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Which tech giants will still be around after 100 years?
- holri 15y agoThe free software movement giant will definitely be around in 100 years.
- gaius 15y agoCOBOL will be around in a thousand, so long as there is payroll there will be COBOL.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- arkitaip 15y agoIBM has always been in IT: The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of four companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Corporation, and the Bundy Manufacturing Company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM The reason why IBM still exists to this day while most of its competitors have vanished is because they have been able to redefine what IT means for IBM. That and some of the world's best managers.
- gwern 15y agoI suppose an IBM stockholder from 100 years ago to now might disagree about how they have nothing in common.
- unclickable 15y ago"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible and exiting only in contemplation of law. It has neither mind nor body of its own."
- prodigal_erik 15y agoThe metaphor I've always liked is: a pile of money that hires people to make itself bigger.
- falava 15y agoList of oldest companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies
- bergie 15y agoHotels and alcohol seem to be clear winners - same service has been relevant as long as there has been commerce.
- protomyth 15y agoI think Facebook is really in the most danger of the whole group. I can't help but think something else will show up. Apple has a good shot, but I think Dell is not going to be around. It just seems like the integrated model is going to last and Microsoft is going to do it own thing (ala XBox). Google might have serious problems if something other than the web shows up and advertising is harder. I am really not convinced (despite the efforts of many) that the web is the endpoint.
- maxwell 15y agoI think Google's going after data (profiting on ads), commoditizing automotive, transport, energy, medical, computer hardware, telecommunications, software, and social.
- alanfalcon 15y agoTell me more about these Japanese hotels from the 8th century.
- falava 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoshi_Ryokan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoshi_Ryokan
- m0nastic 15y agoOver 1300 years old, and this is at the bottom of their web page: "Please use Netscape Navigator and the Shockwave plug-in to see this site in its full majesty." I'm curious what it will say in another 1300 years.
- powertower 15y ago"Teleport to galactic planetary body coordinates: 09248x35624x456643x55633"
- cschmidt 15y agoThree Japanese hotels top this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies
- reso 15y agoFacebook has huge promise, but I think it is still too young to tell if it has legs on the order of a century. On the other hand, Google has already shown its ability to hop platforms again and again (Search to E-mail, Web to Mobile, Software to Automotive), and their head-start in artificial intelligence will make them an important force for at least two decades. I would bet Google is the company of this generation that is still around in 2050.
- Newky 15y agoI would have thought that facebook single area of expertise (at this time anyway) makes it a company thats longevity is not guaranteed. When you consider the fact that we are seeing the monopoly that was (and still is to a large extent) Microsoft challenged very seriously on many fronts, and you look at the amount of area's they are involved in, similarily, the longevity of these companies depend on their ability to change their dynamic like IBM.
- zyfo 15y agoI agree about Google, but I don't think Facebook is even remotely in the same class. For all I know it could be gone in a couple of years. Apple and Amazon seem like two much more likely candidates, along with Google.
- jurjenh 15y agoMind you, back in its infancy you could very much have said the same thing about Google (search? how can you even begin to make money off that?) - and Facebook has been acquiring rather a lot of talented engineers. Assuming that the core priority is to maintain and optimise their core business to a certain point of stability, they can then look at branching out into other areas that present attractive opportunities. Of course Google has developed a very specific method to encourage this kind of behaviour (80/20) and Amazon has yet again quite a different process, so it would be very interesting to see how Facebook will go about this in the next few years.
- Sandman 15y ago
- kenjackson 15y agoHorrible article. It makes an arbitrary distinction between products and ideas. I'm sure if you asked Michael Dell, even 10 years ago, what his company is about at its core -- he'd probably say something more like delivering technology to consumers and businesses, customized to fit their individual needs, and using the best processes and efficiencies to deliver at the lowest price possible. Don't bother wasting your time reading it. You'll have wasted two minutes, learned nothing, and have even less respect for the Economist.
- noiv 15y agoAgreed. Was expecting some kind of idea why information technology actually is a mega-trend and what possible game changers are around the corner. Just imagine only one patent on a working quantum computing device and all mentioned companies are out.
- groby_b 15y agoI'm not quite sure why e.g. Facebook would care about a working quantum computer, at least in the short run.
- dagobart_ 15y agoOn the other hand, why would anybody assume, Facebook could ever have an interest in face recognition? But now they do.
- noiv 15y agoLooks like bashing Facebook leads to down votes, interesting. But short run is not 100 years. And yes, Facebook will care from day one about QC, think data center and investors willing to burn money to foster old school technology.
- groby_b 15y agoAs far as I know (and I haven't read too much about QC, so I might very well be totally off), QCs are only useful for a very specific set of problems. And none of those seem to map to FB problems right now. Will that change? Sure. Will FB do internal research with QCs? Maybe, once they've progressed past the vaporware state. (Sidenote - if we observe QC less, will development work better? ;) But a working QC will not put FB out of business any time soon. The hardware is only a tiny piece of the puzzle of quantum computing. Algorithms for QC are rare, hard to develop, and the field is in its absolute infancy.
- warfangle 15y agoI'm surprised AT&T wasn't mentioned. Yes, it was broken up as a monopoly, but it's been slowly growing back into its former self.
- metageek 15y agoIsn't AT&T dead? SBC bought the name, not the company.
- troystribling 15y agoSBC bought the company and used the name.
- metageek 15y ago<dig, dig>...oh, you're right.
- throwaway32 15y agodont forget that SBC was a baby bell, and thus originated from AT&T.
