5 ms·

> Apple is a design company selling tools that empower people. [...] Microsoft is an enterprise-focused services company focused on helping people get work done

by adwn 8y ago

> Apple is a design company selling tools that empower people. [...] Microsoft is an enterprise-focused services company focused on helping people get work done. [...] Oh dear, what drivel. By that logic, BP is not an oil and gas company, it's logistics company helping people and goods get to where they're needed the most. And Deutsche Bank isn't a bank, it's a charity focused on making people's and companies' dreams come true (for a small fee). Please spare me this bullshit.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
doyoulikeworms 8y ago
I think the sentiment is true, though, that the giant tech companies are a diverse set of businesses. There’s overlap between them, but they focus on different things and are successful in (mostly) each their own market.
- nextstep 8y ago
  I agree that the broader point is true: each giant is using software (and hardware in some cases) to build massive infrastructure businesses (logistics, cloud, communications, advertising/search, etc.). But I think this analysis overlooks the ways where these tech companies do sort of compete: search advertising is a duopoly between Google and Facebook; search has some (very weak) competition from Microsoft and Amazon; cloud services are competitive between Google and Amazon... I think the stronger pattern is Alphabet is in everything and in some way competing with every other giant.
  - jzebedee 8y ago
    Azure is by far the next biggest cloud provider after AWS. GCP is the lame duck playing catch up.
    - dmoy 8y ago
      Yea don't underestimate MS's enterprise connections. Gives them a huge leg up in cloud.
    - rhymenoceros 8y ago
      Oddly enough, the three biggest cloud vendors by revenue are MS, Amazon, and _IBM_ (see links below). IBM Cloud revenue is a head-scratcher. I've had to use them in the past, and while they have some unique features, it's hard to imagine anyone choosing them unless they had an explicit need for those features, or were forced into using IBM due to existing business relationships. I guess corporate inertia (possibly from the SoftLayer days) is a hard thing to overcome. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/07/11/microsoft-on-track-to-hit-7-billion-in-quarterly-cloud-revenue-amazon-6-billion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/07/11/microsoft-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/05/21/top-cloud-vendors-will-crush-100-billion-in-2018-revenue-microsoft-amazon-ibm-hit-75-billion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/05/21/top-cloud-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft-tops-amazon-in-q1-cloud-revenue-6-0-billion-to-5-44-billion-ibm-third-at-4-2-billion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft-...
    - lawrenceyan 8y ago
      Is that really what you think? Google Cloud is far and away the best service for machine learning right now. There's a reason why basically every company that has ML training needs is switching from AWS to GCP. Not only is Tensorflow, which is the only production machine learning framework that anyone uses, basically 100% integrated with GCP, the Google Compute Engine is the only way you can get access to TPUs. At my company, we use GCP almost exclusively with preembtible TPUs as our primary compute for training models. It's not cheap, but you can't beat the performance and quality. Plus when you compare it with how much the engineers here are getting paid, it's a drop in the bucket ultimately.
      - mooreds 8y ago
        How much of the average compute work load for companies and startups is machine learning?
agumonkey 8y ago
yeah it can be stretched too far, but at the same time, I think in the case of Apple and MS, they had different views on what was the goal of their (for profit) business. MS rapidly tried to be the platform. Apple felt a bit closer to people usage.
- Ntrails 8y ago
  The goal is to make as much profit as possible. It's the only goal that they're aiming for, and it's consistent. Everything else is just about how to get there
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    Thats true but trivial. How to get there is exactly the right question, its what makes it possible to turn a profit.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    No
meritt 8y ago
You must have never read anything from Neil Cybart before. The entire purpose of his newsletter, Above Avalon, is to support a long-only viewpoint of Apple. Just take a look at some of his daily updates: https://www.aboveavalon.com/dailyupdates/ https://www.aboveavalon.com/dailyupdates/
specialist 8y ago
McDonald's saw (see?) themselves as a real estate company. The problem with this article, the drivel, is projecting nonsensical narratives onto these entities. So while Google is certainly not a customer facing data services company, I still have no idea how they see themselves. Which would be useful information. A better (actionable) external narrative is Scott Galloway's The Four. I have no idea if Galloway's analysis is closer to the mark. But at least it's self-consistent. [http://www.thefourbook.com http://www.thefourbook.com]
- cm2187 8y ago
  What they are is what they are making most of their money at. Everything else is a hobby or supporting that business. Apple is selling iphones, google and facebook selling ads, amazon a retailer and a cloud provider. Microsoft selling software licences to businesses and cloud provider. One thing that should be worth looking at given where we are in the economic cycle is how procyclical these businesses are. They didn't suffer much in the 2008 crisis as they were in full expension mode, but now these businesses are starting to be mature. Ads and retail are certainly very procyclical. $1000 smartphone too I presume. Cloud should be more stable, depending on how much of their income is VC funded loss making startups. Business license should be fairly stable.

