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Microsoft, for all its flaws, has strengths. They're grittier than most and ultimately, know how to deliver software products and build businesses around them..
by netcan 5y ago
Microsoft, for all its flaws, has strengths. They're grittier than most and ultimately, know how to deliver software products and build businesses around them... very different products and very different businesses. Leadership was a lever to these, but there was something to lever
FB have never built a successful product besides Zuck's original. They have never created a good business besides the FB and program. They pushed both to the max.
FB pushed the walled garden hard. They pushed hard on acquiring the competition. They pushed hard on making the product "addictive" and optimising it on a "what FB wants from users" basis.
In its ad business FB pushed hard on leveraging data. Google's AdWords was always based on user intent. Someone searches for "divorce lawyer," and AdWords finds them a divorce lawyer. FB ads are premised on targeting, not intent. So... leverage data to create a segment with >n chance of wanting a divorce lawyer. It worked.
That's FB in a nutshell. They push hard on simple things.
What they need is something else to push on. I agree on making WhatsApp a payments app. IMO, retail finance would suit FB perfectly. They'd be better at it than Apple or Google. Look at retail banks, like Citi. It's all about pushing for revenue. Some newly invented fee that most customers don't know they're paying. Some new way of charging both sides of a transaction. More of something. Generating revenue from customer data, float, 3rd party deals... taking advantage of moat. FB would be really good at that.
Controlling the VR metaverse... I just don't see it. Too much innovation. Too much invention. Too many elements to balance. Too avante garde. It's not Zuck.
- busymom0 5y agoI think Microsoft is also almost an essential product company. You can either get a PC or a Mac. Or Linux but even that requires getting a PC anyway. Chromebook market is still tiny.
- AussieWog93 5y agoApparently Chromebooks outsold Macbooks in 2020, and their market share only seems to be increasing: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/chromebooks-outsold-macs-worldwide-2020-cutting-windows-market-share/ https://www.geekwire.com/2021/chromebooks-outsold-macs-world... (That said, ChromeOS still makes up a much smaller percentage of active installations, as Google don't have the legacy hardware base that Apple and Microsoft do)
- netcan 5y agoIn some sense this demonstrates a point about key markets. Chromebooks have market share that's not important, beyond sales volume for a variety of reasons. It's a secondary machine, a non-work machine, a machine for the unsavy, etc. People who don't need much from the laptop. It has few apps, and the ecosystem isn't that important. Companies don't run on it. Companies don't even really run on Google docs very often. These products remain non essentials with little to no lock-in. You could argue that kindle is a computer too, but it doesn't really matter either way.
- alexb_ 5y agoI think you are forgetting a gigantic market that is worth billions upon billions of government funded cheese: schools. Chromebooks have the education market down. Damn near every single school that wants to upgrade its tech is getting a chromebook. Schools need google docs. Schools need a low cost machine so that they can buy a thousand of them. Schools need something incredibly locked down. Schools are a source of income that is not only great but also gets people used to using google products as that is all they have learned (you ever wonder why Adobe and Microsoft work so closely with education?). To say that chromebooks have an "unimportant" market share is just flat out wrong.
- KptMarchewa 5y agoI think you forget that only US schools buy their students computers.
- dagw 5y agoThat isn't true. I know of many schools in Norway and Sweden that buy iPads or Chromebooks for their students. Although it is admittedly not universal
- KptMarchewa 5y agoProbably Switzerland does that too. That's still very small fraction of the whole world.
- simias 5y ago>Or Linux but even that requires getting a PC anyway I'm not sure I understand what you mean here, if I buy, say, a Dell computer with Linux pre-installed then I don't think MS gets a cut? They don't own the PC platform. Or maybe you mean that most prebuilt PCs come with some OEM Windows license even if you don't intend to use is, which is fair enough I suppose. Not that it really matters for desktop PCs where Windows is king anyway. Although from personal experience I'd argue that the "essential product" these days is less Windows itself than the Office suite which is still the gold standard in many institutions.
