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The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple
- visarga 9y agoIn case you want to shorten the title in similar situations ("The GAFA War"): FAMGA - Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon GAFA - Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple FANG - Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google
- user5994461 9y agoor call them the big four.
- jrs95 9y agoPersonally I'd keep Microsoft included, they're killing it with services now. Especially amongst enterprise consumers.
- bad_user 9y agoI wish we stop the perpetuation of dumb metaphors and analogies. It does nobody any good.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoWhat is the dumb metaphor/analogy and why?
- fhood 9y agoMost of this articles content, and because analogies don't usually represent meaningful understanding, they just fake it.
- MBCook 9y agoCalling Apple the genitals because they're a luxury brand? As soon as I saw that graphic I knew what quality of article I was in for.
- Singletoned 9y agoYeah, that was pretty tenuous. And assertion that women buy Apple products to deter "romantic rivals from poaching [their] relationship partner" seems almost ridiculous. I would say that iPhones and MacBooks are almost mass-market these days. Sure, they are more expensive than the alternatives, but they are so ubiquitous that can't really be considered status symbols anymore, can they?
- eregorn 9y agoI think it could be argued, though this article didn't seem to bother arguing it as much as it does for the other "pharaohs". Wasn't there an article here a few weeks ago about the green text bubbles?
- wadeboggs 9y agoGo to a public university or high school and count the MacBooks you see.
- jrs95 9y agoWell relative to $40k+ for tuition, a $1000+ laptop is pretty cheap!
- fhood 9y agoHell, probably less than your cell bill per year.
- falcolas 9y agoOr the number of apple earbuds and airpods. Those white buds are ubiquitous. And where they are lacking, Apple's other property - Beats - steps in.
- bad_user 9y agoI can tell you from my experience as somebody that never liked Apple products, those Apple earbuds are popular because they are cheap and good, having an insane quality/price ratio. I have an Android phone right now, but I'm using Apple earbuds, even though the volume controls don't work.
- amelius 9y ago> Your iPhone signals you’re wealthier, better-educated, and more attractive than an Android user. The "status" argument is a bit silly. An iPhone costs about the same as a dog annually, [1]. [1] https://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-980&y=-2276&z=5 https://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-980&y=-2276&z=5
- mattferderer 9y agoI honestly find it very easy to not use any of their services. They all have quality competitors.
- kawfey 9y agoThe majority of humans don't find it so easy or necessary.
- mattferderer 9y agoI agree. As stated in the article the best thing many of these companies do is make their product easier to use. If they actually wanted to use a different service though, do you think they would find it hard?
- adventured 9y ago> The majority of humans don't find it so easy or necessary. Minority, in fact. You're wildly exaggerating, as is the article. Half of Facebook's monthly actives barely use the core social network service. That leaves a billion people or so. There are 7.x billion people on the planet. Your majority premise just collapsed. Google has about 1/3 of global adults as users, with varying frequency. Gmail as an example, has a small share of global email. Again, minority. Amazon is still a trivial ecommerce presence outside of the US, as a whole and in relation to the number of adults shopping on their service versus the total number of people on earth. And Apple? Their reach, like the others, is dramatically less than the "majority of humans." Apple reaches a billion people.
- bllguo 9y agoPlease. Don't be a pedant, you're not advancing any meaningful points. It should be obvious that in the context of this discussion, we are talking about the developed Western world.
- lkiernan 9y agoI'm overlooking the easy "It's easy for me so it's easy for everyone" because I'm interested what phone you use?
- zzalpha 9y agoI'm genuinely unsure how I feel about this article. First, the internet itself is only in danger if net neutrality is genuinely threatened by ISPs. Until then, the network itself is as open as it ever was. As for the services on top, the meta-layer of products and infrastructure we rely on--social media, content sources, smartphones and smart devices, etc--there's a lot of reason to be concerned. But Amazon's marketshare is tiny compared to traditional retailers. They're growing, sure, but they're not a monopoly yet. Apple is already being beaten on many fronts, smartphones included. Google is successful in a few areas (search, email, android), but they've proven incapable of pushing into other major areas (streaming services, social, etc). And Facebook also has basically one core competency. So, there's lots of reasons to be concerned. But this article feels more than a little hyperbolic. And as a random aside, modern theories suggest that pyramid builders were paid employees and not slaves.
- idlewords 9y agoAmazon's role in the oligopoly is running much of cloud computing. It comes down to this: - Google and Facebook capture all the value in online ads - Amazon, Google and Microsoft control the cloud - Apple and Google have a duopoly mobile OS - Apple and Microsoft dominate desktop OSs (sorry linux bro) - Facebook essentially controls online political advertising, and its founder is gearing up for a run at office Even if the pyramids were made by happy, paid, unionized workers with a good health/mummification plan (which seems a stretch), they were a terrible misuse of resources.
- Pigo 9y ago> Facebook's algorithmic echo chamber got Trump elected. The article he references talks extensively about how the campaign effectively used social media for fundraising and advertising instead of tv, not echo chambers for brainwashing people. After all this time people still can't admit that echo chambers are what propped up Clinton in every media outlet and poll.
