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Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

• pajko 5y ago
  My bet is that Whatsapp and Instagram will be separated from Facebook, but Meta will have many times bigger role in the company's future, so I wouldn't call a declination here. Google in turn will be split into smaller segments.
• api 5y ago
  I hope Facebook since it would benefit the world, but I think Netflix is most likely.
  • dntrkv 5y ago
    Honest question, do you really think that if Facebook disappeared tomorrow anything would change? Considering the complaints about Facebook plague every other social website including Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube. That's also assuming another social media site won't rise up to fill that same role (maybe an existing one)?
    • api 5y ago
      Would one tobacco company disappearing reduce cancer rates? No, but it's a start. Every social media company that optimizes for "engagement" (which means addictiveness and the promotion of polarizing and triggering content) is part of the problem but Facebook is probably the largest player here. These companies are making billions off the collective lobotomization of humanity.
• 46756e 5y ago
  Kinda shocked Facebook is past Netflix. I realize Facebook isn’t very popular right now, but all I see usually is people talking about how bad Facebook is, while the browse their Instagram and talk on messenger. Not saying you can’t hate the company for what it is, but seems like so many people are calling for the end of Facebook while being it’s most dedicated users.
• cinntaile 5y ago
  My guess is Netflix, I think the others have much wider moats. No actual number crunching was involved in producing this guess.
  • freyr 5y ago
    I agree regarding the moat, but I think Netflix could still do fairly well as one of N big players in the streaming space. On the other hand, I think we could see FB utterly collapse over the next decade. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
    • scifi6546 5y ago
      I personally think it is wishful thinking. At this facebook is rich enough that even if facebook.com completely imploded they could pivot to another social media platform they own such as instagram, and it is hard to imagine facebook.com imploding completely as it is used across the globe and I can see that even if facebook fell in the english speaking world other regions would still use it.
    • cinntaile 5y ago
      Both Reid Hastings and Marc Zuckerberg are very capable business leaders. It will be interesting to see in what direction Netflix decides to expand or if they will just stay in the movie and series business. I feel like they should have bought CrunchyRoll instead of Sony, that's a missed opportunity imo. But since they're trying some game experiments they might decide to buy some game developers? Or a big music streaming company, that would almost fit better with their business? Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram are very sticky. I don't see them disappearing anytime soon. Facebook has a massive image problem though, so who knows how that affects their VR attempts?
    • SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      > I think Netflix could still do fairly well as one of N big players in the streaming space. I disagree. I play for Netflix and Amazon Prime video (that was a cross-sell). I'm not playing for another. If everything is one one service, then I'll pay for it. That was the original promise of Netflix. But now everyone wants to play that game. Two services, maybe I'll pay. N services? Screw that, might as well go back to torrenting. And then, why keep Netflix? Paying for TV shows is _voluntary_. Consumers are willing to pay, but only up to a point. Jerk them around too much, and the consent goes away - not only will Netflix get only a slice of the pie, but the whole pie will be smaller.
• chermi 5y ago
  Is there any way to hide the votes until you've voted?
  • Victerius 5y ago
    No.
    • chermi 5y ago
      Bummer, I suspect that biased the poll quite a bit. Facebook had an early lead when I first commented. It's on everyone's mind from recent news, so it was going to lean Facebook regardless I'm guessing. Edit only for poor sentences, no content change.
• propter_hoc 5y ago
  Netflix's inclusion in this list instead of Microsoft may have been the best investor-relations coup in history.
  • scotuswroteus 5y ago
    Nah its just easier to say fang than famg
    • thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > Nah its just easier to say fang than famg Interestingly, from a physical perspective there's not much difference between saying "fagm" and saying "fact". But one of those is easy for English speakers and one is impossible. Coarticulated velar/labial consonants exist in other languages, though.
      • ARandomerDude 5y ago
        Yeah but you get cancelled if you say "fagm" these days.
  • hourislate 5y ago
    • itisit 5y ago
      I wonder why this didn't take off with the press.
  • burntoutfire 5y ago
    The list is based on salaries. Microsoft does not reportedly pays as much as FAANGs.
    • titanomachy 5y ago
      Microsoft comp is bimodal. They will compete with the best in some cases.
• TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  Google feels the least aggressive about moving into the future.
  • jmartrican 5y ago
    Makes me wish that YouTube would be spunned off into it's own company.
    • seg_lol 5y ago
      Anyone can make a YouTube replacement now. They just own search for video and provide a consistent interface. Hosting and delivering and playing video files is a solved problem.
      • ipaddr 5y ago
        Cost of hosting a free video platform is not a solved problem. If it were we would see many many more video platforms
        • seg_lol 5y ago
          What if it wasn't yesterday, but it was today? Your statement only makes sense if time was invariant.
  • dynamite-ready 5y ago
    That's because they've near enough enveloped the future. Chrome is underrated in importance, every other mobile device is based on Android, and YouTube, after almost 20 years, is still state of the art. Thinking of things this way, Netflix is the odd one out and most likely to fail, because I reluctantly engage with products from those other brands everyday. And I suspect everyone else does too.
• Clubber 5y ago
  Amazon, Google and Netflix seem to be happy where they are and don't seem to be innovating much; more interested in collecting rents on existing properties. Apple keeps doing what they've been doing for the last 20 years (successfully). Facebook is trying to pitch this Meta thing, which to me sounds like a desperation play and doesn't sound that interesting, but I'm not hip with whatever is going on in social media.
  • curiousgal 5y ago
    I don't know man, Netflix added games to its Android app so..
  • fullshark 5y ago
    The Metaverse play is just a further development of Oculus, which has gained traction afaik. Will it result in a paradigm shift in computing? Probably not but I can see the fanbase/use cases for oculus growing and justifying the investment.
  • notatoad 5y ago
    >Amazon... seem to be happy where they are and don't seem to be innovating much If you're just looking at the consumer end of it, maybe. but over the last couple years amazon has become one of if not the largest logistics company in the world, and across the full line from supplier to last-mile delivery. it's not sexy innovation like a new iPhone is, but they've been developing a huge moat and as long as customers want quick delivery of their online purchases, amazon is a long ways in front of any competitor. All the complaints about review fraud or inventory commingling are small-potatoes compared to the ability to do next-day delivery of millions of different SKUs to a large portion of the planet.
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      Amazon might not be innovator in consumer electrics. But they enter the markets with very good price point. Ofc, margins are lower, but they can make lot up with volume and breadth...
  • aantix 5y ago
• jacktheturtle 5y ago
  I think we have out grown FAANG. There are tech companies with moats and great tech that should be included. IE: Microsoft and Shopify. Decline is kinda open ended too, but if we are talking about ability to hire the best talent, I think it's safe to say Facebook/Meta is going to see a decline in talent. Despite their amazing salaries, because of the brand name that's attached to it they won't see as great talent anymore.
  • helpinghand5 5y ago
• andrewl-hn 5y ago
  Three years is a very short time. Even if any of these companies starts to decline it won’t be noticeable.
  • Taywee 5y ago
    Who said anything about three years?
• artemonster 5y ago
  I have loads of friends who started to cancel their netflix subs and went back to piracy because they grew tired of searching for a way to watch something legally. Now its disney, hbo, prime, whatever. Screw all of this.
  • ews 5y ago
    Same. We are back in the TV bundle channel era, unfortunately.
    • coding123 5y ago
      True, but the price seems a bit lower (for now). A fully loaded cable account back in the day for me was $180 (including internet). Now days you can get internet for $50 or $100 (depending on location, speed etc). Then if you wanted say 5 of the various platforms, that's going to roughly be $50 to $70 more. So that's still a likely savings. And on top of that, all new movies are basically being PRODUCED by these networks, so for the most part you don't need a theater (or their prices). And on top of all that, instead of just fully subscribing to all of them, just get one at a time. Want the new Dexter series, get Showtime. Done with that? drop it until season 2 is out. So it definitely can be a lot cheaper than the old days.
      • Dig1t 5y ago
        Also, most importantly, there are no more advertisements.
      • speby 5y ago
        I haven't had a cable subscription in years. I think almost 5 or 6 years now. It's been a combination of streaming, movie rentals (streaming), and BitTorrent downloads. And yes, it definitely can be cheaper if you willing to actively manage what subscriptions you need and don't need one month at a time.
