4 ms·

Over 4 decades I've watched many unbeatable high-tech juggernauts disappear practically overnight. These will be no different, including the relentless claims o

Over 4 decades I've watched many unbeatable high-tech juggernauts disappear practically overnight. These will be no different, including the relentless claims of "but it's different this time!" for each one.

ardit33 9y ago
I don’t know. MSFT and Apple have been around for 35+ years and still going strong. If well managed, large companies stick around for a long time. Can’t see why FB and GOOG won’t be around for at least another 30 years. Sure, there is SUN, and Sillicon Graphics as an example, but they were badly managed and put all their eggs into one expensive basket and got disrupted. The only way large companies become truly irrevelant is through: 1) Bad management 2) Ground shifting / seismic shift on the ecosystem or tech. (Think Kodak). FB has been very proactive in acquiring new trendy companies and in retrospect Instagram’s acquisition was a genius move. (I remember how much talk was at the time at the 1b price for a company with no revenue). Google has been proactive by doing active research, and amazon by doing all kinds of things. Yahoo and Twitter are classically badly managed companies and while yahoo got sold to irrevelance, I think Twitter is the next one to be truly disrupted.
- tehlike 9y ago
  Google has recently diversified into many other sub-bets. How about FB? What are they diversifying in?
  - elsewhen 9y ago
    VR, Video, Messaging
    - tehlike 9y ago
      Video is part of its social focus, so is messaging. VR... i don't know about that.
- zdw 9y ago
  > I don’t know. MSFT and Apple have been around for 35+ years and still going strong. Lots of survivorship bias in this - Most of their contemporaries such as Atari, Tandy, Commodore are all defunct, and the Unix hardware vendors that all became M&A targets.
rtpg 9y ago
Companies like General Electric have been able to survive many decades. I would say that given the scale of companies like Amazon in particular, the null hypothesis is more that these companies will exist forever.
notaboutdave 9y ago
I mostly agree, but now they're building cities. How will we compete with companies that encompass our entire lives, digital and physical? Today we are stuck with Google search, tomorrow we will be trapped in off-white Google apartments in Google city, and DuckDuckGo will still only be a search engine.
- davidcbc 9y ago
  How are you "stuck" with Google search? Just use something else, you even mention DDG in your post.
swyx 9y ago
can you elaborate a little about which unbeatable juggernauts you have in mind? i think where in the past juggernauts have fallen its usually due to not being wise to megatrends/platform shifts. I'm not saying amzn/fb/googl are immune to these, but they have each in their own way shown a fair amount of nimbleness in the 10+years they have been around, navigating huge shifts in consumer behavior. If they can learn from the past and prevent themselves from ossifying, they will put off their eventual decline for that much longer. I think bezos and zuck have among the best attitudes to change/learning we have ever had in corporate america.
- ctdonath 9y ago
  CompuServe. AOL. Kodak. Nortel. Etc. Practically everything on nabla9's list above had to make severe pivots to survive, and many are shadows of their former selves; for many that aren't, I see their demise coming (they've just got so much money from the heyday that the momentum will take time to stop).
tanilama 9y ago
Sort of agreeing with u. FAAG companies are hard to compete, only under the assumption that consumers' habit won't change. In that sense, yes. Even now, no one beats Microsoft for desktop operating system. But the real interesting underlying pattern is, once the revolution comes, it is not that the then giants would lose their game they had been so good at and optimized to teeth for years to come, it is more like, the game they were playing become, suddenly not that important anymore. Look at MSFT and Intel, how formidable they were 10 years ago, and even though they are still insanely profitable, it is no doubt they are no longer wearing the crowns of tech economy. They didn't lose their own game, they are beaten in someone's game. So it is hard to say where those tech giants can be beaten or not unless someone can predict the future. What if there is revolution happens, where PC can be as powerful as the super computer today, that the cloud companies business model and advantage has been invalidated overnight? Don't lose your imagination.
nabla9 9y ago
Worlds largest ICT companies by revenue, category and year founded: 1. [2] Apple (1976) 2. [2] Samsung (1969) 3. [4] Amazon.com (1994) 4. [2] Foxconn (1974) 5. [4] Alphabet Inc. (1998) 6. [2] Microsoft (1975) 7. [1] Hitachi (1910) 8. [1] IBM (1911) 9. [3] Huawei (1987) 10. [1] Sony (1946) 11. [1] Panasonic (1918) 12. [3] Dell (1984) 13. [2] Intel (1968) 14. [1] Hewlett Packard (1939) Apple revenue $229.2B, Hewlett Packard $50B. (FYI: Facebook revenue is just $30B) categories: [1] old electronics, 70-100 years old companies. [2] founded few years before or after the invention of microprocessor (1971) [3] founded at the dawn of the PC era (80s) [4] founded at the dawn of the internet era (90s) From each revolution few companies may eventually join the list, but the old rule.
- Cyph0n 9y ago
  I'm honestly surprised that Hitachi is even on that list!
  - nabla9 9y ago
    Only 30% of Hitachi revenue comes from ICT and electronics. Their consulting and services business sell mostly to Japan. Electronics division is very specialized. Semiconductor processing equipment, test and measurement and so on.
- tnova 9y ago
  > Worlds largest ICT companies by revenue, category and year founded: > [...] > 2. [2] Samsung (1969) I know, I'm nitpicking here, but I guess you are thinking of Samsung Electronics here, which is just a part of the Samsung Group. Samsung was founded in 1938.

