7 ms·

The rule still applies: if you build your business on someone else's property, don't act surprised when they they casually destroy you. It has happened again a

by _jal 6y ago

The rule still applies: if you build your business on someone else's property, don't act surprised when they they casually destroy you. It has happened again and again and again. Building for FB or Google is you making yourself their serf, and you will be allowed to exist at their whim.

moron4hire 6y ago
What business short of The Principality of Sealand's data warehousing is not "built on someone else's property"? Even a brick-and-mortar business needs to appease the taxman.
- rpdillon 6y ago
  It's a matter of degree, I imagine. Some approaches expose one to this risk to a greater degree than others. The highest risk might be placing an app or extension into a walled-off store controlled by a single company with sole authority over what is listed there.
stevespang 6y ago
Yeah, if enough intelligent people would just band together and agree to NOT do business with any corporations or co's that don't offer live human people answering their phone with intelligible English within 3 minutes of connection, voice mail and robot mail prohibited - - - bring these bastards to their knees - - or put them out of business.
seanwilson 6y ago
How can you realistically avoid this for certain products though? For mobile for example, you've got the iOS and Android store policies to go through, the iOS and Android SDKs, and whatever restrictions Safari (e.g. no proper PWAs) and Chrome have. Not everything can be a website that just needs basic browser capabilities.
- tonyztan 6y ago
  At least Android allows sideloading without using the Play Store. Chrome used to allow this, and I believe they've made it much more difficult.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - thejynxed 6y ago
    I believe you can only do it on the dev channel now and it still makes a fuss.
- viraptor 6y ago
  > How can you realistically avoid this for certain products though? You can't. It seems like if you're in business of mobile/web-apps which are not large enough to have paid, direct contacts with your relevant platforms, you should have more than one business. I'm not saying it's a reasonable expectation or a good thing. But if you can pull off either 2 ok apps, or 1 main app and some set of simple things, it may be preferable to one perfect product from the business continuity perspective.
chc 6y ago
This isn't very actionable advice, though, since there is basically no such thing as a software product that isn't built on somebody else's property. You might think, "Ah-ha, web apps!" But no, Google can still casually destroy you there. Or you might think, "Ah-ha, desktop apps!" But the OS vendor can casually destroy you there.
- lidHanteyk 6y ago
  Maybe this means that software shouldn't be distributed as products, but as code. Maybe people should be free to run code of their choice on their computers.
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    I am not helping my parents compile Gentoo Linux.
    - account42 6y ago
      Not that they should, but the only ability that is required for installing Gentoo is to read and follow instructions.
- _jal 6y ago
  People have been complaining about $dominant_player's power to destroy forever. It was IBM, then it was Microsoft, now we have new overlords. (For that matter, Sun was big enough to be a little obnoxious for a bit.) That's unfortunate, but it is how the software market has worked thus far. Platform owners have massive power over those who build on them. For it to change, the market fundamentals will have to change. People thought the internet would change things, and it did - instead of one monster, we now have several, each with much more reach and control. As far as actionable advice, well, starting a company isn't easy or formulaic. All I can recommend is look for niches where you'll be hard to dislodge and avoid situations where you have asymmetrical dependence on an entity that has no reason to care about you.
  - deleted 6y ago
maehwasu 6y ago
I’m torn here. 1. I agree as to the need to get off the Google lands. 2. Being able to create business relationships to build on other people’s property and work without fear of their yanking the rug out is an incredibly important part of a working society.
LeonB 6y ago
Their business isn’t solely built on google. Part of it relies on browsers and google have a dominant position in browsers. Should no one build a business related to browsers until google is toppled? I wouldn’t follow your “rule”, as most successful businesses started out by violating that rule.
sdrinf 6y ago
Except chrome isn't really a "property app" so much as a "proprietary OS"; it's the platform in which ~70% of desktop users spend >10 hours a day. This is different from eg Facebook, in that FB's valueprop is being "full stack" (content + controls + ads); while Chrome's design is open-ended -running other people's websites, with other people's extensions. The other side of the issue is tough, though: Chrome extensions are regularly purchased & have ads embedded into them ( https://superuser.com/questions/1551266/how-to-track-down-which-chrome-extension-is-generating-popunders https://superuser.com/questions/1551266/how-to-track-down-wh... ), so Google's chrome extension team (couple of ~hundred person?) is essentially held accountable by ~1 billion users to the behavior of ~10s of thousands of extensions.
- fouric 6y ago
  Google's 2014 net income was $14B. Chrome is one of the most valuable properties that Google owns, as it allows them to control a large fraction of advertising on the desktop, and advertising is their core business. They can afford to hire thousands more developers to vet Chrome extensions, yet they don't - implying that at least the upper levels of the Google command hierarchy don't consider this to be a problem or don't care about fixing it.
tensor 6y ago
This is not a useful comment. You are suggesting a world where no platform is extensible, which isn't realistic nor desirable. When you are building for an extensible platform it's entirely reasonable to be surprised when the vendor sabotages you. Platforms like this are good because they help both parties, so there is an expectation that one side won't sabotage the other in general. When it happens it's surprising, and usually not a great outcome for the platform provider.