    • thebigman433 5y ago
      Is it even close to that? You can bundle a ton of services and still come out cheaper, plus you avoid ads. The biggest difference is also that you can mix and match services at will, so if you arent using one, you can just drop it for a few months. Its significantly better than cable TV still. I also dont get people reminiscing about one streaming service dominating, we shouldnt be wishing for monopolies. Everyone coming out with their own platform should drive up competition and give us better quality services
• cam0 5y ago
  I don't think people will stop using the Google search bar. I don't think people will stop binging shows on Netflix. I don't think people will stop ordering crap on Amazon. I don't think people who use iphones and macbooks will stop buying iphones and macbooks. Hard for me to see how it wouldn't be FB/meta. They're betting the farm on something unproven / creating new habits / maintaining habits that seem to be waning.
  • ipaddr 5y ago
    Facebook has a history of getting first or buying into new social spaces. Gaming and facebook will be important going forward. I would bet in them getting bigger. The cloud computing fad could go away and Amazon would still be the #1 retailer. Google, Microsoft will get bigger probably more government contract related. Netflix is in the worst poor position. There costs for high end production are extremely high because they have to overpay for top talent. So they take years to continue a series or cancel successful ones because actors want raises. The availability of fresh existing shows keeps going down while costs go up.
  • jrsj 5y ago
    Decline doesn’t require people to stop using Google search. It just requires a lack of growth, and Google isn’t really doing much of anything innovative. At least FB sees stagnation as a threat and is responding accordingly, Google seems to have its head so far up it’s own bureaucracy that it can’t execute effectively anymore.
• colesantiago 5y ago
  Decline is far too charitable to Facebook and Netflix. They need to cease to exist. Any product that Facebook makes produces -99% of value for humanity.
  • dasil003 5y ago
    The question isn't which company twists your undies the most, it's which is most likely to actually decline.
    • colesantiago 5y ago
      Then the answer is to hasten their decline to a complete downfall by not using or working any of them. Unless of course pushing buttons on an orange site is going to change things...
• bonestamp2 5y ago
  Decline in what sense... product innovation? market share? stock price? revenue growth? profitability?
• krupan 5y ago
  I think Apple and Amazon are the only 2 that won't decline. I'm a little on the fence with Google because of phones and maps, but that's kind of all they have going on. Ok, I'm also probably wrong about Facebook, but I so want to be right! :-)
• momofuku 5y ago
  On a related note, I genuinely think that Meta/FB will be one of the first companies that goes through a Big Oil kind of a break-up within the next decade. Most likely will involve the de-merger of Instagram/WhatsApp from FB and maybe Oculus. Its just a privacy nightmare at this point.
• ecshafer 5y ago
  Facebook is currently ahead, but I wonder how much of that is perception. There is a lot of media about how Facebook is evil, but that is mostly from a pretty small circle of media and political people, that Facebook is naturally in opposition to. Facebook also owns instagram and whatsapp as well. But everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook, heavily. Instagram is also used very heavily. Amazon has threats from other E-commerce sites, lots of bad press, Governmental attacks, and unionization. Google prints money on search and I don't see enough people swapping to Duckduckgo to bring them down. Amazon is also kept up by AWS, which who knows if one day that is spun off.
  • andrewflnr 5y ago
    The strongest signal that Facebook will fall is the recently publicized trouble they're having in hiring people. I expect that to have rather strong knock-on effects... 10-15 years down the road. For example if VR turns out to be as big as everyone says and FB/Meta/whatever are only able to put up a weak offering. I tend to agree that they'll be harder to kill than a lot of us wish.
    • kkcorps 5y ago
      Do they really? It seems to be blown up by media. Talented people are still applying in droves for a job at FB. The competition has definitely increased with good options out there for candidates but hiring trouble is bit preposterous.
      • andrewflnr 5y ago
        I guess I could be wrong, but I remember reading that they were having to give even higher offers than other SV companies. That indicates a real, widespread reluctance to work there.
        • eclipxe 5y ago
          They have always paid top of market - in the early days it was to hire from Google it seems - who at the time was paying top of market.
• willcipriano 5y ago
  Amazon is the only one on that list that has actively reached out to me, it's also the only one I'd never interview at given what I've heard about working conditions there. Some places seem to keep everything on fire all the time and have big expectations on engineers personal time to keep the fires from consuming the business, Amazon is like that from what I've heard.
  • lonesword 5y ago
    Really depends on your team, and your manager. I'm actually having a pretty good time (in Europe) - there's absolutely no expectation to work overtime/weekends.
    • willcipriano 5y ago
      Don't you only find out the team/manager at the end of the process? I'm self taught so I assume I'll get stuck on a bad team at least to start.
      • chickenpotpie 5y ago
        I’ve never had a a job where that isn’t true. Every interview I’ve done, the hiring manager is in the last round of interviewing. Usually the format is Recruiter phone screen -> engineer technical interview -> on-site with manager and engineers
        • willcipriano 5y ago
          Fair enough. My point is it's high effort for a roll of the dice. Having a general reputation as a nice place to work goes a long way in my willingness to interview as I feel more confidant that I won't land on one of the bad teams at the end.
    • wombat-man 5y ago
      I've heard that too, but the way they backload RSUs feels kind of risky. You kinda have to tough it out 3+ years or take the loss if you need to move on earlier.
• _hypx 5y ago
  I wonder if “all of the above” is too crazy? All of these companies have reached a stage in their corporate life where innovation is expected to stop or at least slow down.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• thrower123 5y ago
  Netflix shouldn't have ever been included in that grouping. Apple has a bajillion dollar war-chest that could last forever, but they feel the most creatively bankrupt.
• blahblah12 5y ago
  I think the European acronym, GAFAM, is more applicable. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAFAM https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAFAM
  • tester756 5y ago
    MAGMA :P
• qaq 5y ago
  Is this in any way inspired by Chamath Palihapitiya advice to short a FAANG that you think will decline and go long the one you think will do best (to hedge against major market moves)
• layer8 5y ago
  From a user utility / user-friendliness / product quality point of view, all of them have already declined, and will likely continue to do so. At the same time all of them will likely continue to grow, although with diminishing returns.
• jeffdubin 5y ago
  Amazon, Apple, and Google are each well-entrenched and also have a good bit of cash and patents available to pivot or crush competitors if necessary. Plus if broken up (e.g. by gov't antitrust regs, etc.) each would have multiple sustainable businesses that could survive independently of the main company. Netflix will buy/be bought. Much like cell phone carriers, ISPs, and CATV companies, consolidation will leave only a few heavy hitters. Netflix would be a nice addition to Peacock or Paramount+ and would give each a sense of legitimacy. Meanwhile, Facebook has made many enemies on all sides; they're synonymous with tracking users, fake news, and old folks. I can't think of anyone who doesn't use Facebook somewhat begrudgingly. Also, does anyone actually like FB/Meta? Or Zuckerberg, the defacto face of the company? Facebook is one or two gaffes away from where Myspace is today.
  • notRobot 5y ago
    Facebook (Meta) the company is a lot more than Facebook the social media network. Meta owns WhatsApp and Instagram, two of the biggest social networks, that are ubiquitous with younger generations. It does not matter that Facebook is associated with old people, because Facebook also owns the places where all the young people are at.
    • cmsj 5y ago
      FWIW, I don't think Instagram is super popular with the Tiktok generation, and WhatsApp's monetization strategy is still unproven.
      • notRobot 5y ago
        > I don't think Instagram is super popular with the Tiktok generation You're wrong. I work with teens. They all use both. For different reasons. TikTok is much more creator/viewer like YouTube, where few make content, and many watch. Instagram is where there are close "circles" (heh, G+?) of friends, and everyone is just following and making content for each-other.
  • warp 5y ago
    I think many people underestimate how much of a foothold Facebook has outside of the USA with Whatsapp and Instagram. Especially in countries without net neutrality, social networks may be included in your phone plan even when real internet isn't -- forcing many local businesses to interact with their customers over instagram, whatsapp or facebook messenger. (Having a website is pointless if most of your customers cannot reach it).
• sys_64738 5y ago
  Has to be Netflix as I really don't know what their core competency is right now. They produce some content but they sell subs via content from others. They don't have a larger business to fund the slide into the abyss, IMO.
