5 ms·

It’s hard to look at your list and be impressed with Silicon Valley since around 2010. The 2010s seem to be a decade where existing giants scaled, without any

It’s hard to look at your list and be impressed with Silicon Valley since around 2010. The 2010s seem to be a decade where existing giants scaled, without any fundamentally new technological developments.

Gibbon1 6y ago
What makes me despondent is back in the 1970's 1980's much of the commercial work in the valley was about creating new technologies to empower people. Since 2010 it seems it's now mostly about exploiting people. 1975: National Semi, our new audio amp allows people to buy cheap high quality stereo's. 2010: Ubber, our app that ratfucks the taxi industry.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Or Uber: the business that allows me to drastically reduce the probability of me being scammed by a taxi driver, as well as increase the quality of the cars themselves Source: my numerous experiences with taxis in multiple cities in the US and around the world before and after Uber
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Or Uber: A failed Randian play to use VC money to squelch out every independent taxi company in the United States and the world by subsidizing rides to well below their cost. To the tune of $1B per quarter. I suspect they thought they could drive them all out of business and then take over and raise prices. Unlike their patchwork of independent competitors, Uber didn't have to cover the cost of a ride from fares. I guess now they deliver lunch so that's pretty cool. I for one look forward to the movie.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      If it was a physical product it would be considered dumping and be illegal. Not to mention Uber and Lift don't pay for the roads their businesses depend on. And then Uber and Lift have dramatically increased congestion in a lot of cities. Which negatively impacts people that live in those cities. Finally both Uber and Lift are applying political pressure to eliminate mass transit.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- cactus2093 6y ago
  No idea what ratfucking is, but the willful ignorance in your examples is almost comical. Example 1: innovations in technology & clever business model put previously expensive thing in reach for an order of magnitude wider audience, leads to significant qualitative shift in behavior/capabilities for the average person. Uber: Exactly the same thing. Why are you so offended about the harm to the taxi industry, what about all the vacuum tube manufacturers put out of business by semiconductors? Innovation has always involved creative destruction, but for some reason there's a bigger than usual portion of society now that is completely unwilling to acknowledge utilitarian benefits and wants to make all change illegal. And the even greater tragedy is it's always the comfortable, well-off upper middle class making these arguments on behalf of the working class, with absolutely no skin in the game because they will never be the first ones affected by the negative consequences of their absolutist worldview.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Couldn't vacuum tube manufacturers pivot to semiconductors, at least somewhere in the production process.
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      Nope - only in the sense of your great grear grandfather's axe after your grandfather replaced the head three times and your father replaced the haft twice and the head is now a sledgehammer. Vacuum tube making is about metalworking essentially. Sure you can swap components between the wires but manufacturing of vacuum tubes is entirely different than silicon and even they needed new fab processes for nanometer changes. Lightbulbs and would have been a better pivot (with or without a gas in the medium for neon lights or CFBs) at least until LEDs finished them off.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid). The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it. Also, the argument on Uber/Lyft drivers not being contractors since they can't set their own rates and decide which ride they take strikes me as weird since medallion drivers were contractors, had to charge the price set by the city and could only pick-up customers in the (arbitrary) zones covered by their medallions. And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24225648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24225648
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Maybe the cure can eventually become worse than the disease? Also, as terrible as the medallion system is, the taxi industry weren't uniformly as bad as SF's in every region, so ridesharing probably unintentionally wiped out some quality cab companies in the process.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      I've never heard anyone say that pre-Uber cab companies were better. But I could always be wrong.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Taxi industry had its karma coming. Prior to Uber, ratfuckers would sit behind the wheel and rip off the clients. Maybe there was some place in the world where taxis were clean and taxi drivers honest, but in my corner of the world they were synonymous with low-key mafia.
  - chrisweekly 6y ago
    In Prague (in 1997, at least), the taxis were literally run by the (Russian) mob.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      Oh, yeah, I was 19 at that time and I avoided them, they were up to no good. This strange combination of sleazy and menacing at the same time. Precisely the type of people you do not want to join in their car. Therefore they mostly preyed on international tourists at the airport.
