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Well then, compaq is another great example. Quickest company to a billion in sales at the time. Built an IBM clone on venture capital and IBM ignored them unt

Well then, compaq is another great example. Quickest company to a billion in sales at the time. Built an IBM clone on venture capital and IBM ignored them until they were first to market with a 386, managed to kill the PS/2 architecture and became.the industry trend setter in desktops for a decade. Every american household had an RCA product at one time, dominant electronic manufacturer torn to shreds by upstart Japanese minnows who became giants (Sony, Pioneer). Tandy, once a minnow, then an innovative giant in PCs killed dead by Dell and other startup clone makers. Yahoo and AOL murdered by a tiny startup called Google. Digital Equipment Corporation, once giant killers themselves in minicomputers, a segment they defined with the pdp and vax machines, slaughtered by upstart Sun Microsystems. The examples are literally endless.

zepto 5y ago
These aren’t examples of ‘innovation’ coming from small startups at all. All you’ve really shown is that startups can be successful sometimes, and simply ignored the fact that large companies keep going and in fact do keep innovating. Take Google for example. AOL wasn’t murdered by Google at all. It was murdered by the internet. Yahoo, wasn’t murdered by Google either. It simply made bad investments. Google on the other hand, came up with one excellent innovation as a startup. But everything else they have done, they did as a giant company. Google proves that almost all innovation comes from large companies.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  Maybe pick up a book now and again. Google did stop innovating, all the subsequent progress they made aside from gmail was acquisition of startups. Android being the most obvious one. Yahoo and AOL were killed by google, i am old enough to have seen that play out live.
  - zepto 5y ago
    > Maybe pick up a book now and again. Maybe try reading the HN guidelines. > Google did stop innovating, all the subsequent progress they made aside from gmail was acquisition of startups. Obviously false. They bought technologies from startups, but those products didn’t stand on their own. Maps is the obvious example. > Android being the most obvious one. If you had any idea what Android was before Google bought it you wouldn’t say this. I do. I saw it. > Yahoo and AOL were killed by google, i am old enough to have seen that play out live. Do you even know what Yahoo and AOL were? Yahoo was a web directory, and later a portal. That wasn’t killed by Google. Indeed Google was offered for sale to Yahoo for $1M. What killed Yahoo was just not being good at business. AOL was a dial up information service that pre-dated the consumer internet. It had groups and communication services and in fact everything it needed to be Facebook. Failure to adapt to the internet killed AOL. Not Google.

zepto 5y ago

These aren’t examples of ‘innovation’ coming from small startups at all. All you’ve really shown is that startups can be successful sometimes, and simply ignored the fact that large companies keep going and in fact do keep innovating. Take Google for example. AOL wasn’t murdered by Google at all. It was murdered by the internet. Yahoo, wasn’t murdered by Google either. It simply made bad investments. Google on the other hand, came up with one excellent innovation as a startup. But everything else they have done, they did as a giant company. Google proves that almost all innovation comes from large companies.

smackeyacky 5y ago
Maybe pick up a book now and again. Google did stop innovating, all the subsequent progress they made aside from gmail was acquisition of startups. Android being the most obvious one. Yahoo and AOL were killed by google, i am old enough to have seen that play out live.
- zepto 5y ago
  > Maybe pick up a book now and again. Maybe try reading the HN guidelines. > Google did stop innovating, all the subsequent progress they made aside from gmail was acquisition of startups. Obviously false. They bought technologies from startups, but those products didn’t stand on their own. Maps is the obvious example. > Android being the most obvious one. If you had any idea what Android was before Google bought it you wouldn’t say this. I do. I saw it. > Yahoo and AOL were killed by google, i am old enough to have seen that play out live. Do you even know what Yahoo and AOL were? Yahoo was a web directory, and later a portal. That wasn’t killed by Google. Indeed Google was offered for sale to Yahoo for $1M. What killed Yahoo was just not being good at business. AOL was a dial up information service that pre-dated the consumer internet. It had groups and communication services and in fact everything it needed to be Facebook. Failure to adapt to the internet killed AOL. Not Google.