• NotVerstappen 5y ago
  I was trying to decide which of these I am hoping will decline, but realized the answer is actually all of them - even the one I work for. Netflix is the only one I consider "innocent" however their market segment as a whole deserves a kicking for pushing us back towards the cable TV model. I have historically been very anti Apple but the M1 is impressive, as is their attitude to privacy. Not such a good look on the working culture front though. Google and Amazon are both toxic to some extent, while being so good as to be indispensable to a majority of their customers. For Google that is B2C, for Amazon (and Microsoft, who deserve inclusion here), that is B2B. On balance I expect stasis for all 3. Having Facebook decline all the way out of existence would give me hope for humanity, but I don't see it happening.
• joelbondurant1 5y ago
• dangus 5y ago
  Netflix will have the most competitively difficult path forward, with massive and aggressive competitors swarming in from all sides. You've got the recently-awoken content giants (Disney+, Paramount+, HBO Max, Hulu, etc), and then you've got new players like Apple and Amazon with deep, deep pockets. Google can take a lot of criticism for being relatively complacent and without much visible innovation lately, but they'll coast on Google Workspaces (G Suite), search/advertising, and their OS marketshare just like Microsoft did for decades. They have ample time to make and correct mistakes. I've also noticed that whatever products their intense focus is on often see rapid, high quality improvements (like when Google Meet development accelerated after the pandemic started). Facebook could go either way. It owns Instagram, of course, and I think they know the social media business well. WhatsApp will never go anywhere, it's entrenched. They're big enough to copy novel new social media ideas quickly. A highlight is that they truly are a leader in VR, and the Oculus Quest is clearly a hit in that category. If VR and AR truly become big businesses (skeptical on that but we'll see), Facebook will be growing. I can't see Amazon declining due to their dominance as a logistics company for everything. They can become truly awful any everyone will just keep using Amazon.com and AWS. I don't know if this is a bold prediction, a safe prediction, or just one that will get me accused of being a fanboy, but in this list think Apple is the least likely player to decline in the years ahead. They have shown time and time again that they have good management in place that has a long-term vision in mind. A lot of people say that Steve Jobs was the greatest and Apple isn't the same anymore, but they've taken advantage of every possible high margin business with their newest products in the post-Steve Jobs era. Apple Watch with its accessory ecosystem (like $400 Hermes watch bands), headphones and audio, and all the subscription services.
  • wepple 5y ago
    > WhatsApp will never go anywhere, it's entrenched. They're big enough to copy novel new social media ideas quickly. Whilst it hasn’t yet exploded in user growth, I’d disagree with this. Signal and telegram and others have outmaneuvered WhatsApp on features several times now (eg signal had gifs and emoji reactions, not sure if whatsapp even does yet?) Once you get over the network effect hurdle (no small feat), the switch is frictionless.
• itisit 5y ago
  Amazon, Apple (3T MCAP!), and Google for all their faults and frustrations are highly diversified and incredibly wealthy to stagnate themselves into a decline. And I'd argue they each have the collective brainpower to know the criticality of innovation to a company's survival. "Teenage users of the Facebook app in the US had declined by 13 percent since 2019 and were projected to drop 45 percent over the next two years, driving an overall decline in daily users in the company’s most lucrative ad market."[0] Sounds pretty dire to me. Dire enough to prompt the rebranding and pivot into Meta. They'd be my first choice. Netflix, 2nd, is just content (with some great tech under the hood), but just content paid for by a monthly subscription. [0] https://www.theverge.com/22743744/facebook-teen-usage-decline-frances-haugen-leaks https://www.theverge.com/22743744/facebook-teen-usage-declin...
• hi5eyes 5y ago
  HN is really convinced the only other player in the online ad market besides Google is going to decline?
  • jrsj 5y ago
    Kind of silly to me the choice is FB when they are at least actively working to expand into new areas while Google is sort of just…existing
• daedalus_f 5y ago
  I think trust in Amazon is beginning to decline, at least in my limited circle. I've recently have had several packages from Amazon UK go missing followed by difficulties sorting it out, alongside other issues. I'm no longer sure I would trust them with high value purchases, and certainly would be wary of buying anything for consumption from them given the number of fake products floating around. Of course, non of that will touch AWS...
  • oneepic 5y ago
    Did this missing packages thing happen around the holidays? I bet there was a spike in craziness due to Christmas/the new year. So I don't think that kind of issue shakes my trust in them very much.
• guerrilla 5y ago
  Why do people hate Netflix? I'm out of the loop on that...
  • flyrom99 5y ago
    I don't think they hate netflix, it's just that there are so many competitors to netflix at this point that it is hard to afford/use all of them and this amount of competition might hurt netflix in the long run.
  • aflag 5y ago
    I don't think people who are voting for netflix hate it. It's just the smaller of the bunch and the one which faces most competition. So, it's a reasonable guess. If we see any decline, which is unlikely, it would probably be facebook or netflix in my opinion. Tiktok is bigger than facebook right now and they have a very bad reputation. Maybe they will make it big with the metaverse thing, but it's a huge gamble.
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    Their content is seemingly getting worse. And with everyone entering the market likely not going to get better. So inhouse content is one thing, but many people want most of movies and so on from one place.
• kenhwang 5y ago
  Apple and Amazon are still churning out products and tech advancement at breakneck speeds, especially given their size. Google and Facebook are definitely stagnating and burning money on expanding (unsuccessfully) outside of the advertising duopoly they have. Netflix is in the unfortunate position of battling against the established and increasingly technically competent entertainment industry and the technically competent and better funded tech industry.
• voakbasda 5y ago
  All of them, if we are lucky.
• jarjoura 5y ago
  All of these companies are too big to fail at this point. They all have at least a decade of reserves to power through anything that gets thrown their way. However, I do predict that they will change in significant ways in the next decade. * Apple is one Supreme Court ruling away from ending their App Store monopoly that could disrupt the entire world, since it would also affect all other digital marketplaces. * Amazon is about to enter a decade of unionization all over the world. * Google and Facebook both lost a key ability to micro-target on their ad platforms so they are both reinventing themselves to drive revenue from other sources, hardware being the biggest moats they can invest in. * Netflix has some of the worlds brightest minds in data science and they've built up a war-chest of understanding viewing habits. They've also gobbled up a lot of key Hollywood players in the last few years, so I expect some huge cultural changes ahead as these creatives start to take more leadership roles in the company.
  • twox2 5y ago
    As long as Google has search ads, they have granular targeting at their disposal.
    • wayoutthere 5y ago
      Google Search is beset from all sides right now. Their search results are terrible and people are looking for alternatives. They’re definitely at or past the peak of that product lifecycle.
  • monkeybutton 5y ago
    Netflix is facing the rise of competing streaming platforms. They're forced into creating their own content because other producers would rather release content on their own platforms and keep all the streaming revenue, rather than license it to Netflix. Streaming video on demand isn't a technical moat that is stopping anyone.
    • cam0 5y ago
      True, but Netflix has gotten really good at this over the past 10 years. They create/fund some great content (and a lot of mediocre/bad content) - kind of similar to a VC fund now that I'm writing this out. They're an integral component of the entertainment industry now.
• baxtr 5y ago
  Ok. So FB ends up getting the top spot, which needs to be discounted by the utter hate for the company on HN. (They're called Meta btw) :) But, surprisingly Netflix seems to ending up on second place. I think that's shortsighted and not taking into account how deeply they're integrated into the film production industry by now. It's one thing to build a streaming platform and acquire some customers. It's a whole different game to do this and create great content. PS: My bet is google. Just look at their deteriorating search results and the missing other revenue streams.
  • gkoberger 5y ago
    Google? I think you mean Alphabet ;) I think the problem with Netflix is there's a ceiling. Disney (which owns, like, all the IP out there... not to mention theme parks, sports and countless other things) is worth $288bn and Netflix is somehow worth $291bn!? Sure, Netflix has some decent movies out there... but do you really think their catalogue even begins to touch Disney? Either Disney is undervalued (probably true) or Netflix is overvalued (definitely true), and Netflix doesn't currently seem to have significant momentum. Source (Nov 2021): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-11/netflix-s-value-nears-disney-amid-streaming-battle-tech-watch https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-11/netflix-s... EDIT: I posted a longer list of their IP below, but don't forget that Disney owns a majority of Hulu and their television/movies!
