The article talks about people companies and factories, and I think it is calling a tech company a people company. Lawyers and engineers are not the same in the

The article talks about people companies and factories, and I think it is calling a tech company a people company. Lawyers and engineers are not the same in the sense that lawyers have to spend hours of time to bill clients (in theory at least). With a software company, if all the engineers walk out, the company can still go on serving the same product (in theory at least). Once software is made you can make as many copies as you want essentially for free. And there is a huge barrier to entry for something like Google or Apple, or any large software product, so it is difficult to replace these companies. So I think they deserve to be in a different multiples category. But this isn't the only reason someone like Google can have such a large multiple. I think there is the possibility of transformation into a new market, not just dominance of its existing market. You could call Google an AI company instead of an advertising company. There might be some big economic potential for AI and that is what the large multiple can capture. The same applies for Amazon in that they could become a strong player in everything that is purchased, not just in online shopping. And they seem to have a real chance of moving in this direction. And, to underscore the fact that they are trying to do this, they are taking a very small profit right not to try to build their presence, and then they will start pulling profit later when they have a more dominant position.