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>All of the most successful tech companies are platforms This is silly. 4 rather recent internet companies are meant to prove your point that the way to succes

>All of the most successful tech companies are platforms This is silly. 4 rather recent internet companies are meant to prove your point that the way to success is as a platform? This post ignores the vast majority of tech companies.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
Depends on your definition of "success". As a percentage of total market capitalization, these 4 companies comprise a significant portion of that, though by percentage of total companies, it's a low figure.
kbenson 7y ago
> rather recent internet companies As opposed to what, ancient internet companies? Amazon, Google and Ebay were all started in the mid to late 1990's. They are all over twenty years old. Facebook, as the youngest, is about 15 years old. How many people were even on the internet in the mid 1990's? Edit: Or perhaps you meant tech companies pre-internet. But I think the fact that relatively young (although not really, even non-internet tech companies aren't that old) companies quickly rose to supersede non-internet companies (or those non-internet companies shifted to to be somewhat internet centric to not be left behind, like Microsoft) points towards more evidence for platforms (since the internet enabled platforms in a much easier way).
- dahart 7y ago
  > How many people were even on the internet in the mid 1990's? I know that was rhetorical, but just to answer the question literally since I was curious, the estimates across multiple sources from the first page of Google results for “internet usage 1995” show it was double digit millions, somewhere in the 10M-50M range, and separate percentage estimates seem to say about 0.5% of the world’s population. Today, by contrast it’s over 50% of the planet.
  - skinnymuch 7y ago
    Holy crap. Of course the usage in 1995 would be super low. That’s around the first time I used the Internet. It was a vast ecosystem to my young eyes. So the number makes complete sense but still shocking to me. I’m guessing by Napster peak time the number was relatively much bigger.
m-p-3 7y ago
the vast majority of tech companies aren't most successful.
oblio 7y ago
IBM was a platform company. System/360, the PC (which they botched by opening up).

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

Depends on your definition of "success". As a percentage of total market capitalization, these 4 companies comprise a significant portion of that, though by percentage of total companies, it's a low figure.

kbenson 7y ago

> rather recent internet companies As opposed to what, ancient internet companies? Amazon, Google and Ebay were all started in the mid to late 1990's. They are all over twenty years old. Facebook, as the youngest, is about 15 years old. How many people were even on the internet in the mid 1990's? Edit: Or perhaps you meant tech companies pre-internet. But I think the fact that relatively young (although not really, even non-internet tech companies aren't that old) companies quickly rose to supersede non-internet companies (or those non-internet companies shifted to to be somewhat internet centric to not be left behind, like Microsoft) points towards more evidence for platforms (since the internet enabled platforms in a much easier way).

dahart 7y ago
> How many people were even on the internet in the mid 1990's? I know that was rhetorical, but just to answer the question literally since I was curious, the estimates across multiple sources from the first page of Google results for “internet usage 1995” show it was double digit millions, somewhere in the 10M-50M range, and separate percentage estimates seem to say about 0.5% of the world’s population. Today, by contrast it’s over 50% of the planet.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  Holy crap. Of course the usage in 1995 would be super low. That’s around the first time I used the Internet. It was a vast ecosystem to my young eyes. So the number makes complete sense but still shocking to me. I’m guessing by Napster peak time the number was relatively much bigger.

m-p-3 7y ago

the vast majority of tech companies aren't most successful.

oblio 7y ago

IBM was a platform company. System/360, the PC (which they botched by opening up).