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • drstewart 5y ago
      If you're not into kids movies or superheroes, Disney's IP isn't really all that compelling.
      • gkoberger 5y ago
        Disney owns/co-owns ESPN, Hulu, ABC, Fox, A&E, The History Channel, Lifetime, Vice, 20th Century Fox, 21st Century Fox, Touchstone, Lucasfilm, Searchlight, National Geographic, FX, FXX... the list goes on.
• siliconc0w 5y ago
  Hard not to see Facebook declining as they bleed their younger audience. Part of me wants to see a new AR paradigm with lightweight glasses and a fully augmented reality but it seems fuzzy/far away with lots of ways to get it wrong.
• jrsj 5y ago
  Facebook seems the most likely but that’s only if what they’re trying to do with Meta fails. Google on the other hand seems to have entirely lost their ability to innovate and it’s not clear to me that they’re even trying to do anything of significance at all. So I’m a bit torn. But I’m going with Google because I’m the long run I think a lack of effort is probably the worst thing to have
• mrkramer 5y ago
  I do not understand why Facebook ranks at the top when they have near monopoly in internet social networking industry. Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok combined do not have market cap even close to FB plus FB has plenty of space and time to further monetize Instagram and WhatsApp. TikTok is only real competition to FB so far. I voted for Netflix; too much competition and original content is expensive to make.
  • dnissley 5y ago
    This comes down to the fact that a lot of people dislike facebook -- it says nothing about their how well they are doing as a business.
  • neogodless 5y ago
    I think the argument might be different opinions on the value of social networking. Personally, I think "social networking" has value, but trying to use Facebook is a net negative for me, so I don't get any value out of it at all! On the other hand, I get some value out of SnapChat and TikTok, for as little as I do use them. That doesn't mean one of them will "win" and overtake Facebook for social networking purposes, but it does mean there is competition, and the original open question of how valuable social networking of the sort Facebook provides will remain into the future.
• shmerl 5y ago
  I expect Apple will increasingly become the target of anti-trust and since they are so strongly focused on anti-competitive practices, it will impact them the most.
• mindcrime 5y ago
  I'd say Netflix as it stands today. Not enough differentiation, and their catalog continues to skew more and more towards Netflix Originals which constitute a pretty "mixed bag" IMO. If they continue to drop more and more "external" content, which more often makes up the stuff I go in wanting to see, I could see cancelling their service. OTOH, if they keep producing enough of their own content, that is good enough, they might keep me around. For example, if they come out with another show as good as, say, Bojack Horseman, every so often then I would likely keep my subscription. Time will tell, I suppose.
• tyingq 5y ago
  I thought that Netflix would suffer from their apparent focus on "quantity of shows" over "quality of shows", but it seems to have not hurt them much so far. There are still some good Netflix exclusive shows, but there's some really terrible ones to wade through.
• physicsguy 5y ago
  I see Facebook as the one most likely to struggle because, at least in the UK, Facebook the site is disliked by tons of people and is now mostly used day to day by older people. I don’t know anyone that is my age that actively posts on it anymore. Most people only keep it to keep in touch with older family who don’t use anything else. On the other hand, Instagram is very popular and so is WhatsApp.
• faut_reflechir 5y ago
  Initially voted Google based on a hunch: Google Search is the most likely flagship product of a FAANG to get displaced by a competitor. Unlike, say, Amazon as a hub for products or Facebook as a social network, Google Search is not a natural monopoly -- there's no inherent reason a search engine should maintain dominance if it loses its competitive advantage. The complaints from tech friends ("you can't find anything anymore") that I've heard for years now are starting to come from tech-agnostic family instead. Alternatives are still worse, but it's easy to imagine a breakthrough. However, this doesn't mean Google/Alphabet itself, with its diverse product suite and huge amount of advertising data, will decline in any meaningful sense; that will happen on a much slower scale.
  • klabb3 5y ago
    Another thing is that searching the web is steadily becoming displaced by more structured and localized forms of search, such as videos, nearby restaurants, products, used goods and so on. In some cases keyword search is replaced entirely - by recommendations & personalized simple buttons (gas stations on the way to my destination, the latest episodes of my favorite podcasts, etc etc). From an ad-pipeline perspective, Google isn't entirely left behind in this new world, they still have YouTube, Google maps, Gmail, etc. However, they missed most of social and e-commerce, which feels irrecoverable at this point.
  • scrollaway 5y ago
    Google is the dominant search engine essentially everywhere except for China and Russia. Amazon's marketplace dominance is pretty US/UK specific, and even there, there are plenty of alternatives. Amazon marketplace is actually only available natively in a small handful of countries. I feel like most people in this thread are grossly overevaluating Amazon's ability to stay relevant. If a competitor pops up with consistently better prices/better products/better marketing then they'll steal users from Amazon and over time dominance is lost. What exactly does Amazon have that prevents me from stopping the use of it? Google has excellent quality search results and a ton of products with a huge lock-in to their account ecosystem. Apple has fantastic product quality. Meta has a ridiculous network effect in three of the four products I use it for -- I can't even leave two of them (Whatsapp and FB) despite not even liking them! And Netflix consistently produces and publishes some of my favourite shows. Amazon has nothing I can't get elsewhere, it's just a bit more consolidated. With the exception of AWS, and as I said upthread, who knows if that will remain the same company.
• bachmeier 5y ago
  Google seems like the obvious choice. They rely on people continuing to use search in its current form. I don't see how that survives the next ten years. It's too obviously ripe for replacement. It's not at all a stretch to say search is for the most part a waste of time if you're going to type a phrase into a text entry box and read the results.
• ramesh31 5y ago
  Everyone here loves to hate on Facebook, but they're not going anywhere. They have successfully metastasized out into the web in a way that irreversible. Instagram is still the hottest thing around, and will be for the foreseeable future. Of this list, Netflix is the only obvious one that will see serious user loss. They had a great thing going for about 10 years until the pandemic knocked every Hollywood exec upside the head to realize that streaming is no longer optional. Netflix has been reduced almost entirely to their own content at this point as every other producer is running their own service now. And Netflix original content is... spotty at best.
• mgraczyk 5y ago
  I worked at Facebook last year and Google this year. I don't have an insider view of the other companies but some of my closest friends work at all of them except Netflix. My guess is that none of these will stop growing in the next few years, but Facebook is especially undervalued. They execute on new products faster and better than the others listed, so regardless of current sentiment they are probably not going to fail any time soon. I chose Netflix because I have the least evidence to suggest they will remain stable, but would say the odds are <10% any of these have a lower market cap in 5 years than they do now.
  • neogodless 5y ago
    What are Facebook products? And which ones are worthwhile? The only thing I could think of without cheating and using Google is the Oculus line. I'm not personally convinced there's a huge VR market, but there could be, and Facebook probably has the best product for this market. They aren't competing against the other megacorps listed in that particular market though, so I can't evaluate if they execute faster/better than others. I know Apple executes pretty well on products, and at a rate that far exceeds my own upgrade cycle.
    • cptaj 5y ago
      I bet he means like "Copy stories in instagram!" by "Products". I've heard a lot of social media devs talk about features as products. I'm guessing because that's how product managers see them in those orgs. I don't find it a very good definition. Implementing a feature is not a new product.
      • BbzzbB 5y ago
        When north of a billion people use you Craigslist feature and your Snapchat copy feature spawns 3 business lines larger than Snapchat itself within each of your platforms, I think it's fair to call them products even if they live under existing products' umbrellas.
      • mgraczyk 5y ago
        If Instagram stories were a company, it's revenues would put it in the top 700 of companies worldwide. That's a product.
• diegocg 5y ago
  Google (at least the search engine). As more and more content is created inside closed services, Google will become less valuable.
• thelastpizza 5y ago
  RIP FAANG
• pmontra 5y ago
  Amazon is its own shopping search engine. It won't suffer much even if Google blocks it. Apple has its own ecosystem and cult. It's safe for the time being. Google owns advertising, the major mobile OS and search. Anyway all of them could be offered separately in a better way. Advertising and search are easier to overturn than Android. Facebook is hated but is owns messaging outside Apple's boundary. Network effects protect them but network effects could destroy it as quickly as they built FB's lead. Netflix can be overturned by any competitor with a cheaper plan. These are my votes in reverse order.