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
It's a fair point. What's engaging is that typically, the nature of the next emerging cycle is not evident until you're well into it. I started to write a list of possible break-out technomarkets for the 2020s from The Valley, but I decided I'd rather not and be 'surprised'. One aspect of the scale these companies are achieving is the political implications. Yes, the worry in DC over their manipulation of human nature, but it's also issues like the headbutting of the gig-labor lifestyle against tax policy right in California. Pushing technology forward eventually encounters politics and it's interesting to watch these firms gird up for that battle.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
petra 6y ago
If you want fundamental new technological innovations, startups are a better place to look. Altough, for example, the work Google did in the 2010's in machine learning does seem fundamental.
risorect 6y ago
Wait what about smartphones, tablets, IoT, etc? I know that they started earlier than 2010 but I feel like the huge improvements and democratization of cloud computing, machine learning, etc (available via the "open source platforms" I believe the parent is referring to) made the 2010s the era of ubiquitous smart devices. Alexa, smart TVs, drones, misc tracking/monitoring technologies are the new normal, not to mention the sharing economy tech of the Ubers and AirBnBs, and digital payment tech like Square/Venmo + cryptocurrency in general. Am I, like, way off?
- adventured 6y ago
  No, you're entirely correct. People frequently mislead about the advancements Silicon Valley has made because it makes them feel good to bash it. There are dozens of companies not named Uber or Airbnb that have come out of SV in the past 10-15 years that lead the world at what they do. You won't see the SV bashers talk about any of that, they go out of their way to avoid that point in fact. Where is the Cloudflare of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the ServiceNow of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the WorkDay of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Palo Alto Networks of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Twilio of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Snowflake of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Splunk of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Okta of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Veeva Systems of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Zoom of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the DataDog of Europe? Doesn't exist. (DataDog is NY, however they have an office in the SV area as well) And on the list goes. These are massive, wild success stories. Most of them are already big companies and they're growing fast. With few exceptions meanwhile most of the rest of the world not named China is asleep, and SV keeps on conquering markets and building giant software companies. Where is the global competition for these companies? It largely doesn't exist, they're going to keep on with the SV traditional of pushing out of the homogeneous US market and scaling up globally and building giant companies.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    The comparison being made was of SV of today vs the SV of yesterday not SV vs Europe. By the way, of all the companies you listed, only Zoom and Snowflake were actually founded after 2010. And that's the point. In the past 10 years, we haven't seen any Googles, Apples, or Microsofts emerge, despite eye-popping levels of venture investment -- which is a bit disappointing.
ss3000 6y ago
I think one difference is the existing giants have smarted up to the fact that new competing startups can be existential threats to their business like they were to their former incumbents, and have started putting much more focus on gobbling them up with cash before they become fully fledged competitors instead of trying to out-compete them.
proverbialbunny 6y ago
>The 2010s seem to be a decade ... without any fundamentally new technological developments. I wouldn't go that far. The cloud became a thing in 2010 and from that big data appeared allowing data science to appear. The 2010s is the era of data science and ML, which is a larger leap than many give credit for. The 2010s are just like the '80s in that new technology appeared, but end consumers didn't see much of a difference until the late '90s. Just yesterday CA gave a license to GM to legally allow fully self driving cars.
PicassoCTs 6y ago
The problem here, innovation toxic venture capital, that outspend the old risk capital guard. These new - "outsiders" usually spend huge sums on leveraging what is essentially just technology used for union busting and abstracting away wage slavery. Its a capitalists idea of innovation, and it small dreams. You don't need to invent a alexa (the device), if you can drive down the wage of a person to near zero and own a alexa (the person). They already had that back in ancient rome- and thus never developed the Greek steam engine. To become really innovative at scale again, the valley needs to exorcise those tech external investors.
opportune 6y ago
Smartphones? iPhone 3G came out in mid-2009 and Android brought smartphones (and computing in general) to hundreds of millions or billions more price sensitive users

