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> Why is it not ok for tech companies to be big, but a-ok for telecom, oil, banks, law firms, audit firms, and all the other traditional companies to be huge?
by modi15 9y ago
> Why is it not ok for tech companies to be big, but a-ok for telecom, oil, banks, law firms, audit firms, and all the other traditional companies to be huge?
The thing which makes tech companies different from every other is the 'infrastructure' effect of software and the absence of 'geographical' limits on monopolies.
Banks, law firms, audit firms are fundamentally limited by geography. A law firm in New York will find it very hard to service clients in San Francisco without having employees there. Tech firms arent 'boxed' in by these limits, which are preset for most traditional businesses, thereby greatly expands their ability to become monopolies and strangle competition.
The other advantage that tech companies have is the fundamentally additive nature of software. Microsoft made a very good OS few decades back, but its ability to keep releasing a competitive OS builds on the work piled on by decades of engineering. It is simply impossible for a startup to release another version of an OS which can compete with Microsoft Windows.
However, if we were to break up Windows into pieces, it opens up the possiblity for a new startup to innovate on a part of the OS and buy existing pieces from the vendors of each part to ship a new offering.
- stale2002 9y agoI mean, what you are effectively arguing is that Microsoft's OS is so freaking awesome and amazing and good for consumers, that no other competitor is able to provide value to consumers as much as microsoft is. And your solution is effectively to make Microsoft's products worse, so that a different, lower quality product is able to compete. What about instead of that, we do the thing that helps consumers, instead of hurting them?
- throwaway2048 9y agoThe error in your assumption is that windows wins because its "so freaking awesome" and not because of secondary effects that microsoft has imposed on the market via its ability to effectively force adoption of stuff.
- tensor 9y agoAll of the industries I've mentioned are already international. Law firms have offices around the world and routinely export work. Audit firms too. Your arguments about momentum of software also equally play to the big law firms and audit firms, if not more so. These firms have been gorillas for a very long time. For perspective, PWC is the result of a merger between two large audit firms founded in 1949 and 1954 respectively. Microsoft was founded in 1975. PWC is a worldwide company employing 236k employees. Microsoft only employs 124k. Admittedly Microsoft has a revenue of ~90 billion vs PWCs mere 37.7 billion. But I'm not seeing why one is fundamentally different than the other.