• gherkinnn 5y ago
  Does FB have anything of interest? They missed the platform train. They don't provide infrastructure. And they didn't buy the next big thing before it got there. All I see is a huge bet on the yet undefined metaverse and declining interest in their current products. I wouldn't predict a quick death, but a drawn out descent in to obscurity. And to broaden the question: I don't know where Twitter is off to. It is a miserable place but it fills a well defined niche and there's no competition. While I see Microsoft outlasting humanity. There is no way they'll go down before everything else does first.
  • skizm 5y ago
    Have they done any monetization on WhatsApp yet? Which is ~2 billion users. They could literally add a few billion in revenue by showing a single text ad once per day or similar. That's not counting the fact that instagram is still basically in hyper-growth mode globally and facebook (the webpage/app) is still growing in every market except the US. Agree that (very) long term they'll need the VR/AR market to take off and capture a significant portion of that to stay on top of the digital ad business along with Google.
  • mavhc 5y ago
    They don't have to buy it before it got there, they can buy it after it got there. The fact that they're taking their least popular product, VR, and making that their main focus, seems to show they're not resting on their laurels.
• victorvosk 5y ago
  Don't you mean MAANG :D But its Facebook for sure. If it wasn't for buying Instagram they would circling the drain right now. Google is the king of search and ads. Apple is the premium product company and now chip maker. Netflix is in a saturated market but have proven they can make original content. Amazon runs the vast majority of the internet on its servers, let alone retail sales.
• jeffalbertson 5y ago
  im going netflix. the sheer amount of services the other companies provide is staggering compared to netflix. The streaming space is very crowded, and netflix has the most expensive pricing while shifting to being dependent on shows they create vs a catalog of others.
• bopbeepboop 5y ago
• o10449366 5y ago
  The thread should be more accurately renamed: Which FAANG do you most want to decline in the years ahead?
• pphysch 5y ago
  Apple is my vote. It's very easy to be a tech professional who uses a lot of tech in my free time and never rely on, interact with, or even think about Apple products beyond users that may be using them. Therefore, it's easy for me to imagine a world where Apple just doesn't exist, and not because some unknown competitor rises up. However, I don't think that is particularly likely.
  • zmmmmm 5y ago
    I think you underestimate their ecosystem lockin for those who are bought in already. That alone will keep them going for decades unless antitrust intervenes. Apple's real vulnerability in my view is that most of their value arises from extraordinarily high margins which in turn are driven by perception / fashion. They run the risk that losing that fashion shine at any point will rapidly cause a catastrophic loss of marketshare. Staying perpetually in fashion with young people is notoriously difficult - their default is to orient away from whatever their parents did and do something else. It's very hard too look cool copying Mom and Dad.
    • pphysch 5y ago
      > Apple's real vulnerability in my view is that most of their value arises from extraordinarily high margins which in turn are driven by perception / fashion. Well put. The iPhone is going on 15 years old. Once-hip iPhone users are becoming parents to children and teenagers that are getting their first devices. The iPhone will go the way of the Blackberry in the next 5-10 years and Apple will need to reinvent itself (again, without Jobs) in this time or see a rapid decline.
  • warner25 5y ago
    This is an interesting point. Besides making a few $1 purchases of songs or podcasts with iTunes (which I haven't done since 2018), I've never been an Apple customer. It hasn't taken any special effort to avoid them, either. But I'm struck by two things in Apple's favor: (1) I keep hearing fantastic things about their new M1 processors and laptops, and it actually has me slightly interested in Apple for the first time in my life, so that's impressive. (2) Just the extreme loyalty among people who are Apple customers.
• karmasimida 5y ago
  Personally it would go to FB for me. As I no longer use their products, and I feel nothing changed.
• inglor_cz 5y ago
  Facebook's business model seems to me the most fragile one. They rely a lot on automated moderation and are seriously understaffed in the "human moderator" segment. It is likely that various countries will push Facebook around and force it to somehow respect local laws regarding freedom of speech or criminalization of hate speech. This needs a lot of human moderators whose aggregated compensation might sink the company, unless it starts charging the users. But charging the users turns them into customers and makes them way more assertive against their business partners in disputes. Yet another source of extra costs.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• selfhifive 5y ago
  Facebook is only going up with its advantage in VR platforms. Netflix, on the other hand, has no real competitive advantage at this point except being the oldest streaming service with a good brand. Google is too big and too diverse to fail. Amazon's Cloud computing is going strong, still the dominant eBook platform and now dominant audiobook platform, plus retail. Apple's margins are always good. They don't need to do anything different. When Microsoft and IBM didn't fall after a decade of bad decision making I've lost faith in "no one is too big to fail".
  • PHGamer 5y ago
    googles only money maker is search and their results suck. i dont care if they are "diversivied" the only product that mattered is search and people are starting to get off it.
• raydev 5y ago
  I'm shocked that FB has so many votes here. FB may be getting slaughtered by the media, hated by both the left and the right, but the truth is no one is actually leaving FB. It's still the #1 place to find restaurants, buy/sell used items, neighborhood groups, etc etc etc. And if FB Proper were to ever fall behind, IG still has a lot of stamina left. I don't think it will happen any time soon, but I would like to see Apple decline. Their ideals and design and software quality from the previous decades are nowhere to be seen. Their software and UX especially have suffered from mismanagement, and I wonder how bad it will need to get before people start switching away. The alternatives are still behind, but the gap is closing in a bad way.
  • schnitzelstoat 5y ago
    The question was which is the most likely to decline, not to disappear. I don't think Facebook (or Meta) will disappear, but I do think it is the mostly likely to decline. The only one I think may disappear is Netflix - this is because Facebook benefits from the network effect which helps slow any sudden decline as all your family are still on it etc. whereas Netflix just needs a bad run of poor quality content and it could lose a lot of subscribers to competing services. Netflix is also less diversified (even though now it's adding Netflix Games for some reason.. we'll see how popular that is..) which further weakens its position.
    • k8sToGo 5y ago
      Plus Netflix keeps increasing pricing.
    • returnzero 5y ago
      With companies the size of the FAANGs they appear to struggle with change and being dynamic. A lot of the time they purchase existing companies/tech in the direction they want to steer towards. I would argue that while Facebook/Meta has been more of a gradual evolution Netflix has shown that it can transition to a whole new way of working within its domain. They revolutionised DVD rentals by combining a web UI with efficient warehousing and logistics. When they saw that infrastructure was getting close to making streaming viable they pivoted to digital delivery and not only did it allow them to keep their existing customer base who would have eventually moved away from DVD rentals on their own, but it also brought in other international markets where DVD rentals never would have worked. I think I agree that Facebook/Meta will decline without disappearing in much the same way that IBM has. They will acquire new businesses and sell off old ones without really being seen as particularly innovative. Netflix on the other hand I think will stick around but will likely change into more of a content producer rather than a distributor like it has been. Beyond that, who knows?
• sciolizer 5y ago
  Depends on what you mean by "decline". But if you're talking about stock price, then the current Shiller PE Ratios are: Amazon = 238.08 Netflix = 219.32 Google = 73.95 Facebook = 68.36 Apple = 63.17 The Shiller PE Ratio of the S&P 500 is current ~30. All of these companies are overpriced, and Amazon and Netflix significantly so.
  • jandrewrogers 5y ago
    PE ratios are only meaningful for comparing companies with no revenue growth, which is well-understood by investors. For companies with insanely high revenue growth, like Amazon, a PE ratio is essentially meaningless because that growth is financed with earnings. The fact that Amazon is only trading at 3.7x revenue is a strong argument that it is underpriced given its revenue growth, not overpriced.
• phkahler 5y ago
  This was hard to answer, I had to think carefully about weather I thought each one will decline, or weather I want them to decline. In short IMHO: Amazon - Needs to clean up the 3rd party seller mess, but that will just make them better. They still offer good service. Netflix - They're being replaced (unfortunately) by a bunch of different streaming services so they will never have as full a catalog as they did. Apple - Hmmm. Still making great products people want to pay for. Probably near their peak customer value like MS circa 2003. Facebook - Just make it go away. Doesn't mean it will though. Google - Fading in search relevance but hasn't been displaced yet. They'll be here for a while longer. So I'm going with Netflix as most likely to decline over the next few years.
