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Amazon and Google will end up being the middle men for everything. You simply can't compete with a company that has all the data, all the money, the best engin

Amazon and Google will end up being the middle men for everything. You simply can't compete with a company that has all the data, all the money, the best engineers, the patents, etc... Once they like your business model, you are out of business. This is happening at an increasingly faster pase. There will be an Amazon AirBnB, and Amazon Uber, Amazon Food, Amazon Freight, etc... the future of free markets is not free. They will own every slot in the monopoly game and we will receive a basic income to keep the game going.

mseebach 9y ago
> Amazon and Google A couple of weeks ago, your list would have included Facebook. The future is a lot less deterministic than you think.
- castis 9y ago
  Yes, but does this make OPs forecast any less possible?
  - mseebach 9y ago
    The OPs forecast is predicated on an understanding of companies like Google and Amazon being so big and powerful that they are immune to the ebb and flow that define normal market conditions and allow new entrants to prosper and old companies to whither when they no longer create enough value for consumers. My argument is that when Facebook, a company until a few weeks ago commonly understood to be every bit as immortal as Google and Amazon, can be so deeply upset by a scandal that isn't even predominantly their own making (I don't mean to imply that FB isn't culpable, but CA did the bad stuff and explicitly and broadly broke terms in doing so), this immortality is a lot shallower than it seems. Facebook isn't dead, and won't be for a long time, but the idea that Facebook moving into Airbnb's space will immediately monopolise it for the detriment of consumers seems rather more of a silly fantasy than a "forecast".
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - justicezyx 9y ago
    No it doesn't. It merely points out that the possibility is very low in the absolute sense.
- kakarot 9y ago
  The future is a lot less deterministic than you think. Unless our current understanding of physics is completely wrong, the future is entirely deterministic. I think you mean to use the word predictable, which insinuates that we don't have enough information to accurately model the future.
  - CPLX 9y ago
    I believe Mr. Heisenberg would like to have a word with you.
    - ubernostrum 9y ago
      Mr. Heisenberg would like to have a word with you about classical versus quantum phenomena.
    - kakarot 9y ago
      We don't use quantum physics to measure significant amounts of time, we use classical physics. In addition to the uncertainty we encounter at that scale, the arrow of time is often irrelevant anyway.
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    You seem certain of that, but I don't think it's been quite that clear for some time. I'm not a physicist, but AFAIK the Copenhagen interpretation essentially requires indeterminacy. Suffice it to say that I don't think it's as clear-cut as you do :)
    - kakarot 9y ago
      Quantum mechanics has no bearing on the macro scale that classical physics inhabit in our current models. We currently have not synthesized the two models into a singular theory. Classical physics is deterministic. I thought this was common knowledge...
      - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
- kadenshep 9y ago
  Amazon and Google are engaging in concrete industries. Google is still the largest advertising company in the world, facebook is not. Facebook has been and will be second fiddle to Google in the ad industry. "His" list wouldn't have included Facebook because they haven't really dominated anything, let alone stretched their arms out into other fields. Facebook can only hold the dimmest of candles up to Google and Amazon. There are giants, then there are titans.
theli0nheart 9y ago
New ideas thrive best without constraints. Large companies may have more resources but they must have institutional constraints to manage a large workforce. Startups will always have a leg up on new ideas because of their flexibility. There’s no bullshit holding back a small team from executing. That’s a big reason why startups are so effective at pulling the rug out from underneath larger companies who seem to be invincible.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  Consider what startups are/have actually been building... collectively. There are a lot of individual startups, but most of the money driving them comes from the market cap of "tech giants" directly or indirectly. First, VCs invest based on the probability of a startup becoming a tech giant. Second, most exits are buy-outs by existing giants using their market cap as currency. Ultimately, either new giants are created or existing giants are made bigger. That's where all the startup money comes from, and that's where it ends up in success scenarios. Startups are a part of that, not the antidote to it. What are these tech giants, and why are they worth so much? As Thiel put it, monopoly. MS learned this game early. They understood, platforms and moats, network effects and ringfenced markets. Google is a search monopoly. Amazon has its fiefs. Uber raised all that money because it looked like they could become a monopoly. Now "their" market looks a little more competition-friendly. There are actual market dynamics pressuring prices down to marginal costs... Hey! how are we supposed to justify $100bn market cap with competition?!! Unicorns are a dime a dozen (well $1bn, technically). Unless the market crashes, we'll probably have 3-5 dragons(TM) within 3-5 years worth >$1 trillion each. They will all be relatively unexposed to market forces.