by adwn 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

doyoulikeworms 8y ago

I think the sentiment is true, though, that the giant tech companies are a diverse set of businesses. There’s overlap between them, but they focus on different things and are successful in (mostly) each their own market.

nextstep 8y ago
I agree that the broader point is true: each giant is using software (and hardware in some cases) to build massive infrastructure businesses (logistics, cloud, communications, advertising/search, etc.). But I think this analysis overlooks the ways where these tech companies do sort of compete: search advertising is a duopoly between Google and Facebook; search has some (very weak) competition from Microsoft and Amazon; cloud services are competitive between Google and Amazon... I think the stronger pattern is Alphabet is in everything and in some way competing with every other giant.
- jzebedee 8y ago
  Azure is by far the next biggest cloud provider after AWS. GCP is the lame duck playing catch up.
  - dmoy 8y ago
    Yea don't underestimate MS's enterprise connections. Gives them a huge leg up in cloud.
  - rhymenoceros 8y ago
    Oddly enough, the three biggest cloud vendors by revenue are MS, Amazon, and _IBM_ (see links below). IBM Cloud revenue is a head-scratcher. I've had to use them in the past, and while they have some unique features, it's hard to imagine anyone choosing them unless they had an explicit need for those features, or were forced into using IBM due to existing business relationships. I guess corporate inertia (possibly from the SoftLayer days) is a hard thing to overcome. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/07/11/microsoft-on-track-to-hit-7-billion-in-quarterly-cloud-revenue-amazon-6-billion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/07/11/microsoft-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/05/21/top-cloud-vendors-will-crush-100-billion-in-2018-revenue-microsoft-amazon-ibm-hit-75-billion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/05/21/top-cloud-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft-tops-amazon-in-q1-cloud-revenue-6-0-billion-to-5-44-billion-ibm-third-at-4-2-billion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/04/27/microsoft-...
  - lawrenceyan 8y ago
    Is that really what you think? Google Cloud is far and away the best service for machine learning right now. There's a reason why basically every company that has ML training needs is switching from AWS to GCP. Not only is Tensorflow, which is the only production machine learning framework that anyone uses, basically 100% integrated with GCP, the Google Compute Engine is the only way you can get access to TPUs. At my company, we use GCP almost exclusively with preembtible TPUs as our primary compute for training models. It's not cheap, but you can't beat the performance and quality. Plus when you compare it with how much the engineers here are getting paid, it's a drop in the bucket ultimately.
    - mooreds 8y ago
      How much of the average compute work load for companies and startups is machine learning?

agumonkey 8y ago

yeah it can be stretched too far, but at the same time, I think in the case of Apple and MS, they had different views on what was the goal of their (for profit) business. MS rapidly tried to be the platform. Apple felt a bit closer to people usage.

Ntrails 8y ago
The goal is to make as much profit as possible. It's the only goal that they're aiming for, and it's consistent. Everything else is just about how to get there
- ThomPete 8y ago
  Thats true but trivial. How to get there is exactly the right question, its what makes it possible to turn a profit.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  No

meritt 8y ago

You must have never read anything from Neil Cybart before. The entire purpose of his newsletter, Above Avalon, is to support a long-only viewpoint of Apple. Just take a look at some of his daily updates: https://www.aboveavalon.com/dailyupdates/ https://www.aboveavalon.com/dailyupdates/

specialist 8y ago

McDonald's saw (see?) themselves as a real estate company. The problem with this article, the drivel, is projecting nonsensical narratives onto these entities. So while Google is certainly not a customer facing data services company, I still have no idea how they see themselves. Which would be useful information. A better (actionable) external narrative is Scott Galloway's The Four. I have no idea if Galloway's analysis is closer to the mark. But at least it's self-consistent. [http://www.thefourbook.com http://www.thefourbook.com]

cm2187 8y ago
What they are is what they are making most of their money at. Everything else is a hobby or supporting that business. Apple is selling iphones, google and facebook selling ads, amazon a retailer and a cloud provider. Microsoft selling software licences to businesses and cloud provider. One thing that should be worth looking at given where we are in the economic cycle is how procyclical these businesses are. They didn't suffer much in the 2008 crisis as they were in full expension mode, but now these businesses are starting to be mature. Ads and retail are certainly very procyclical. $1000 smartphone too I presume. Cloud should be more stable, depending on how much of their income is VC funded loss making startups. Business license should be fairly stable.