3 ms·
I'm not sure it's fully from efficiency of scale, especially outside of manufacturing. What I keep seeing is using one's size to keep out newcomers as the most
by tabtab 8y ago
I'm not sure it's fully from efficiency of scale, especially outside of manufacturing. What I keep seeing is using one's size to keep out newcomers as the most important factor. You have more patents and more lawyers and can accept financial losses longer on specific products to keep them out: products A and B subsidize C when C is threatened. And you can bundle multiple products into "special deals" the way a single-product producer can't. And there's the network effect that social networks use: you need more customers before you can get customers.
In short, economic bullying.
Since the early 80's I've watched Microsoft grow, and don't see it about raw merit at all. It's poker, not chess.
- rayiner 8y agoAmazon is the archetypal example. They didn’t litigate their way to dominance. Amazon is just better than all the mom-and-pop alternatives, and that is fueled by technology and scale. Wal-Mart is another example, except optimizing for price. Apple is another.
- tabtab 8y agoI'm mostly talking about after one gets dominant, not how they got dominant. Microsoft was already dominant in PC software by the late 1980's.