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Why is it healthy to have many small players? Larger companies have the resources to put experts on hard problems. They also have the vested incentive (since th
by fixermark 9y ago
Why is it healthy to have many small players? Larger companies have the resources to put experts on hard problems. They also have the vested incentive (since they have more to lose if they fail) to handle things like security correctly---I trust Facebook and Google to use security and authentication best-practices much more than J. Random Startup, for example.
- walkingolof 9y agoThe best example is gaming, imagine no-indies, you would have to chose between an NBA Game, the latest Quake and a Driving game each year, the next year, same thing but with more polygons, that is "safe" AAA games that publishers bet on, they do not create games like Fes, DwarfFortress or EvE.
- fixermark 9y agoGaming is a totally different ecosystem to what Google builds. I want something very different from my entertainment than from my information-seeking and business services.
- maxxxxx 9y agoBecause big companies set the hurdle really high for new technology to succeed. Either they buy the new company and kill the product or they can re-implement the feature. To me mobile devices are an example of this. PalmOS or FirefoxOS could maybe have succeeded if Android and iOS weren't that overwhelming. Apple and Google can control whatever they want to be on their devices and what they don't like. Innovation is pretty much stopped.
- fixermark 9y agoAs a former owner of several generations of Palm devices and a former Palm developer, I must regrettably suggest that it wasn't Apple or Google's control of their respective ecosystems that killed PalmOS. Palm hardware was unreliable and plagued with battery breakdown problems.