by _jal 6y ago

moron4hire 6y ago

What business short of The Principality of Sealand's data warehousing is not "built on someone else's property"? Even a brick-and-mortar business needs to appease the taxman.

rpdillon 6y ago
It's a matter of degree, I imagine. Some approaches expose one to this risk to a greater degree than others. The highest risk might be placing an app or extension into a walled-off store controlled by a single company with sole authority over what is listed there.

stevespang 6y ago

Yeah, if enough intelligent people would just band together and agree to NOT do business with any corporations or co's that don't offer live human people answering their phone with intelligible English within 3 minutes of connection, voice mail and robot mail prohibited - - - bring these bastards to their knees - - or put them out of business.

seanwilson 6y ago

How can you realistically avoid this for certain products though? For mobile for example, you've got the iOS and Android store policies to go through, the iOS and Android SDKs, and whatever restrictions Safari (e.g. no proper PWAs) and Chrome have. Not everything can be a website that just needs basic browser capabilities.

tonyztan 6y ago
At least Android allows sideloading without using the Play Store. Chrome used to allow this, and I believe they've made it much more difficult.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- thejynxed 6y ago
  I believe you can only do it on the dev channel now and it still makes a fuss.
viraptor 6y ago
> How can you realistically avoid this for certain products though? You can't. It seems like if you're in business of mobile/web-apps which are not large enough to have paid, direct contacts with your relevant platforms, you should have more than one business. I'm not saying it's a reasonable expectation or a good thing. But if you can pull off either 2 ok apps, or 1 main app and some set of simple things, it may be preferable to one perfect product from the business continuity perspective.

chc 6y ago

This isn't very actionable advice, though, since there is basically no such thing as a software product that isn't built on somebody else's property. You might think, "Ah-ha, web apps!" But no, Google can still casually destroy you there. Or you might think, "Ah-ha, desktop apps!" But the OS vendor can casually destroy you there.

lidHanteyk 6y ago
Maybe this means that software shouldn't be distributed as products, but as code. Maybe people should be free to run code of their choice on their computers.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  I am not helping my parents compile Gentoo Linux.
  - account42 6y ago
    Not that they should, but the only ability that is required for installing Gentoo is to read and follow instructions.
_jal 6y ago
People have been complaining about $dominant_player's power to destroy forever. It was IBM, then it was Microsoft, now we have new overlords. (For that matter, Sun was big enough to be a little obnoxious for a bit.) That's unfortunate, but it is how the software market has worked thus far. Platform owners have massive power over those who build on them. For it to change, the market fundamentals will have to change. People thought the internet would change things, and it did - instead of one monster, we now have several, each with much more reach and control. As far as actionable advice, well, starting a company isn't easy or formulaic. All I can recommend is look for niches where you'll be hard to dislodge and avoid situations where you have asymmetrical dependence on an entity that has no reason to care about you.
- deleted 6y ago

maehwasu 6y ago

I’m torn here. 1. I agree as to the need to get off the Google lands. 2. Being able to create business relationships to build on other people’s property and work without fear of their yanking the rug out is an incredibly important part of a working society.

LeonB 6y ago

Their business isn’t solely built on google. Part of it relies on browsers and google have a dominant position in browsers. Should no one build a business related to browsers until google is toppled? I wouldn’t follow your “rule”, as most successful businesses started out by violating that rule.

sdrinf 6y ago

Except chrome isn't really a "property app" so much as a "proprietary OS"; it's the platform in which ~70% of desktop users spend >10 hours a day. This is different from eg Facebook, in that FB's valueprop is being "full stack" (content + controls + ads); while Chrome's design is open-ended -running other people's websites, with other people's extensions. The other side of the issue is tough, though: Chrome extensions are regularly purchased & have ads embedded into them ( https://superuser.com/questions/1551266/how-to-track-down-which-chrome-extension-is-generating-popunders https://superuser.com/questions/1551266/how-to-track-down-wh... ), so Google's chrome extension team (couple of ~hundred person?) is essentially held accountable by ~1 billion users to the behavior of ~10s of thousands of extensions.

fouric 6y ago
Google's 2014 net income was $14B. Chrome is one of the most valuable properties that Google owns, as it allows them to control a large fraction of advertising on the desktop, and advertising is their core business. They can afford to hire thousands more developers to vet Chrome extensions, yet they don't - implying that at least the upper levels of the Google command hierarchy don't consider this to be a problem or don't care about fixing it.

tensor 6y ago

This is not a useful comment. You are suggesting a world where no platform is extensible, which isn't realistic nor desirable. When you are building for an extensible platform it's entirely reasonable to be surprised when the vendor sabotages you. Platforms like this are good because they help both parties, so there is an expectation that one side won't sabotage the other in general. When it happens it's surprising, and usually not a great outcome for the platform provider.