  • pyb 5y ago
    Apple's issues : lack of new product lines ; seem to be still behind wrt AI
• paxys 5y ago
  Facebook (the app) is already in decline. WhatsApp has been next to impossible to monetize. Oculus/the Metaverse is an ambitious plan but ultimately pretty hard to pull off. If/when users start getting bored of Instagram, Meta will start to see warning bells. Their future lies in being able to acquire the next "big thing" in the social space, but with increased antitrust scrutiny I don't know if that will be possible either.
• johnchristopher 5y ago
  Ignoring KPI and financial results I'd say Netflix because its core business is not as diverse as the others ? Unless they pivot their core business to a video CDN.
• 015a 5y ago
  The leading indicator I'd use to analyze how strong these companies will be in a decade is: how much of their bull market zeitgeist is based around nebulous technology ideas that don't exist, and that investors really don't understand. Its the "hope" factor; if investors are bullish on promises about future tech, it means they aren't bullish about their current tech; and history is the best indicator of the future. The three big zeitgeists right now are: AR/VR, Metaverse, and Crypto. By this measure: Amazon is very strong. This is a company that achieved unreal fulfillment numbers during a world-stopping global pandemic that brought their peers to their knees. Yet they only control single-digit percentages of US commerce. They're a company that doesn't just make empty promises about next-gen tech like drone delivery or same-day fulfillment or "supply chain hardening"; they deliver (literally) and are deploying this tech today. Google is strong. Google is the ghost in the information machine. Ten years ago everyone was so concerned about how competitors could disrupt their control in search, maps, video, etc. No one has. If they have eyes, they will find a way to monetize it. Combine that with their slow but methodical push into B2B, between Workspace & Cloud, and I'm not concerned about them. Netflix is stable. Piracy will be an issue as these platforms shard more and more good content between different subscriptions, but I also think its a self-fixing problem. We're in a period of striation, and we'll soon enter a period of coalescing; Netflix & Disney+ are very well positioned to survive and continue to do well. Apple is weak. iPhone is flat. Mac is flat. iPad is flat. Their biggest wins over the past decade have been on the accessory side (Watch & AirPods). AR can either be a "metaverse platform", which will stumble to see "next-iPhone success" because Apple doesn't play well with other children and loves their gardens, or it could be "another accessory", which will also stumble because that's not a trillion dollar business. Facebook is very weak. The metaverse stuff will probably pay off to some degree, but their biggest gain will be on the hardware side. They just won't be able to produce the same kind of open digital universe that video-game native competitors in this space (like Epic) have spent years preparing for. They aren't a video game company, and that's the skillset this takes.
• zmmmmm 5y ago
  Interesting that most here are not counting the cloud businesses of Amazon / Google, but these are important because they are getting built into the foundations of a generation of companies computing infrastructure. It may not be super visible at the moment but this revenue is going to be very durable because the cost of shifting tech stacks is enormous. Interesting that Microsoft has missed out on being a FAANG (is this just because we cant make the acronym work?) .... they are much more significant than Netflix
• gigel82 5y ago
  LOL, Netflix is a FAANG? They're small potatoes in the big picture; by market cap: (1) Apple 2.98T (2) Microsoft 2.51T (3) Alphabet (Google) 1.92T (5) Amazon 1.72T (7) Meta (Facebook) 941B ... (35) Netflix 264B Source: https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/
  • azangru 5y ago
    > LOL, Netflix is a FAANG? Don't use this stupid acronym then.
• dynamite-ready 5y ago
  Why is Microsoft not in this poll?
• hemloc_io 5y ago
  Weird to see how little traction Amazon is getting. Labor issues, easy antitrust (you can just cut off AWS, Audible etc.) , and a new more passive CEO sounds pretty dangerous to me.
  • pyb 5y ago
    They seem to be having tech talent issues as well. In that regard, the repeat AWS outages, plus the state of the Amazon catalog could be seen canaries in the coalmine.
    • hemloc_io 5y ago
      Yepp highly suggest checking out the salaries on Levels.fyi for SDE 2 engineers. They're putting up Facebook numbers now. Anecdotally everyone from my school who went is somewhere else within a year and half or so.
• rietta 5y ago
  Maybe I am wrong, but I think Facebook has jumped the shark with the virtual reality Meta branding. It's not going to work.
• meltedcapacitor 5y ago
  Could Netflix become the next Time Warner? Could Facebook become the next Yahoo? Could Amazon become the next Sears? Could Apple become the next Kodak? Google is fine: it already is the new IBM.
• cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Agree with others about Netflix not being appropriate for this list. Their success or failure in the marketplace will have little to do with the factors affecting the others on this list. FWIW today is my last day at Google (after 10 years), so maybe that's informing what I'm about to write... I don't have any particular pick from any of this list which is dominant over any other, but... People keep bringing up Google Search still being leading and dominant... but Ads is Google's revenue source and product ... and that's only partially driven by search traffic. Even without Search, Google would still be the strongest presence in online advertising. Google's share price is buoyed quarter after quarter by Google coming in with growth in ads revenue quarter after quarter. I don't think it's controversial to speculate that some day that has to stop. It's just taking a long time to stop. All markets have a saturation. When it does, that will have some kind of cascading effect on Google as a whole. Engineering retention, vulnerability to competition, etc. I think a similar kind of dynamic applies to Facebook as well, with some differences around market segment etc. At least a couple of these companies' success depends on their ability not so much to innovate or produce a better product but to retain the right talent to stop other people from innovating or producing a better product. And to continue to do what they're already doing at scale. A failure to hand out hundreds of thousands in RSUs per engineer every year and an end to siphoning talent straight out of universities and into their payroll.. and all of that will start to crumble.
• disambiguation 5y ago
  Order of decline: Netflix, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple. Netflix because their moat isn't strong enough. Facebook because of monetized-ads model and backlash against social media in general. Google also because of monetized-ads model and declining quality of search results. Amazon and Apple are relatively safe IMO. Amazon is the most at risk from unionization and regulation, potentially breaking up their business verticals. But motivation to do this seems to have subsided after last years congressional hearings. Apple is really only at risk if people start questioning shelling out thousands for the "shiny new thing".
  • dehrmann 5y ago
    You called out decline in Google's SERP quality, but not issues with third-party sellers and fake reviews on Amazon?
    • disambiguation 5y ago
      Yeah fake reviews is a good point, but Amazon isn't primarily a product review company so i don't see it as an apples to apples existential threat like poor quality search is for Google. Also, Amazon could easily reel in 3rd party sellers and impose quality control. It's an unused lever in their toolbox. They've decided that exchanging brand quality for higher free cash flow is a better trade off for the time being.
• scrollaway 5y ago
  As of this post, scores are 748 FB, 28 AMZN, 29 AAPL, 262 NFLX, 128 GOOG "Decline" is also not defined. I am interpreting it as "lose a significant amount of users", not as a question to predict their stock price. I voted Amazon, and given the scores, I feel compelled to explain why. - AWS is a massive beast within Amazon, and it seems increasingly likely that it'll be spun up into its own company - Beyond its other attempts at diversifying, Amazon-the-marketplace is garnering worse and worse reputation. Unless they severely change their ways, other players will catch up. Amazon's huge sell to customers used to be its product reliability and customer support. Both of these have suffered tremendously. - Covid accelerated a lot of the online trends which makes me think Amazon is past its peak. I could elaborate but it's getting late. FB the website will likely decline in the coming years, but MZ has shown an astounding capacity of staying ahead of trends and buying winners (Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus). Netflix I do find likely to decline but not as much as Amazon, and most of all Netflix still has lots of potential for growth. Google seems Too Big To Fail, at best my gut says they will stagnate. And apple I just don't know enough about but they seem very safe.
• tomdell 5y ago
  Voted for Facebook. The “Meta” rebranding reeks of desperation. They have only maintained growth by purchasing competitors and their main platform is dying. As others have said, each generation wants to differentiate itself from the previous one, so social media networks wax and wane as time goes on. Facebook bought IG and WhatsApp, but regulators are waking up and are likely to prevent their next attempt to purchase a big competitor. VR is going to remain a smaller market than social media, no potential to get bigger than the video games console market because it is primarily used for video games and will stay that way.
