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Google is advertising. Facebook/Twitter/etc are social networking. Uber is transportation. Amazon sells stuff. Silicon Valley lost its tech when it lost its sil

Google is advertising. Facebook/Twitter/etc are social networking. Uber is transportation. Amazon sells stuff. Silicon Valley lost its tech when it lost its silicon. You are not a tech company unless you sell technology to other companies, and that is your main stream of revenue.

shuckles 7y ago
"Tech" is a label which can obviously mean anything as broad was "builds skyscrapers" but in this context means companies with very low marginal costs. That is specifically what WeWork is not, as every new customer requires the acquisition of physical office space.
DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
I’d wager they’re tech companies if their business model is built on proprietary technology that allows them to take a business idea and scale it quickly. Uber’s a tech company because their technology for taxi dispatch allows them to dispatch millions of cars without a single human manning a telephone. Amazon is a tech company because their inventory management system (unique at the time: when they didn’t have bins of identical items in their warehouses unlike their competitors in the early 2000s. If Amazon was just using Magento then you’d have a point - but when a company’s beating heart depends on the canny exploitation of their own technology - they’re a tech company.
xiphias2 7y ago
Google's value would take a huge hit if somebody made a search engine that is better than Google's, so it's still a tech company. It's still mainly seaech (advertising is its business model, though ad positioning is state-of-the-art). Facebook has network effect and Über has it's driver network, which is more important than the app itself. They are all very different types of companies. WeWork is similar to Über: it has real costs of buying atoms instead of.juat handling bits.
- etskinner 7y ago
  Uber doesn't use Ü in its name
jbay808 7y ago
Google search, maps, and other products are impressive piecies of new technology that Google creates, and even if they don't sell them directly for money, they wouldn't be making their ad revenue without them. I do think a tech company has to be creating technology yo be a tech company, but it can choose the method of generating revenue from that tech makes the most sense.

shuckles 7y ago

"Tech" is a label which can obviously mean anything as broad was "builds skyscrapers" but in this context means companies with very low marginal costs. That is specifically what WeWork is not, as every new customer requires the acquisition of physical office space.

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago

I’d wager they’re tech companies if their business model is built on proprietary technology that allows them to take a business idea and scale it quickly. Uber’s a tech company because their technology for taxi dispatch allows them to dispatch millions of cars without a single human manning a telephone. Amazon is a tech company because their inventory management system (unique at the time: when they didn’t have bins of identical items in their warehouses unlike their competitors in the early 2000s. If Amazon was just using Magento then you’d have a point - but when a company’s beating heart depends on the canny exploitation of their own technology - they’re a tech company.

xiphias2 7y ago

Google's value would take a huge hit if somebody made a search engine that is better than Google's, so it's still a tech company. It's still mainly seaech (advertising is its business model, though ad positioning is state-of-the-art). Facebook has network effect and Über has it's driver network, which is more important than the app itself. They are all very different types of companies. WeWork is similar to Über: it has real costs of buying atoms instead of.juat handling bits.

etskinner 7y ago
Uber doesn't use Ü in its name

jbay808 7y ago

Google search, maps, and other products are impressive piecies of new technology that Google creates, and even if they don't sell them directly for money, they wouldn't be making their ad revenue without them. I do think a tech company has to be creating technology yo be a tech company, but it can choose the method of generating revenue from that tech makes the most sense.