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The "big 4" should be disrupted by the market, not the government. Of those firms listed, only Amazon seems to be in a position of solid, lasting strength. Don

The "big 4" should be disrupted by the market, not the government. Of those firms listed, only Amazon seems to be in a position of solid, lasting strength. Don't believe it? Remember Microsoft? They used to dominate our industry and crush innovation. Their tactics made Uber's seem soft and fuzzy. Sure the government gave them a knock but that didn't slow them down. Do you know what did? Apple and iOS. They missed the boat on mobile and now they're still valuable but not an existential threat to the industry. It's really hard for a tech company to dominate over the decades. Apple has been near death multiple times in the past and while they have a ton of money, they aren't exactly innovating anymore. It will happen again, it's in their DNA. Facebook is just Myspace 2.0 that was smart enough to snatch up Instagram (starting to show its age), and Whatsapp. Acquisitions != innovation. None of these companies are threats to technological progress in the long term. Something new will show up a that disrupts their entire model. It's happened with every boom cycle in tech history. The trick is to look for the next big thing and ride the wave and not look to the single most regressive institution in existence (the government) to come help you.

maxxxxx 9y ago
The problem is that we move from one dominant behemoth to another. In the meantime small business gets crushed by either.
my_usernam3 9y ago
And google (.... or alphabet)? Between their domination of mobile OS and search engines, I think they have equal lasting strength as Amazon. Plus their communication tools aren't exactly uncommon either, albeit replaceable.
- curious_fella1 9y ago
  Who says their domination of search engines is dominant? Isn't Bing starting to gain some serious market share?
  - nwsm 9y ago
    Link?
  - wpasc 9y ago
    I too have heard about Bing's growth, but how much of that is NOT because of it being default for windows 10 and Cortana searches? I think default-bing searches make up >90% of all bing searches (as opposed to going to bing.com or setting it as the default on your browser), but I'd love to see the data on that. Google became a verb which demonstrates a solid position. I was interviewing at Yahoo and was given a project problem. The interview said "Feel free to Google stuff to build the project", I joked back "Don't you mean Yahoo it?" He laughed and said "No, you can use Google. We all use Google here, it's fine." I think they're pretty dominant
  - marinman 9y ago
    According to one analysis, Google has over 90% of the global search market. What's crazy is that its market share includes virtually 0 in China, where it backed out/was forced out. http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
PatchMonkey 9y ago
Meanwhile, in the affordable consumer desktop world, Windows is still king. Wanna game on a PC? Windows. What OS dominates professional workstations in offices? Windows. Windows proficiency is still considered the standard for computer literacy. Your toy phone can do things, but thats nothing compared to a laptop or desktop. And theyre making a move on the cloud too, leveraging their dominance in productivity suites. It has been more effective than many here guessed, with FLOSS like LibreOffice competing in the same space. And they still have those same business practices.
cmurf 9y ago
After a certain size, they should be disallowed further conglomeration. The market's incentive is mergers and anti-competitive behaviors.
- donarb 9y ago
  Why? There's something to be said for letting dinosaurs get fatter and lazier. Eventually an upstart will come along and be able to move up to the top. In the 1960's no one even dreamed that IBM would lose its dominant position in computers, then along came Microsoft. 20 years from now, it'll be some other company.
pmilot 9y ago
I think you're absolutely underestimating the consequences of the various antitrust rulings Microsoft had to submit to, especially in the European Union. Even if Microsoft was no longer a monopoly (which, by the way, is entirely incorrect), you can't always hope for a new emerging market to break up a monopoly. The hold that Google has on digitized data is nearly unassailable at this point.
jowiar 9y ago
Microsoft absolutely did get slowed down by the government. Badly. It would have been illegal for them to integrate the way Apple did with MacOS, long before iOS rolled around. The role of the government is to correct for market failure. A company that has the power to be a gatekeeper (for other companies) to the industry (and uses it) is too big.
djsumdog 9y ago
Microsoft is still huge though. Sure they've lost server share to Linux (which they're embracing in some ways now) and desktop share to Apple, but they're still massive. The trouble is, how do you compete with Google, now, today. We use to have Lycos, Hotbot, Yahoo, Dogpile ... Duckduckgo is far from even approaching Google's share. I don't think the future is the free market. The future is developers making distributed platforms that everyone can support. The next YouTube won't be centralized. The next search won't have removable results, because they'll be cached among all the computers that contribute to that search.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  MS is huge but they don't have the dampening effect on innovation they did in the 90s. I fully agree with your prediction that the future is decentralized and probably non-commercial though.
- rock_hard 9y ago
  I am not sure that’s gonna work as we all want it to. If there is no central governing body (like FB or Google) then these decentralized networks will be pure anarchy...in which case it won’t take long for government to jump in and mess everything up with a bunch of nonsensical regulations...just look what happened with BitTorrent and now Crypto currencies. You seriously think the government is gonna do a better job at regulating Google or Facebook then these companies themselves? The incentives are simply not aligned...it’s all gonna go to hell my friend :(

