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> Of these, Exxon, BHP, Shell and Petrobras have one trick between 'em: dig shit out of the ground and sell it. I hardly think this is the same. It is very ex
by jussij 16y ago
> Of these, Exxon, BHP, Shell and Petrobras have one trick between 'em: dig shit out of the ground and sell it.
I hardly think this is the same.
It is very expensive to 'dig shit out of the ground' and you will only make money if you manage to dig in the right place. Many a mining company have gone into the business of digging only to go broke shortly after, because the managed to dig in the wrong place.
Sure these companies make massive profits by digging, but they also spend a vast amount of money consolidating these profits by exploring for the next place to dig.
Their trick is not so much the digging, but their ability to keep finding other places to dig and their ability to then get the stuff out of the ground at profit.
- Lewisham 16y agoThat's the rub. Google's trick was created by a bunch of CS grad students at Stanford, and annihilated Yahoo! (who had a very similar trick) in less than a decade. One of Google's biggest competitors was started by an undergrad in his doom room at Harvard. The barrier to entry on the web is incredibly low in comparison to other industries. There are thousands of other people ready to eat your lunch, and it only takes one to bring everything toppling down. I think Google's previous attempts at monetization, like the swiss cheese Google box for your intranet, Google Apps, etc. were decently good ideas. Google now seems hell-bent on open-source, in the hope of drawing more eyeballs onto the one trick. As awesome as the self-driving cars are, I'd worry about trying to find some cash flow on something a bit closer to home.