- throw_away 15y agoall the baby bells are now owned by either at&t, verizon or centurylink.
- warfangle 15y agoKeep in mind that Verizon was also originally a baby bell. It began as the Bell Atlantic corporation, and through a series of mergers in the 90s gained its place next to AT&T as one of the largest wireless and long distance carrier. That's right: The two largest cell phone companies in the country are legacies of a monopoly attempting to reassert dominance in an era of little regulation. Do we really want to return to the days of Ma Bell...?
- mikle 15y agoI think we are not the target audience for this article...
- seanalltogether 15y agoNintendo has been around for over 130 years now, however they've only been a tech company since the 70's
- RockyMcNuts 15y agoA little surprised Cisco comes in for no love ... if your mission is to provide the best platform for routable network equipment, one would hope as long as there are routable networks they should do OK. Of course, if you don't execute on your mission, dilute your franchise by buying tangentially related companies, gouge your customers, might turn out differently. Are routers and network equipment going to be a commodity, or is a good platform going to keep providing a moat and competitive advantage?
- kylemaxwell 15y agoGreat premise but disappointed with the article's incredibly superficial approach and examination.
- contextfree 15y agoYeah, I'd be very surprised if Microsoft ever managed to branch out from only making BASIC interpreters.
- josephmosby 15y agoIntel? I always think of them as the bread and butter of IT. Only 45 more years and they'll be a centennial company.
- edtechre 15y agoNot if ARM processors continue to gain ground.
- josephmosby 15y agoBut Intel is an ARM licensee through DEC. They've been making ARM processors through the DEC channel for years now.
- edtechre 15y agoLet me clarify: competing ARM processors :) Chances are it's not an Intel CPU you're using in your smart phone, tablet, or game console.
- cjoh 15y agoWeird that Nokia wasn't mentioned. Depending on how you count it, Nokia is nearly 150 years old: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia
- bergie 15y agoEven though I've seen people explain it as a story arc of communications technology, Nokia's progress through paper, cables, TVs and mobile phones doesn't really make a compelling single service vision that the article was aiming for.
- dkrich 15y agoThis article is terrible. It is essentially taking the hottest tech companies of today and making a conjecture that because they have maneuvered well to get where they are, that 100 years from now their methodologies will still apply. I realized this author had no clue when he/she explained that Microsoft isn't a safe bet while Facebook is. Um, last I checked MS had a $200 billion market cap. I don't think you can compare that to a website that has been in existence for 7 years and hasn't even shown profitability. I'd bet a week's pay that he/she hasn't ever used an Oracle product or could even explain how its database technology is used.
- edtechre 15y agoFacebook lasting a hundred years? WHAT?! I hardly see Facebook as being in the same league as technology companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon. In fact, I don't really see Facebook as much of a technology company at all, at least in comparison to those I mentioned. I wonder if the author would have said the same thing about Myspace 5 years ago. I bet he would have.
- edtechre 15y agoAnd by technology company I mean: Hardware (Apple, Amazon) OS (Apple, Google) Cloud services (Google, Amazon, Apple) Web services like email, maps, search (Google) Facebook has a very large user base. Whoopee. But does that mean staying power? Nope. Just ask Myspace, Yahoo, and countless dot bomb companies. You need to invest in R&D, become a technology provider, and succeed in more than one market. Beyond social networking, what does Facebook have? This is a horrible article, especially by the Economist's standards.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Apocryphon 15y agoCOBOL Engineering.
- lachlanj 15y agoTerrible Article, I am surprised to see the from The Economist. It seems like they just want to name drop the most popular tech companies of late. Facebook has just as much chance of disappearing in 5 years as it does of being around in 100 year. Google probably has a better chance than any of these companies of being around in 100 years, they are in the oldest industry of all time. Advertising. Plus they have shown they are willing to invest in new technologies to stay current, ala self driving cars. Amazon has massive potential, but by no means are they guaranteed. Apple, Google and Microsoft all have ridiculous piles of cash, provided they don't make any stupid big bets, all of these companies will easily be here for the next 100 years just on these cash piles alone.
- StavrosK 15y agoGoogle is actually in the AI business, which is why I think they're the most likely to be around in the future.
- lachlanj 15y agoYes, Ai which is applied to advertising. They do advertising in a very unique way but I still feel it boils down to ads. I think they will be a huge force for Ai in the future, they should be more so now, but will the make money from Ai unrelated to ads in the future? Time will tell.
- cageface 15y agoAnybody willing to make any predictions about the world 100 years from now is much braver than I am.
- bergie 15y agoThe article was aiming to explain the characteristics of a company likely to make it, not exactly to say which companies will. What is nearly certain is that there will be major technological shifts in the next hundred years. What they are is impossible to say. But the less married a core business idea of a company is to the current technologies, the more likely they can make the jump to whatever comes first.
- flocial 15y agoWe're still defining IT. The building blocks are the same from card-punching days but what we've built on top of that foundation is light years ahead and evolving faster. Information technology has the most potential to displace or swallow other industries and even redefine the human race. The survival of Google or Apple as a going concern seems pretty immaterial in that context.
- waterlesscloud 15y agoThere seems to be a lot of focus on a company disappearing by dying, but it's far more likely that any of these companies will disappear via merger or acquisition. When you look at it from that perspective, any of them could go through a downturn in the next 80+ years that leads to some hot new company just buying them outright.
- Tichy 15y agoI bought Google shares simply to insure myself against the singularity. If AI emerges from Googles data centers, maybe it will have mercy on me because I helped fund it's creation.