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on one side I completely understand the need for healthy market competition in tech industry. However, you have to realize the amount of innovation and products
by m23khan 7y ago
on one side I completely understand the need for healthy market competition in tech industry. However, you have to realize the amount of innovation and products FAANG companies (and Microsoft) have rolled out -- it is unimaginable how we would be able to function equally efficiently both at personal and commercial level.
On personal level for example,
I use gmail/google search/rely on google to tell me weather and search news and do FX rate conversion, do some unit conversions, etc. I used to own android based phone and it made life simple to have gmail compatible app and the likes.
Similarly, I can use amazon for shopping, trying out / learning AWS and even get kindle to read ebooks should I desire. heck, amazon provides entire infrastructure to efficiently deliver my parcels --- better than my Government's mailing program.
- Similarly majority of Business world runs mainly on backs of Microsoft (when it comes to corporate tooling and computer OS).
- Even take example of Apple -- their products are worldclass and its integration with its own suite of products makes life so much simpler -- iPhone, iWatch, their storage offerings, etc.
Now imagine having to utilize products between dozens of companies instead of these giants who you don't know would be able to survive in long run. And those blaming these tech giants for lack of collaboration for a market standard -- sure, that is correct but remember it was much worse to integrate products and services among different vendors back in 1980s and 1990s when you had dozens of medium and large companies.
- 18731xak 7y agoEveryone functioned more efficiently before the Internet or Windows for that matter. Travel agents could find flights in DOS applications much faster than nowadays. Life has turned into a gigantic useless digital bureaucracy.
- chrismcb 7y agoNow anyone can find fights, and fairly quickly.
- sshumaker 7y agoThat’s what people said about AT&T before we broke it up in 1982 - that it would hurt innovation. This was the company that had Bell Labs after all. Instead, we had an absolute revolution in communication technology since - from fax lines, to modems, to cell connections, to the commercial internet. It turns out that innovation happens more often when there is a lot of competition in the market. And the market figures out how to build standards for interop - you don’t need all of the products from the same company to get them to work together.
- antiterra 7y agoYour claim about innovation thriving when there is competition may be true, but your examples run counter to that. Commercial fax machines, modems, TCP/IP, Arpanet,and cell phones all predate the AT&T breakup.
- chrismcb 7y agoDid we really have an absolute revolution in communication? I'm not so sure there is evidence to back that statement up. Or at least none to suggest that innovation happened because if the breakup
- nabla9 7y ago>realize the amount of innovation and products FAANG companies (and Microsoft) have rolled out This is common misconception. Look at the list of acquisitions made by FAANG companies. For some reason their internal innovation dries up very fast and they buy innovation. FAANG companies innovate with checkbook and grow using network effect.
- smegma2 7y agoWhen a FAANG company makes an acquisition, what's the effect on consumers? Would they be better off if acquisitions did not happen?
- nabla9 7y ago> what's the effect on consumers? Consumer-welfare standard is not the only concern of antitrust regulation.
- nvader 7y agoThe answer to this will vary hugely on a case-by-case basis. I don't want to speculate on what the sign of the net effect is. So without trying to answer the question one way or the other, I just want to share this link which came to mind: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
- pjc50 7y agoQuite often there is an "acquishutdown"; the company is bought for the team not the product, or the product fails to integrate, or is neglected. So if you were happy with the product, you're worse off after an acquisition. Yahoo was particularly bad for this (Flickr, Delicious).
- loudmax 7y ago> but remember it was much worse to integrate products and services among different vendors back in 1980s and 1990s when you had dozens of medium and large companies. Precisely because of the lack of standards. A monopoly is a standard of sorts, but it does not foster progress. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google all owe their existence to the open web. Apple's iPhone wouldn't be nearly as successful if they couldn't attach to nearly any modern cell phone network. Even Microsoft owes success to the commodification of the PC. All of the success we attribute to capitalism is due to competitive free markets. Like democracy itself, it should not be taken for granted. We could lose it and we'll be much the worse off if we do.
- toper-centage 7y agoBut how can we account for the innovation that didn't happen because they were crushed by companies that could offer a similar service for free?