Gibbon1 6y ago

What makes me despondent is back in the 1970's 1980's much of the commercial work in the valley was about creating new technologies to empower people. Since 2010 it seems it's now mostly about exploiting people. 1975: National Semi, our new audio amp allows people to buy cheap high quality stereo's. 2010: Ubber, our app that ratfucks the taxi industry.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
Or Uber: the business that allows me to drastically reduce the probability of me being scammed by a taxi driver, as well as increase the quality of the cars themselves Source: my numerous experiences with taxis in multiple cities in the US and around the world before and after Uber
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Or Uber: A failed Randian play to use VC money to squelch out every independent taxi company in the United States and the world by subsidizing rides to well below their cost. To the tune of $1B per quarter. I suspect they thought they could drive them all out of business and then take over and raise prices. Unlike their patchwork of independent competitors, Uber didn't have to cover the cost of a ride from fares. I guess now they deliver lunch so that's pretty cool. I for one look forward to the movie.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    If it was a physical product it would be considered dumping and be illegal. Not to mention Uber and Lift don't pay for the roads their businesses depend on. And then Uber and Lift have dramatically increased congestion in a lot of cities. Which negatively impacts people that live in those cities. Finally both Uber and Lift are applying political pressure to eliminate mass transit.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
cactus2093 6y ago
No idea what ratfucking is, but the willful ignorance in your examples is almost comical. Example 1: innovations in technology & clever business model put previously expensive thing in reach for an order of magnitude wider audience, leads to significant qualitative shift in behavior/capabilities for the average person. Uber: Exactly the same thing. Why are you so offended about the harm to the taxi industry, what about all the vacuum tube manufacturers put out of business by semiconductors? Innovation has always involved creative destruction, but for some reason there's a bigger than usual portion of society now that is completely unwilling to acknowledge utilitarian benefits and wants to make all change illegal. And the even greater tragedy is it's always the comfortable, well-off upper middle class making these arguments on behalf of the working class, with absolutely no skin in the game because they will never be the first ones affected by the negative consequences of their absolutist worldview.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Couldn't vacuum tube manufacturers pivot to semiconductors, at least somewhere in the production process.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Nope - only in the sense of your great grear grandfather's axe after your grandfather replaced the head three times and your father replaced the haft twice and the head is now a sledgehammer. Vacuum tube making is about metalworking essentially. Sure you can swap components between the wires but manufacturing of vacuum tubes is entirely different than silicon and even they needed new fab processes for nanometer changes. Lightbulbs and would have been a better pivot (with or without a gas in the medium for neon lights or CFBs) at least until LEDs finished them off.
908B64B197 6y ago
Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid). The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it. Also, the argument on Uber/Lyft drivers not being contractors since they can't set their own rates and decide which ride they take strikes me as weird since medallion drivers were contractors, had to charge the price set by the city and could only pick-up customers in the (arbitrary) zones covered by their medallions. And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24225648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24225648
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Maybe the cure can eventually become worse than the disease? Also, as terrible as the medallion system is, the taxi industry weren't uniformly as bad as SF's in every region, so ridesharing probably unintentionally wiped out some quality cab companies in the process.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    I've never heard anyone say that pre-Uber cab companies were better. But I could always be wrong.
inglor_cz 6y ago
Taxi industry had its karma coming. Prior to Uber, ratfuckers would sit behind the wheel and rip off the clients. Maybe there was some place in the world where taxis were clean and taxi drivers honest, but in my corner of the world they were synonymous with low-key mafia.
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  In Prague (in 1997, at least), the taxis were literally run by the (Russian) mob.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    Oh, yeah, I was 19 at that time and I avoided them, they were up to no good. This strange combination of sleazy and menacing at the same time. Precisely the type of people you do not want to join in their car. Therefore they mostly preyed on international tourists at the airport.