fwgwgwgch 9y ago
> the best engineers You're living in a bubble. Lots of companies have better engineers on an average.
- 2_listerine_pls 9y ago
  I am not sure about that, but what I meant is that they can afford to hire the best in their field.
rubidium 9y ago
The railroad barons are going to be the middleman for everything. They have all the best engineers and control all the suppliers.
- CPLX 9y ago
  They were for a while there, and it took legislation to fix it, it didn't just magically get better.
  - shortoncash 9y ago
    I am always surprised by the turn of events when legislation is not involved. Several years ago, documentaries were coming out attacking Walmart over everything. Now it's Amazon. I don't hear as much about Walmart from the rabble-rousing press anywhere now. Moreover, Amazon ended up killing many of the mom and pops anyway. We could not get a Walmart near our city because of the political opposition, and in the end, the political opposition only delivered us a different overlord.
    - CPLX 9y ago
      I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at. Both Amazon and Walmart have problematic side effects on society. The general trend over this period has been more consolidation of corporate market power and rising income inequality. The idea that these problems don't just fix themselves is certainly supported, rather than undercut, by these observed realities.
      - jsight 9y ago
        I think the point is that a narrative of "Amazon is destroying awesome local companies... like Sears!" is both misleading and not useful in any particular way. A more general narrative of the dangers of our current "winner take all" market environment might be useful.
    - jsight 9y ago
      I think about this quite a bit. Why does there only have to be one boogeyman? I also remember when Wal-Mart was the company destroying boogeyman. It was easy to see why. Their sales in electronics, some furniture, housegoods, and some clothing were causing massive erosion to some key competitors. It wasn't really mom and pop shops either, it was places like Sears and other big box stores. And, of course, other shops were eating other businesses for some of them as well (for example, Home Depot and Lowes having a devastating impact on appliance sales at Sears). But somehow, the media somehow decided that Amazon should be the new boogeyman. Thinking about that list above, are those even things that I would buy at Amazon? Generally, they are not. Amazon has had a huge impact, but not necessarily in the obvious way that gets bandied about in our politics and our press.
htormey 9y ago
Nah, both companies have a major weaknesses that no amount of money seems to be able to solve. Namely, user experience. Example 1, Dropbox: Google & Amazon seem like companies ideally positioned to destroy Dropbox. They excel at making network infrastructure at scale, they both have competing products and massive existing customer basis. Yet Dropbox has managed to compete and win on user experience. Example 2, Netflix: Both google & amazon have tons of money and massive amounts of users to cross promote a premium video service to yet neither YouTube nor Amazon seem to have figured out how to produce consistently good original content to the same degree that Netflix has. Netflix should be dead by now yet it’s doing very well. YouTube/Amazon also have much poorer interfaces than Netflix. I could go on. My point is that plenty of companies successfully compete with both Google & Amazon.
- GSimon 9y ago
  Not the most airtight examples. Dropbox was first to market with an innovative service, they've been losing market share ever since Google Drive which now has 25%+ of the market. Netflix was also an innovative service that was first to market. So now there's a new monopoly type of a company who dominates a new market > cable tv. Smaller company can't oust bigger ones unless it is actually possible for them to #1. Out innovate and implement a better service and #2. Hope the monopolies don't catch on to your idea and overwhelm it with their resources (i.e what Blockbuster could have done by adapting an online model). Those 2 critical circumstances don't have all that often.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    In the case of Netflix, there are also some distinctions between their strategy and both Google's and Amazon's strategies that can't easily be erased. Netflix has a 100% subscription model that includes original content plus enough licensed content (mostly TV) to fill things out. Google is basically an engineering organization (ADDED: that makes money through advertising) that probably doesn't have a lot of interest in becoming a studio or in licensing a lot of content. Amazon wants to offer subscription video as part of a broader bundle at a price they want to be attractive even for people who don't use the subscription video a lot. And they also want to sell video a la carte whether online or as disks.
Eridrus 9y ago
I think the playbook at these two companies is very different. Amazon will eat your business completely, but Google will mostly just take a cut off the top. I say this since I don't think Google is willing to hire large amounts of people who aren't software engineers.