• amelius 5y ago
  Google and Facebook. One of these days people will understand that ads are a huge driver of overconsumption and therefore climate change. Since Google's and FB's businessmodels depend almost completely on ads, it is clear who has to go first.
• neogodless 5y ago
  It's interesting... Apple was originally founded in 1976, about a year after Microsoft. But we often hear about and think about FAANG, like with this poll. What sets Microsoft apart from this group? They are "older" though, being older than Apple is more a measure of how long they've been successful. Microsoft and Apple often battle for larger market capitalization. They both deliver software and hardware, and the two of the most popular operating systems in use (Windows, Android, iOS). Microsoft is arguably more B2B, while Apple has a more recognized consumer brand. Microsoft is infamous for messing up on the consumer end, and Windows 11 feels like a repeat of this. On the other hand, they are still doing well with their Xbox division. But are they omitted from this poll because of the assumption that their core business... selling to other businesses, will carry them on indefinitely?
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    >But we often hear about and think about FAANG, like with this poll. What sets Microsoft apart from this group? Fang is a catchy word, and the "m" does not neatly fit into it or an alternative acronym that is as catchy.
    • neogodless 5y ago
      If only we could include the Boring company, along with Alphabet, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta. BANAMAM! Without it, MANAMA!
• oaiey 5y ago
  Amazon (Cloud and Shopping), Apple (Hardware), Google (Search, Apps, Cloud) and Microsoft (Cloud, Apps) will be fine. Amazon, Apple and Google will be more regulated but will stabilize like Microsoft. I do not see a growth model for Facebook. Selling ads with regulators all over the world fighting against you is nothing sustainable. And Netflix .. I mean .. look at their catalogue.
• annadane 5y ago
  Facebook if antitrust actually does its job properly (notably, give back Whatsapp to Brian Acton and Jan Koum, don't require a log-in to view public Instagram photos, and don't tie the Oculus to Facebook accounts)
• gnicholas 5y ago
  This is the first time I've participated in a poll, and I wish I could vote before seeing the results. Not that dang and friends aren't busy enough — just mentioning for the future.
• jrockway 5y ago
  I don't see any of these companies flat-out failing ever, but it does seem like they've gone the way of IBM. In the Fortune 500 but not quite as innovative as they were at their peak. I feel like every generation has had their list of companies to be "lifers" at. There was Bell Labs, HP, IBM in a past generation. Then there was Google and Apple in a newer generation. Then there was Netflix, Facebook, AWS, etc. Right now, there are none! Who will start the next one, and avoid it becoming one from my list?
• acqbu 5y ago
  It's got to be Facebook. Increased awareness about privacy and a few more mishaps and that's enough to kick it all off
• muzzio 5y ago
  I'd say in terms of relevancy, either facebook or netflix: - Netflix already feels like an outlier in that list because they're not as technically focused as any of the other ones listed. They feel more like a media company these days, not a tech company, and as time goes on there's less and less differentiating them from any other media company/streaming service. - If Metaverse doesn't pan out for them, I don't see either FB or Insta having a revival in popularity in the coming years. The only family I have still under 20 have deleted or abandoned FB, and I don't see the younger generation bothering with the "keep up with family" social network, and Insta keeps getting its lunch eaten with all its competitors. It feels like Insta is going to get a competitor at some point that will take its main offering (photographic status updates, basically) and then it'll suffer the same fate of irrelevancy.
• more_corn 5y ago
  Isn’t it MAANA now? Meta > Facebook Alphabet > Google
• GeekyBear 5y ago
  The biggest recent change is that Amazon has thrown away it's reputation for being a reliable customer service focused marketplace in favor of being a marketplace for (too often substandard if not outright fraudulent) third party partners.
• dwighttk 5y ago
  Currently seems to be running at about the ratio I see things as they currently stand.
• synergy20 5y ago
  where is microsoft, possibly even nvidia
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• bawolff 5y ago
  I think google. FB is the obvious one, but they see the writing on the wall and are making plans. I think google is the one that has been complacent but doesn't realize it, so its the one most likely to fail. Its also the only one without effective competition, which is all the more reason it will be taken by surprise.
  • alphabetting 5y ago
    Or there's a reason that their competition is effective. Search is impossibly hard to pull off.
    • bawolff 5y ago
      Oh i definitely agree. But it just means when someone finally does find a way to effectively compete they won't know what hit them.
• Hippocrates 5y ago
  I don't see how Netflix will hold ground. Streaming tech is now a commodity, not a moat. 2-3 years ago I would have said Netflix is the streaming sub to have. Hard to say that now. Disney, HBO and Amazon also have great original content and huge catalogues that could sustain a family as the only sub. Apple is growing a small but quality catalogue, and bundling within the ubiquitous iCloud package. Amazon has a massive bought-in base being that they bundled it with Prime shipping. There are countless other legacy network subs and content re-packagings to choose from. So I don't see Netflix as particular a leader in content, scale, or value. Their best (only?) post-streaming tech innovation is the collaborative filtering. A way of finding something passable to watch that is better that channel flipping broadcast TV. Now there is so much great content that people just go straight to the show with the buzz. If there is one promising area they lead now I'd say it's internationalized content like Squid Game and Money Heist, but I'm not convinced this is big enough moat.
• _8j50 5y ago
  Why the hell does netflix has so many upvotes? i would pay triple their max subscription fee for their content! For me it has to be Google, yeah FB too for obvious reasons but Google got too big and their products have been showing a detrimental pattern. They will be around but people are using tiktok and friends in lieu of youtube and their main revenue source is ADs via search and I see many good competitors in that space. New apps and enganging services don't really rely on google search. The main spenders are merchants and being able to get virtual foot traffic without Google's help is getting easier by the day. Both Google and FB (Alphabet/Meta) are clouded by the arrogance an deep pocket brings where they thing their cash will somehow overcome the law of diminishing returns. Their historical predecessors like AT&T, IBM & Cisco are good examples. You can tell by how they treat their customers. Apple and Amazon know better, they keep their status because they know their deep pockets are always vulnerable and they need to treat their users very well even if they have to treat their employees like shit. I thing google and fb will just keep investing in new companies, lawyers and lobbyists to rhyme with history. Example: I thing GCP is superior but I would bet on AWS support more than GCP any day! I think android can be customized to provide a better security and private environment but I would bet having a good UX with iOS any day.
  • mywittyname 5y ago
    >Why the hell does netflix has so many upvotes? I contributed to this. My first thought was that netflix doesn't really have special sauce anymore. They exist in a highly competitive market and lack the back catalog of established media companies. As a result, they end up paying way too much money for both new shows, and established ones. On the other side of the coin, they can't compete with the volume of free content that is created by YouTube. It's pretty easy to start a streaming service today, and many specialized streaming services have been successful. In my person experience, my NF usage has gone to zero, being replaced with YouTube, Nebula, and HBOMax, with the occasional hop onto Prime for the odd rental. And I was as big of a NF diehard as any; I was paying for streaming since they started offering it.
