against corruption. Lincoln gave the banks the finger and instead, empowered congress to take control of the nation's money supply, and won a war in which the banks had been betting against him by doing this. By contrast, it seems today people view big banks as a kind of mandatory evil that we should just shut up about and tolerate. Further, it does appear that most politicians, especially Presidents, must be subservient to the interests of lobbies and power groups in Washington. Perhaps also, today we take it for granted that a lot of good sense was taken in the past to build this country. I have a strong sense that today's political climate and social culture is ignoring growing problems of the bigness described in the article--concentrations of power. I have heard a lot of people say everything is corrupt, it doesn't matter, which at least in my reading, appears to have not been the case in the past. If that is true, I'm not sure if America would look the same today if it wasn't true.

Consultant32452 9y ago
>By contrast, it seems today people view big banks as a kind of mandatory evil that we should just shut up about and tolerate. On the contrary, I think the population would LOVE to vote for a President that isn't owned by Goldman Sachs, but there just isn't one. We sort of almost kinda got there with Bernie Sanders, but the establishment wouldn't let that happen.
- khc 9y ago
  s/establishment/votes of the people/

mg74 9y ago

The author states that "is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale", and then points to falling profits of music and newspaper industries as the victims of said stymied innovation, the very actors that have fought the innovation of the last 25 years the hardest.

evdev 9y ago
I laughed out loud at that paragraph. To be clear: obviously the assertion itself might be true but is very possible to deny. To make matters worse, the support for the idea is basically that services that charge the end user nothing have destroyed the revenues of services that had the ability to ransom themselves for money. Whether that's good or bad to the broader public is... complicated.
candiodari 9y ago
I doubt that it looks that way as a peon inside the newspaper and/or music industries. It is certainly true that there is more listening to music/movies and more reading of newspaper articles than ever before. And yet, journalists, musicians, and ... have it much harder nowadays.

surrey-fringe 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

ceejayoz 9y ago
That's it, I'm starting an article titled "Is Betteridge's law of headlines true?"
- surrey-fringe 9y ago
  dun do it

raldi 9y ago

How could anyone possibly consider Google a monopoly? There's no lock-in whatsoever. If someone were to build a better search engine, you could switch to it in seconds. That's what separates Google from Microsoft in the 90's, AT&T in the 70's, and the oil and steel barons of yore.

rrggrr 9y ago

Self-serving. Google news has brought regional, independent and small journalists to the masses... much to the NYT dismay. Digital media by many, including Google, has brought with it digital journalism, journalistic data science, micro-news and multi-source real time news. It's brought readers print, video and interactive information, and machine consumable feeds. I learn more from HN daily than I do most news sources I consume directly. NYT can raise its journalistic and UI game, or it xpcan wither and die. Either way, there will be more alternatives than ever.

jtlienwis 9y ago

I think Intel had an 80% market share for all its days. Yet here we are 30 years past the 8086 days and transistors on the latest Intel chip are how many thousands of times cheaper than they were then? One big competitor in tech has to remain paranoid as Andy Grove said to stay alive. Look at what happened to Yahoo.

jtlienwis 9y ago

Lets see. Intel has had an 80% market share since the days of the 8086. Yet here we are 30 years later and the cost for a transistor on the latest Intel chip are THOUSANDS of times cheaper than then. Tech has a pretty slippery slope for competitors that are not paranoid as Andy Grove used to say. Look at what happened to Yahoo, the Google of its day.

scarface74 9y ago

1997 - Apple Computer Company might as well have been called "The Beleagured Computer Maker" and Microsoft had an "unbeatable" monopoly in operating systems and browsers. 2017 - Apple is the most valuable company in the world and now known as phone company while Microsoft is still dominant in operating systems for desktops it doesn't matter and a company that barely existed in 1997 has the dominant browser and becoming the dominant desktop OS in schools. Facebook is on top now, but so was Friendster and MySpace. Facebook is already seen as the place for "old people". In other words. In technology, no one stays on top for long no need for the government.

Ericson2314 9y ago

Why the hell is this flagged?

HillaryBriss 9y ago
i second that. i don't see the sense in flagging this story.