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago

It's a fair point. What's engaging is that typically, the nature of the next emerging cycle is not evident until you're well into it. I started to write a list of possible break-out technomarkets for the 2020s from The Valley, but I decided I'd rather not and be 'surprised'. One aspect of the scale these companies are achieving is the political implications. Yes, the worry in DC over their manipulation of human nature, but it's also issues like the headbutting of the gig-labor lifestyle against tax policy right in California. Pushing technology forward eventually encounters politics and it's interesting to watch these firms gird up for that battle.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

petra 6y ago

If you want fundamental new technological innovations, startups are a better place to look. Altough, for example, the work Google did in the 2010's in machine learning does seem fundamental.

risorect 6y ago

Wait what about smartphones, tablets, IoT, etc? I know that they started earlier than 2010 but I feel like the huge improvements and democratization of cloud computing, machine learning, etc (available via the "open source platforms" I believe the parent is referring to) made the 2010s the era of ubiquitous smart devices. Alexa, smart TVs, drones, misc tracking/monitoring technologies are the new normal, not to mention the sharing economy tech of the Ubers and AirBnBs, and digital payment tech like Square/Venmo + cryptocurrency in general. Am I, like, way off?

adventured 6y ago
No, you're entirely correct. People frequently mislead about the advancements Silicon Valley has made because it makes them feel good to bash it. There are dozens of companies not named Uber or Airbnb that have come out of SV in the past 10-15 years that lead the world at what they do. You won't see the SV bashers talk about any of that, they go out of their way to avoid that point in fact. Where is the Cloudflare of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the ServiceNow of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the WorkDay of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Palo Alto Networks of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Twilio of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Snowflake of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Splunk of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Okta of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Veeva Systems of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the Zoom of Europe? Doesn't exist. Where is the DataDog of Europe? Doesn't exist. (DataDog is NY, however they have an office in the SV area as well) And on the list goes. These are massive, wild success stories. Most of them are already big companies and they're growing fast. With few exceptions meanwhile most of the rest of the world not named China is asleep, and SV keeps on conquering markets and building giant software companies. Where is the global competition for these companies? It largely doesn't exist, they're going to keep on with the SV traditional of pushing out of the homogeneous US market and scaling up globally and building giant companies.
- nostromo 6y ago
  The comparison being made was of SV of today vs the SV of yesterday not SV vs Europe. By the way, of all the companies you listed, only Zoom and Snowflake were actually founded after 2010. And that's the point. In the past 10 years, we haven't seen any Googles, Apples, or Microsofts emerge, despite eye-popping levels of venture investment -- which is a bit disappointing.

ss3000 6y ago

I think one difference is the existing giants have smarted up to the fact that new competing startups can be existential threats to their business like they were to their former incumbents, and have started putting much more focus on gobbling them up with cash before they become fully fledged competitors instead of trying to out-compete them.

proverbialbunny 6y ago

>The 2010s seem to be a decade ... without any fundamentally new technological developments. I wouldn't go that far. The cloud became a thing in 2010 and from that big data appeared allowing data science to appear. The 2010s is the era of data science and ML, which is a larger leap than many give credit for. The 2010s are just like the '80s in that new technology appeared, but end consumers didn't see much of a difference until the late '90s. Just yesterday CA gave a license to GM to legally allow fully self driving cars.

PicassoCTs 6y ago

The problem here, innovation toxic venture capital, that outspend the old risk capital guard. These new - "outsiders" usually spend huge sums on leveraging what is essentially just technology used for union busting and abstracting away wage slavery. Its a capitalists idea of innovation, and it small dreams. You don't need to invent a alexa (the device), if you can drive down the wage of a person to near zero and own a alexa (the person). They already had that back in ancient rome- and thus never developed the Greek steam engine. To become really innovative at scale again, the valley needs to exorcise those tech external investors.

opportune 6y ago

Smartphones? iPhone 3G came out in mid-2009 and Android brought smartphones (and computing in general) to hundreds of millions or billions more price sensitive users