- ho_schi 5y agoPC != Windows And was never. The Personal-Computer is an original product of International Business Machines (IBM) and not Microsoft. Contrary to most products shipped today it's architecture is open for industry standards and other companies. A huge success for IBM. Microsoft shipped the pre-installed and required operating-system. You can order desktops and laptops without an operating-sytem or Linux from Lenovo (former IBM), Dell, System76, Purism, Tuxedo and many more. Vendors which aim for cheap distribution to private customers usually only ship Personal Computers with Windows. Most of these are crap and come with questionable pre-installed software - and I don't refer to Windows. That IBM sold the PC subsidiary was the worst mistake the could ever have done, both Apple and Lenovo show how much money you can earn with long lasting high quality products. IBM lost the contact point to many customers. They need to succeed with Red Hat now. Irony, IBM use and prefer (again) ThinkPads, preinstalled with Linux. If you say "it runs on PC" you're actually saying your software is compatible to an Intel 286 CPU or higher. Well, if it is portable?
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago>PC != Windows Technically, yes, that is correct, however, looking at the over 90% marketshare Windows has on the IBM/PC space, Windows is pretty much the synonym for the PC OS. Most laptops and PC's sold with an OS by retailers or OEMs, are shipped with Windows by default. It's basically a monopoly. Sure, on tech boards like this one the proportion of people running some GNU/Linux based OS on their PC is much higher than the statistics, but the average joe consumer is 99% surely gonna have Windows on their PC which is where the assumption that "PC automatically equals Windows by default" comes from.
- ho_schi 5y agoI likely use often also incorrect or misleading terms. Yes. The mass market works (thinks) like that. Like you said, we're here on a tech board and therefore I refer to the actual definitions. Depends on situation when correct terms must be used or not.
- touristtam 5y agodon't let it stop you correcting people calling their desktop PC a hard drive. We're technically on a tech board so the correction is _correct_.
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago> Controlling the VR metaverse... I just don't see it. Too much innovation. Too much invention. Remember FB can always purchase themselves into the market - pick up a few startups and bodge together a consistent product. I think the problem is that VR tech and apps will take too long to arrive to gain any traction with the wider public, before FB needs it. FB needs hundreds of millions/billions of users, VR hasn't punched out of the 'early adopter'/gamer market yet and even those were balking at having to have FB accounts.
- DannyBee 5y agoDepends how fast the market moves. Any acquisition will get enough scrutiny that even if it goes through it will take a while This will both scare off potential acquisitions and slow things down a lot, enabling others time to make better plays. Even if they choose all the right targets it will still be hard.
- kranke155 5y agoFacebook bought Oculus and although their hardware is still good, they are being beat in the software and overall hardware experience by Valve. A far smaller company but they built - Valve Index and Half Life Alyx (widely considered the best game in VR). The Index isn’t perfect, but the actual story of Oculus is just them making a cruddy MVP, Valve taking the time to show their far superior prototypes, and allowing them to copy them, and then Oculus and part of the Valve team selling out to Facebook (ie Michael Abrash). Virtually all the innovation in VR was made by Valve, the only innovation Facebook has added is inside out tracking. So Oculus is really just another Instagram /WhatsApp - they purchased a solid team and product, but they’re not out innovating even smaller players in the field.
- bin_bash 5y agoYou conveniently left out how Index is $999 + the cost of a gaming PC whereas Quest 2 is $300 with everything you need to play. It's hard for me to hear your argument when you don't address the most obvious criticism.
- DrBazza 5y agoMicrosoft has multi-billion dollar branches - Office, OS, Azure, XBox, Activision, I'm sure I've missed one. It also completely fluffed Nokia. And dodged the bullet that is Yahoo. It's pretty resilient. FB? Like others have said, the social media FB itself is pretty weak, and like you also said - addiction, and walled garden are the locks in. It can only grow financially by (more) acquisitions.