maxxxxx 9y ago

The problem is that we move from one dominant behemoth to another. In the meantime small business gets crushed by either.

my_usernam3 9y ago

And google (.... or alphabet)? Between their domination of mobile OS and search engines, I think they have equal lasting strength as Amazon. Plus their communication tools aren't exactly uncommon either, albeit replaceable.

curious_fella1 9y ago
Who says their domination of search engines is dominant? Isn't Bing starting to gain some serious market share?
- nwsm 9y ago
  Link?
- wpasc 9y ago
  I too have heard about Bing's growth, but how much of that is NOT because of it being default for windows 10 and Cortana searches? I think default-bing searches make up >90% of all bing searches (as opposed to going to bing.com or setting it as the default on your browser), but I'd love to see the data on that. Google became a verb which demonstrates a solid position. I was interviewing at Yahoo and was given a project problem. The interview said "Feel free to Google stuff to build the project", I joked back "Don't you mean Yahoo it?" He laughed and said "No, you can use Google. We all use Google here, it's fine." I think they're pretty dominant
- marinman 9y ago
  According to one analysis, Google has over 90% of the global search market. What's crazy is that its market share includes virtually 0 in China, where it backed out/was forced out. http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share

PatchMonkey 9y ago

Meanwhile, in the affordable consumer desktop world, Windows is still king. Wanna game on a PC? Windows. What OS dominates professional workstations in offices? Windows. Windows proficiency is still considered the standard for computer literacy. Your toy phone can do things, but thats nothing compared to a laptop or desktop. And theyre making a move on the cloud too, leveraging their dominance in productivity suites. It has been more effective than many here guessed, with FLOSS like LibreOffice competing in the same space. And they still have those same business practices.

cmurf 9y ago

After a certain size, they should be disallowed further conglomeration. The market's incentive is mergers and anti-competitive behaviors.

donarb 9y ago
Why? There's something to be said for letting dinosaurs get fatter and lazier. Eventually an upstart will come along and be able to move up to the top. In the 1960's no one even dreamed that IBM would lose its dominant position in computers, then along came Microsoft. 20 years from now, it'll be some other company.

pmilot 9y ago

I think you're absolutely underestimating the consequences of the various antitrust rulings Microsoft had to submit to, especially in the European Union. Even if Microsoft was no longer a monopoly (which, by the way, is entirely incorrect), you can't always hope for a new emerging market to break up a monopoly. The hold that Google has on digitized data is nearly unassailable at this point.

jowiar 9y ago

Microsoft absolutely did get slowed down by the government. Badly. It would have been illegal for them to integrate the way Apple did with MacOS, long before iOS rolled around. The role of the government is to correct for market failure. A company that has the power to be a gatekeeper (for other companies) to the industry (and uses it) is too big.

djsumdog 9y ago

Microsoft is still huge though. Sure they've lost server share to Linux (which they're embracing in some ways now) and desktop share to Apple, but they're still massive. The trouble is, how do you compete with Google, now, today. We use to have Lycos, Hotbot, Yahoo, Dogpile ... Duckduckgo is far from even approaching Google's share. I don't think the future is the free market. The future is developers making distributed platforms that everyone can support. The next YouTube won't be centralized. The next search won't have removable results, because they'll be cached among all the computers that contribute to that search.

malvosenior 9y ago
MS is huge but they don't have the dampening effect on innovation they did in the 90s. I fully agree with your prediction that the future is decentralized and probably non-commercial though.
rock_hard 9y ago
I am not sure that’s gonna work as we all want it to. If there is no central governing body (like FB or Google) then these decentralized networks will be pure anarchy...in which case it won’t take long for government to jump in and mess everything up with a bunch of nonsensical regulations...just look what happened with BitTorrent and now Crypto currencies. You seriously think the government is gonna do a better job at regulating Google or Facebook then these companies themselves? The incentives are simply not aligned...it’s all gonna go to hell my friend :(