    • _8j50 5y ago
      Youtube is uset generated content, can't compete with netflix. I used prime for a while and switched to netflix. I am joyfully overwhelmed by the volume and quality of content on netflix. I don't have to rent or buy anything, it is all just there to watch! If anything I resent Disney for not going all in on netlflix instead of doing Disney+. After a few weeks on prime I ran out of interesting content. With Netflix I am binging multi season shows and I still find new movies and seasons as they get released right after the previous one. And they actually ask for your up/down vote instead of relying in ML like with prime (which is terrible btw)
• geebee 5y ago
  I quit facebook (as a user, never worked for them). I may drop Netflix. I've been mad at apple ever since I bought a powerbook that crapped out within a year and a few months, just outside the warranty (I never bought the extended, it was Mac, they never break), and was told I'd have to pay $350 to fix it (I didn't damage it in any way, it was just a turkey of a product), but I'm still using an iPhone. Amazon prime remains immensely popular in my household both for movies and tv shows and ordering gifts, books and groceries, and while I'd like to to use it less, I don't see that happening. I use Firefox and duckduckgo as much as I can, but still use gmail, google docs, search, and google cloudplatform and AI notebooks - the latter extensively. No idea if my own personal preferences or needs have anything to do with overall appeal or decline. I worked for Sun Microsystems once, late 90s-2001. A lot of people figured the dot com thing would take a tumble, but felt good about Sun's prospects (as workers and as an investment) because Sun made real tangible things, servers and workstations. Amazon, at the time, was a bookstore with a "dot com" tacked on to the end. Apple hadn't yet released OS X and was often accused of coasting on good looks and being pretty. There was no facebook and wouldn't be for a few more years... there was "the globe", friendster, a few of those. When I was at Sun, I sat in an office that is now facebook. Google was around, though a lot of people were saying search was no longer a differentiator, and that the important thing for a search engine was to become a portal and be "sticky", and be a bit more like a content provider, entertainment hub, and so forth. The people who thought Sun was a good bet made perfect sense - in retrospect, they had it wrong, and some people accurately pointed this out at the time... but you could make a reasonable case for Sun. So... just sayin'
• 1970-01-01 5y ago
  I voted Google because I don't believe it's special anymore. It's become IBM and Microsoft, with just enough forward momentum to find the rare 10x engineer here and there. The others still have interesting tech that will unfold in disruptive ways, and that will be the big talent magnet for future engineers.
• ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
  Honestly apple is the only company in this list which has any deep respect in the world. So I think they will survive. The rest are just here for the time being.
• nextstep 5y ago
  My ranking (from greatest to least decline): 1. Facebook 2. Google 3. Amazon 4. Netflix 5. Apple
• Shadonototra 5y ago
  Microsoft
• stephc_int13 5y ago
  I have not been impressed by Apple, Google and Facebook during the last 4-5 years. All of these companies are extremely rich and powerful, but they won't disrupt themselves. They barely compete in practice, they are happy to live in a stable ecosystem they own. They won't be displaced easily, but they will, at some point, in the mean time technology in their space is unlikely to progress as quickly as it could.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Facebook. Zuckerberg told investors that it will take awhile before heavy investment in metaverse bears fruit. What if they miss? It feels weird to say this but I'm still wearily rooting for them. Bonus- I think that Microsoft is least likely to decline. Just look at that stock trend line.
• delhanty 5y ago
  Schrödinger's Apple because China's inevitable re-unification with Taiwan will take the U.S.-China cold-war to the next level ( assuming that there's not an actual short, hot war, which, IMO, the U.S. would loose unless it used its nukes), the box will be opened and Tim Cook will be forced to choose whether Apple's loyalties with the U.S. or China. We could even see a rogue Apple China de-merge itself somewhat like happened with ARM [0]. [0] https://www.iotworldtoday.com/2021/09/08/arm-loses-china/ https://www.iotworldtoday.com/2021/09/08/arm-loses-china/
• shove 5y ago
  I maintain Facebook is doomed, but I lost a $100 bet on the timeline :(
• bradgranath 5y ago
  Out of THOSE? Facebook hands down. The others are also playing fast and loose with the truth and are no angels, but only Facebook is really actively hated.
• xiaodai 5y ago
  Meta - gamna
• helloworld11 5y ago
  The emotional favoritism in these poll results is laughable so far. Everyone and their cousin on HN loves to shit on Facebook, so lo and behold, it gets the worst ranking, followed by Google. Apple, despite a number of very consumer-hostile choices, is barely considered a potential failure. I would assume that those voting would choose based on a rational analysis derived from their personal knowledge of tech trends, instead of simple personal dislikes. Oops..
  • chillacy 5y ago
    The poll should be phrased as: Which FAANG would you short-sell relative to long positions on the others to maximize return in 5 years? Then at least we can measure performance, otherwise there isn't really a right or wrong answer we can evaluate.
  • trynumber9 5y ago
    Apple has a loyal customer base and is designing some of the most amazing silicon to come out of Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, Facebook's greatest strength is quickly copying or buying their promising new competitors. Somehow that seems like the strategy of company trying to prevent hemorrhaging. And it doesn't seem likely to scale long term now that they're on government radar.
• calltrak 5y ago
  Google search results sucks. Here is a list of alternative search engines i find handy https://fabform.io/a/alternative-search-engines https://fabform.io/a/alternative-search-engines
• Tiktaalik 5y ago
  Netflix is the odd duck here in that being a content company, they don't have a repeatable business model. They depend on hits and one hit does not guarantee a follow up hit. Like any film production company or games company, if they start repeatedly investing into big budget content that bombs, they will rapidly run into trouble.
• crakhamster01 5y ago
  I guess I should expect to see FB at #1 given this is HN, but even with the negative bias, it’s surprising to see people discount the success of Oculus so easily. Quest was one of the best selling holiday gifts this year, and the companion app even hit #1 in the iOS App Store (over IG, TikTok, etc.)[1]. FB the app may be slowing growth, but AR/VR seems poised to be the next major computing platform - and mainstream adoption shares this sentiment. It’s fine to wish for the company’s demise, but arguing that they’re ready to fail seems foolish. [1] https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/metaverse-app-oculus-ranks-1-on-app-store-and-google-play-2725798 https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/metaverse...
• miiiiiike 5y ago
  Facebook for social/political reasons Google, for SE reasons. I’ve never had as many issues with F/OSS projects than I’ve had with Google’s open source projects. Whenever I need a bug fixed I tell my girlfriend “I’m about to be treated like I’m dumb in a bug tracker.” It’s usually basic functionality that was documented years ago but never actually functioned properly. The fix is usually done behind closed doors by a Google employee in 1-n months and tossed back over the wall. Very little space for a non-Googler to contribute and employee maintainers seem to leave often. The documentation structure used across projects is non-sensical as well. No next/prev, just “related” links. They actually brag about the doc process in their software engineering book.
• rootsudo 5y ago
  Netflix, each media holder is looking to monetize and create their own streaming platform. Netflix was first, but does not hold rights to Disney, NBC, etc - For primary markets, USA and such it will have more and more competition but in other parts of the world they'll be able to still license content until more mature infrastructure develops - netflix is #2 to CDN/cohosting in the world, right behind facebook. Disney plus though, really getting up there with creative content and it's massive legacy of IP. Google - Adtech, no problems there unfortunately, just more crappy internet. Apple - iPhones/Macbook and it's ecosystem is alive and well though revenue stream of app store could change in the future. Amazon - Infrastructure as a service, way better than Google, no problem here. Storefront is a minor part of it's business.
• tdsamardzhiev 5y ago
  Ordered by chance of decline (IMHO): 1. Netflix (~50% chance) - I feel it's only bundled with the rest of FAANG to make it sound better. In any case, HBO/Disney/Apple/whoever producing a cultural phenomenon like "Game of Thrones" would be enough for Netflix to lose the lead. Netflix wants to game viewers based on big data, but I feel like that will only lead to more and more generic stuff being produced. 2. Facebook (~25% chance) - It has pissed off multiple governments and other tech giants. Younger generations don't really care about it, and older people are starting to understand that it thrives on outrage. 3. Google (~10% chance) - Most of their services are slowly becoming worse, but I feel there's at least another decade before disruption time. 4. Apple (~1% chance) - Even if they need to allow additional app stores by law, I don't see that significantly impacting their bottom line. iPhone/iPad/Watch are the device to own in their categories, and the latest crop of Macbooks have been absolutely stellar. Additionally, they have by far the most devout userbase out of any big tech company. If anything can hurt Apple, that's the NIH syndrome, but it's more of a long-term concern. 5. Amazon (0% chance) - Yeah, not happening. Amazon is synonymous with online retail in a time when online retail is what keeps the world going. And AWS is only going to grow, even if it somehow manages to fall behind Azure. Labor unions will certainly show up, but so will automation.
• jstrebel 5y ago
  Tesla?
• freebee87 5y ago
  The market cap of these companies is: Amazon - $1.5 trillion Netflix - $260 billion Apple - $3 trillion Google - $2 trillion Facebook - $1 trillion Anyone who thinks facebook (i.e. meta) is going to drop can buy put options. the $150 put 2 years out is selling for $5 so if you buy 100 for $50K - When the stock falls you will have enough money to buy a house