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Competition in a free market is good, but in the presence of monopolies, it's a self-destructing concept. TechCrunch wrote[0] "This feels like a sign of goodwi

Competition in a free market is good, but in the presence of monopolies, it's a self-destructing concept. TechCrunch wrote[0] "This feels like a sign of goodwill on behalf of Microsoft, which closed its acquisition of GitHub last October, with former Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman taking over as GitHub’s CEO." I believe it's more of a sign of an attempt to kill GitHub's rivals by hurting their revenue streams. As Aaron Levie, co-founder and chief executive of Box once said in 2014, “These guys will drive prices to zero, [...] you do not want to wait for Google or Amazon to keep cutting prices on you. ‘Free’ is not a business model.”[1] [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/07/github-free-users-now-get-unlimited-private-repositories/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/07/github-free-users-now-get-... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/technology/box-dropbox-and-hightail-pivot-to-new-business-models.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/technology/box-dropbox-an...

aarongray 8y ago
Code storage is a free market and GitHub is not a monopoly.
- boramalper 8y ago
  It’s currently the de facto solution, and it’s on the way of becoming a monopoly. 9 out of 10 companies I’ve applied to asked for my GitHub profile explicitly; I presume they would be equally happy with a link to Bitbucket or GitLab but it just shows that GitHub has already won the mindshare by far -which comes as no surprise-. Now that they are acquired by Microsoft, they have more resources than any of its competitors.
  - nickik 8y ago
    The term monopoly has a meaning in economics and even in normal conversation. Saying they have monopoly because they have lot of mindshare is crazy talk.
    - boramalper 8y ago
      I said “it’s on the way of becoming one”, not that it’s currently a monopoly.
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    Its the most popular option but its far from a monopoly. Last job I applied for asked for my github account and I sent them a gitlab link. They hired me and internally they use bitbucket.
markmark 8y ago
It's tough when your competition can give away their product and fund it through their bottomless pockets and money they make on other products. I used to work for a great company in the developer tooling area, one of the big players came directly after us, ramped up a team, started copying our features and gave the product away for free. We were still doing well when I left, but it'll be interesting to see how it goes over the next few years.
- closetCS 8y ago
  This might be a naive comment, but isn't that predatory pricing. By dropping prices to zero and trying to purposely hurt your competitors, you effectively gain a monopoly on that industry.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - aarongray 8y ago
    Github's competitors are already providing the same service for free. Github is dropping their prices from $7 / mo to free to compete.
    - dogweather 8y ago
      But they're not. They created a new, feature-reduced repo type to make free/private. The marketing hides this, and you need to dig to the "Comparison" section to see it: https://github.com/pricing#feature-comparison https://github.com/pricing#feature-comparison
      - aarongray 8y ago
        Good point, it's not the exact same. But their new offering is much closer to what their competitors are offering, so I'd say it's still a move to try to better compete with the free offerings from other companies.
TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
So, it's a loss leader. Seems like we've been here before. All the breathless hyperbole AGAINST "EEE," and yet, we're watching Microsoft destroy another market. But they "love" Linux, and open source.

aarongray 8y ago

Code storage is a free market and GitHub is not a monopoly.

boramalper 8y ago
It’s currently the de facto solution, and it’s on the way of becoming a monopoly. 9 out of 10 companies I’ve applied to asked for my GitHub profile explicitly; I presume they would be equally happy with a link to Bitbucket or GitLab but it just shows that GitHub has already won the mindshare by far -which comes as no surprise-. Now that they are acquired by Microsoft, they have more resources than any of its competitors.
- nickik 8y ago
  The term monopoly has a meaning in economics and even in normal conversation. Saying they have monopoly because they have lot of mindshare is crazy talk.
  - boramalper 8y ago
    I said “it’s on the way of becoming one”, not that it’s currently a monopoly.
- baroffoos 8y ago
  Its the most popular option but its far from a monopoly. Last job I applied for asked for my github account and I sent them a gitlab link. They hired me and internally they use bitbucket.

markmark 8y ago

It's tough when your competition can give away their product and fund it through their bottomless pockets and money they make on other products. I used to work for a great company in the developer tooling area, one of the big players came directly after us, ramped up a team, started copying our features and gave the product away for free. We were still doing well when I left, but it'll be interesting to see how it goes over the next few years.

closetCS 8y ago
This might be a naive comment, but isn't that predatory pricing. By dropping prices to zero and trying to purposely hurt your competitors, you effectively gain a monopoly on that industry.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- aarongray 8y ago
  Github's competitors are already providing the same service for free. Github is dropping their prices from $7 / mo to free to compete.
  - dogweather 8y ago
    But they're not. They created a new, feature-reduced repo type to make free/private. The marketing hides this, and you need to dig to the "Comparison" section to see it: https://github.com/pricing#feature-comparison https://github.com/pricing#feature-comparison
    - aarongray 8y ago
      Good point, it's not the exact same. But their new offering is much closer to what their competitors are offering, so I'd say it's still a move to try to better compete with the free offerings from other companies.

TheRealDunkirk 8y ago

So, it's a loss leader. Seems like we've been here before. All the breathless hyperbole AGAINST "EEE," and yet, we're watching Microsoft destroy another market. But they "love" Linux, and open source.