- eregorn 9y agoI always wonder why the whole "facebook internet" isn't brought up more by pro net-neutrality folks. I think there's only one article that's been written about a particularly worrisome consequence it has as well [1]. While I think it'd take a very long time for Americans to actually be convinced of this, the reason why this is happening (because facebook might as well be THE internet for these users) is a lot more worrisome. Particularly when Mark himself is running soon. (1)https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre-using-the-internet/ https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id...
- drewg123 9y agoWhat I think is potentially more interesting is the anti-consumer behaviors of Amazon in what I call the Amazon/Google cold war over video: - Amazon not allowing the sale of chromecast - Amazon keeping its instant video app off generic android TV devices for a long time, even though they had an app that worked with the Sony android TV. - Amazon using its instant video app as a trojan horse to get you to install the Amazon app store on your Android phone. (and weakening your phone's security, due to having to "allow unknown sources"
- deegles 9y ago> Amazon using its instant video app as a trojan horse Google requires Play Services to be installed and enabled in order to allow Chromecast, which is why no Google apps are on Amazon Fire devices. If anything Amazon's approach is less intrusive since it's just one extra app (unless they also install services).
- drewg123 9y agoThe problem with both is that you have to allow unknown sources. It would be nice (on Google's part) to allow multiple app store certs, so you (as the consumer) could decide which app stores to trust & the OS could maintain some level of security based on the users prefs. As it is now, you need to open your phone up to potential malware to install another app store. What I just don't get is why Amazon are trying to force people to get their video app via their app store, rather than putting it in Google play (where it is apparently available, but just for non-US regions). Is Google trying to take a cut of in-app transactions, like Apple does?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dexterdog 9y agoThey can keep playing walled garden games and piracy will just continue to be the better option.
- Nokinside 9y agoNetwork externalities (product's value to a consumer changes as the number of users of the product changes) are so incredibly strong that few monopoly powers and eventual market failure is inevitability. If you could run multiple parallel universes starting from early 90's, you would end with just handful of companies dominating the markets and using one service or product to leverage to other areas in almost all of them. Just the names of the companies would change. 0014749879
- amelius 9y agoThe ironic part is that the real "gatekeepers of the internet" are the cable companies, but they can't take advantage of it.
- staltz 9y agoFun experiment to try out on your computer and experience the gradual death of the internet: block all domains and subdomains from Google and Facebook in your `/etc/hosts` file, and see how many other websites fail to function. I've had this enabled for 6 months and I've seen websites stopped working as they should, e.g.: - I couldn't reset my password in Twitch, it required (for some reason) access to both Facebook and Google servers. I had to temporarily disable the `/etc/hosts` restrictions - National Geographic site fetches jQuery from Google and the website is unusable - No more embedded Google Maps on many small websites (like local restaurants etc) - Say bye to embedded YouTube videos - Many small websites just display in blank - Other websites have default ugly fonts but are still usable So Google and Facebook's reach is not just related to direct visits to their sites. Essentially, without them, it's a very crippled internet. The one site that works great is Wikipedia, even its videos are self hosted.
- 659087 9y ago> - National Geographic site fetches jQuery from Google and the website is unusable Try this. It might help with a lot of the issues you're experiencing. https://decentraleyes.org/ https://decentraleyes.org/
- solotronics 9y agoI wonder if anyone has tried decentralized peer to peer CDN for things like JS.. code seems a perfect fit for a distributed CDN.
- dexterdog 9y agoIt would help to just cache assets based on the integrity hash. I know there is a potential security hole, but the browser can remember what the sourced URL was and verify/validate. At the very least it gives you a way to handle a downed CDN.
- savanaly 9y agoAnalyzing how websites work without Google or Facebook given that they were designed with the availability of those in mind is pointless. To truly see what it would be like without Google or Facebook we'd have to test how websites work without Google or Facebook given that they were designed without the availability of those in mind. The saying "if things were different, things would be different" comes to mind.
- tzury 9y agoIf your are a coder, I'd say: Split your money between those four giants and get back to code [1]. [1] https://goo.gl/TjDviU https://goo.gl/TjDviU
- aisofteng 9y agoThere's an effect here that this article doesn't mention and that most don't mention. Large scale innovation happens in one of two ways: a strong industry leader, or via government. The latter is relatively rare because government is necessarily usually more conservative; the former happens more easily, especially because industry leaders often are either formed or maintained because a private venture was able to move fast enough to develop a technology in a way that has large societal implications. The side effect, though, is that people who work at those private industries that have innovated and developer something new (which may or may not have short term deleterious effects) eventually leave and either diffuse their knowledge or start their own ventures. When this happens, as time passes, many other new ventures - which can often have an effect directly opposite to said deleterious effects, or otherwise have positive effects - spring up and take hold. And that's a net positive. There are people who worked at (or currently work at and will leave) Google and Facebook, advertising companies that have disproportionately much power, but will use the knowledge they gained from those places to put into effects efforts that they might not have known how to otherwise and that may make the world better, long term. Articles like the one posted here are passionate and persuasive, but they also focus on the short term (if not solely the present); it is worthwhile to remember these sorts of long term effects.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- romanovtexas 9y agoThis article is like scaremongering, partly about how Google and Facebook are selling ads but interlaced with "SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER!", all the same. Some posts can be so ironical.
- tomrod 9y agoOnly one mention of Microsoft. They're eating the software world, and have one of the best data platforms.