ardit33 9y ago

I don’t know. MSFT and Apple have been around for 35+ years and still going strong. If well managed, large companies stick around for a long time. Can’t see why FB and GOOG won’t be around for at least another 30 years. Sure, there is SUN, and Sillicon Graphics as an example, but they were badly managed and put all their eggs into one expensive basket and got disrupted. The only way large companies become truly irrevelant is through: 1) Bad management 2) Ground shifting / seismic shift on the ecosystem or tech. (Think Kodak). FB has been very proactive in acquiring new trendy companies and in retrospect Instagram’s acquisition was a genius move. (I remember how much talk was at the time at the 1b price for a company with no revenue). Google has been proactive by doing active research, and amazon by doing all kinds of things. Yahoo and Twitter are classically badly managed companies and while yahoo got sold to irrevelance, I think Twitter is the next one to be truly disrupted.

tehlike 9y ago
Google has recently diversified into many other sub-bets. How about FB? What are they diversifying in?
- elsewhen 9y ago
  VR, Video, Messaging
  - tehlike 9y ago
    Video is part of its social focus, so is messaging. VR... i don't know about that.
zdw 9y ago
> I don’t know. MSFT and Apple have been around for 35+ years and still going strong. Lots of survivorship bias in this - Most of their contemporaries such as Atari, Tandy, Commodore are all defunct, and the Unix hardware vendors that all became M&A targets.

rtpg 9y ago

Companies like General Electric have been able to survive many decades. I would say that given the scale of companies like Amazon in particular, the null hypothesis is more that these companies will exist forever.

notaboutdave 9y ago

I mostly agree, but now they're building cities. How will we compete with companies that encompass our entire lives, digital and physical? Today we are stuck with Google search, tomorrow we will be trapped in off-white Google apartments in Google city, and DuckDuckGo will still only be a search engine.

davidcbc 9y ago
How are you "stuck" with Google search? Just use something else, you even mention DDG in your post.

swyx 9y ago

can you elaborate a little about which unbeatable juggernauts you have in mind? i think where in the past juggernauts have fallen its usually due to not being wise to megatrends/platform shifts. I'm not saying amzn/fb/googl are immune to these, but they have each in their own way shown a fair amount of nimbleness in the 10+years they have been around, navigating huge shifts in consumer behavior. If they can learn from the past and prevent themselves from ossifying, they will put off their eventual decline for that much longer. I think bezos and zuck have among the best attitudes to change/learning we have ever had in corporate america.

ctdonath 9y ago
CompuServe. AOL. Kodak. Nortel. Etc. Practically everything on nabla9's list above had to make severe pivots to survive, and many are shadows of their former selves; for many that aren't, I see their demise coming (they've just got so much money from the heyday that the momentum will take time to stop).

tanilama 9y ago

Sort of agreeing with u. FAAG companies are hard to compete, only under the assumption that consumers' habit won't change. In that sense, yes. Even now, no one beats Microsoft for desktop operating system. But the real interesting underlying pattern is, once the revolution comes, it is not that the then giants would lose their game they had been so good at and optimized to teeth for years to come, it is more like, the game they were playing become, suddenly not that important anymore. Look at MSFT and Intel, how formidable they were 10 years ago, and even though they are still insanely profitable, it is no doubt they are no longer wearing the crowns of tech economy. They didn't lose their own game, they are beaten in someone's game. So it is hard to say where those tech giants can be beaten or not unless someone can predict the future. What if there is revolution happens, where PC can be as powerful as the super computer today, that the cloud companies business model and advantage has been invalidated overnight? Don't lose your imagination.

nabla9 9y ago

Worlds largest ICT companies by revenue, category and year founded: 1. [2] Apple (1976) 2. [2] Samsung (1969) 3. [4] Amazon.com (1994) 4. [2] Foxconn (1974) 5. [4] Alphabet Inc. (1998) 6. [2] Microsoft (1975) 7. [1] Hitachi (1910) 8. [1] IBM (1911) 9. [3] Huawei (1987) 10. [1] Sony (1946) 11. [1] Panasonic (1918) 12. [3] Dell (1984) 13. [2] Intel (1968) 14. [1] Hewlett Packard (1939) Apple revenue $229.2B, Hewlett Packard $50B. (FYI: Facebook revenue is just $30B) categories: [1] old electronics, 70-100 years old companies. [2] founded few years before or after the invention of microprocessor (1971) [3] founded at the dawn of the PC era (80s) [4] founded at the dawn of the internet era (90s) From each revolution few companies may eventually join the list, but the old rule.

Cyph0n 9y ago
I'm honestly surprised that Hitachi is even on that list!
- nabla9 9y ago
  Only 30% of Hitachi revenue comes from ICT and electronics. Their consulting and services business sell mostly to Japan. Electronics division is very specialized. Semiconductor processing equipment, test and measurement and so on.
tnova 9y ago
> Worlds largest ICT companies by revenue, category and year founded: > [...] > 2. [2] Samsung (1969) I know, I'm nitpicking here, but I guess you are thinking of Samsung Electronics here, which is just a part of the Samsung Group. Samsung was founded in 1938.