mseebach 9y ago

> Amazon and Google A couple of weeks ago, your list would have included Facebook. The future is a lot less deterministic than you think.

castis 9y ago
Yes, but does this make OPs forecast any less possible?
- mseebach 9y ago
  The OPs forecast is predicated on an understanding of companies like Google and Amazon being so big and powerful that they are immune to the ebb and flow that define normal market conditions and allow new entrants to prosper and old companies to whither when they no longer create enough value for consumers. My argument is that when Facebook, a company until a few weeks ago commonly understood to be every bit as immortal as Google and Amazon, can be so deeply upset by a scandal that isn't even predominantly their own making (I don't mean to imply that FB isn't culpable, but CA did the bad stuff and explicitly and broadly broke terms in doing so), this immortality is a lot shallower than it seems. Facebook isn't dead, and won't be for a long time, but the idea that Facebook moving into Airbnb's space will immediately monopolise it for the detriment of consumers seems rather more of a silly fantasy than a "forecast".
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- justicezyx 9y ago
  No it doesn't. It merely points out that the possibility is very low in the absolute sense.
kakarot 9y ago
The future is a lot less deterministic than you think. Unless our current understanding of physics is completely wrong, the future is entirely deterministic. I think you mean to use the word predictable, which insinuates that we don't have enough information to accurately model the future.
- CPLX 9y ago
  I believe Mr. Heisenberg would like to have a word with you.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    Mr. Heisenberg would like to have a word with you about classical versus quantum phenomena.
  - kakarot 9y ago
    We don't use quantum physics to measure significant amounts of time, we use classical physics. In addition to the uncertainty we encounter at that scale, the arrow of time is often irrelevant anyway.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  You seem certain of that, but I don't think it's been quite that clear for some time. I'm not a physicist, but AFAIK the Copenhagen interpretation essentially requires indeterminacy. Suffice it to say that I don't think it's as clear-cut as you do :)
  - kakarot 9y ago
    Quantum mechanics has no bearing on the macro scale that classical physics inhabit in our current models. We currently have not synthesized the two models into a singular theory. Classical physics is deterministic. I thought this was common knowledge...
    - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
kadenshep 9y ago
Amazon and Google are engaging in concrete industries. Google is still the largest advertising company in the world, facebook is not. Facebook has been and will be second fiddle to Google in the ad industry. "His" list wouldn't have included Facebook because they haven't really dominated anything, let alone stretched their arms out into other fields. Facebook can only hold the dimmest of candles up to Google and Amazon. There are giants, then there are titans.

theli0nheart 9y ago

New ideas thrive best without constraints. Large companies may have more resources but they must have institutional constraints to manage a large workforce. Startups will always have a leg up on new ideas because of their flexibility. There’s no bullshit holding back a small team from executing. That’s a big reason why startups are so effective at pulling the rug out from underneath larger companies who seem to be invincible.

dalbasal 9y ago
Consider what startups are/have actually been building... collectively. There are a lot of individual startups, but most of the money driving them comes from the market cap of "tech giants" directly or indirectly. First, VCs invest based on the probability of a startup becoming a tech giant. Second, most exits are buy-outs by existing giants using their market cap as currency. Ultimately, either new giants are created or existing giants are made bigger. That's where all the startup money comes from, and that's where it ends up in success scenarios. Startups are a part of that, not the antidote to it. What are these tech giants, and why are they worth so much? As Thiel put it, monopoly. MS learned this game early. They understood, platforms and moats, network effects and ringfenced markets. Google is a search monopoly. Amazon has its fiefs. Uber raised all that money because it looked like they could become a monopoly. Now "their" market looks a little more competition-friendly. There are actual market dynamics pressuring prices down to marginal costs... Hey! how are we supposed to justify $100bn market cap with competition?!! Unicorns are a dime a dozen (well $1bn, technically). Unless the market crashes, we'll probably have 3-5 dragons(TM) within 3-5 years worth >$1 trillion each. They will all be relatively unexposed to market forces.

fwgwgwgch 9y ago

> the best engineers You're living in a bubble. Lots of companies have better engineers on an average.

2_listerine_pls 9y ago
I am not sure about that, but what I meant is that they can afford to hire the best in their field.

rubidium 9y ago

The railroad barons are going to be the middleman for everything. They have all the best engineers and control all the suppliers.

CPLX 9y ago
They were for a while there, and it took legislation to fix it, it didn't just magically get better.
- shortoncash 9y ago
  I am always surprised by the turn of events when legislation is not involved. Several years ago, documentaries were coming out attacking Walmart over everything. Now it's Amazon. I don't hear as much about Walmart from the rabble-rousing press anywhere now. Moreover, Amazon ended up killing many of the mom and pops anyway. We could not get a Walmart near our city because of the political opposition, and in the end, the political opposition only delivered us a different overlord.
  - CPLX 9y ago
    I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at. Both Amazon and Walmart have problematic side effects on society. The general trend over this period has been more consolidation of corporate market power and rising income inequality. The idea that these problems don't just fix themselves is certainly supported, rather than undercut, by these observed realities.
    - jsight 9y ago
      I think the point is that a narrative of "Amazon is destroying awesome local companies... like Sears!" is both misleading and not useful in any particular way. A more general narrative of the dangers of our current "winner take all" market environment might be useful.
  - jsight 9y ago
    I think about this quite a bit. Why does there only have to be one boogeyman? I also remember when Wal-Mart was the company destroying boogeyman. It was easy to see why. Their sales in electronics, some furniture, housegoods, and some clothing were causing massive erosion to some key competitors. It wasn't really mom and pop shops either, it was places like Sears and other big box stores. And, of course, other shops were eating other businesses for some of them as well (for example, Home Depot and Lowes having a devastating impact on appliance sales at Sears). But somehow, the media somehow decided that Amazon should be the new boogeyman. Thinking about that list above, are those even things that I would buy at Amazon? Generally, they are not. Amazon has had a huge impact, but not necessarily in the obvious way that gets bandied about in our politics and our press.

htormey 9y ago

Nah, both companies have a major weaknesses that no amount of money seems to be able to solve. Namely, user experience. Example 1, Dropbox: Google & Amazon seem like companies ideally positioned to destroy Dropbox. They excel at making network infrastructure at scale, they both have competing products and massive existing customer basis. Yet Dropbox has managed to compete and win on user experience. Example 2, Netflix: Both google & amazon have tons of money and massive amounts of users to cross promote a premium video service to yet neither YouTube nor Amazon seem to have figured out how to produce consistently good original content to the same degree that Netflix has. Netflix should be dead by now yet it’s doing very well. YouTube/Amazon also have much poorer interfaces than Netflix. I could go on. My point is that plenty of companies successfully compete with both Google & Amazon.

GSimon 9y ago
Not the most airtight examples. Dropbox was first to market with an innovative service, they've been losing market share ever since Google Drive which now has 25%+ of the market. Netflix was also an innovative service that was first to market. So now there's a new monopoly type of a company who dominates a new market > cable tv. Smaller company can't oust bigger ones unless it is actually possible for them to #1. Out innovate and implement a better service and #2. Hope the monopolies don't catch on to your idea and overwhelm it with their resources (i.e what Blockbuster could have done by adapting an online model). Those 2 critical circumstances don't have all that often.
- ghaff 9y ago
  In the case of Netflix, there are also some distinctions between their strategy and both Google's and Amazon's strategies that can't easily be erased. Netflix has a 100% subscription model that includes original content plus enough licensed content (mostly TV) to fill things out. Google is basically an engineering organization (ADDED: that makes money through advertising) that probably doesn't have a lot of interest in becoming a studio or in licensing a lot of content. Amazon wants to offer subscription video as part of a broader bundle at a price they want to be attractive even for people who don't use the subscription video a lot. And they also want to sell video a la carte whether online or as disks.

Eridrus 9y ago

I think the playbook at these two companies is very different. Amazon will eat your business completely, but Google will mostly just take a cut off the top. I say this since I don't think Google is willing to hire large amounts of people who aren't software engineers.