- amelius 5y agoFB has Oculus, which could be compared to XBox (though not yet in size).
- pmontra 5y agoXBox is mainstream, Oculus is not. Maybe it will become mainstream too but countless products were the next best thing and faded away.
- netcan 5y agoIt's in a different league in terms of size, at this point. Also, FB bought Oculus. It has grown since, but most of where they are is on trajectory from the purchase. Meanwhile, VR as a whole is neither a big not profitable market. The competition are also a bunch of upstart-ey businesses/divisions limited by investor generosity. Zuck makes good acquisitions, no doubt about that, but Oculus isn't an Xbox yet. Xbox, OTOH, is proof that Microsoft could enter a completely different market, compete, win and create a whole new business division. It was already a mature market.
- md_ 5y agoXbox et al is ~$17b/year in revenue. Meta's VR was ~$2bn last year. I'm shocked it's that high, but, honestly, for an early effort, that's pretty competitive. If I'm reading Microsoft's 2005 annual report right, Home & Entertainment revenue was $3bn in 2005. I still don't think VR is going to supplant console gaming, but console gaming is a big business--Xbox-level revenue would be a 15% increase in total revenue for Meta. I also don't think Zuck's stated aspirations are a +15% boost in revenue by becoming a successful competitor in the gaming market, which is why it's so easy to criticize the insanely overstated goals of the "metaverse."
- whiplash451 5y agoI very much like your analysis, but retail finance would be an uphill battle for a company like FB that has built such a negative track record of user data handling.
- netcan 5y agoCheers. I can certainly see the criticisms mounting, if FB go financial. But, I also recall the many times FB withstood criticism. Criticism from users over product changes. Experts on privacy. Journalists and politicians on social issues and user manipulation. They persevere, and rarely have to give an inch. OTOH, I think FB is the world leader in gaining leverage from customer data. Their ad business is more based on targeting data than Google's. It could conceivably even survive the demise of FB itself. Finding partners to run ads is doable, and with fb's targeting that still could ad up to major and business. So perhaps they're not great at securing customer data, though they are probably more as technically capable than most banks. But, they are the very best at leveraging and monetising customer data. Call it a high risk, high reward investment.
- whiplash451 5y agoI hear you, but I'm not convinced. Retail finance is being hammered by future giants like Revolut and Stripe who are not complete noobs in leveraging customer data and start from a much better position PR-wise (relatively).
- netcan 5y agoHow do Revolut and Stripe leverage customer data? I suppose Stripe has some fraud detection, but I haven't heard of anything game changing. For Revolut, I can't really think of much. FB has the most targeting-centric ad business by far. In dollar terms, I can't think of anyone earning as much from customer data as FB.
- polypodiopsi 5y ago"It's all about pushing for revenue. Some newly invented fee that most customers don't know they're paying. Some new way of charging both sides of a transaction. More of something. Generating revenue from customer data, float, 3rd party deals... taking advantage of moat. FB would be really good at that." I'm curious: do you have any awareness of the fact that there are very unethical actions suggested in what you are discussing here casually?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- datavirtue 5y agoBanking 101. It's not pretty.
- netcan 5y agoI haven't heard of any ethical issues in retail banking. What are they? Anyway, it's not usury if they eat breakfast with you.
- slfnflctd 5y ago> what FB wants from users The way I see it, this is the biggest thing they need to turn around. To a point where they might need to launch a product - or maybe a paid tier - that is somewhat separate from what the FB experience has become. What users want from FB needs to be explored on multiple levels. Ability to sort posts chronologically between a subset of your network, 'suggested' connections you can filter by relevance to a subset of your interests, customizable local community participation alerts... there are all kinds of ways of exploring vast social networks that can actually benefit society. I strongly feel that prioritizing content which gets people riled so you can feed them more ads is such a massive negative, showing a willingness to change something so terrible yet fundamental to their current revenue would be the most significant thing they could do. It probably won't happen, but despite my increasing pessimism I still like to imagine better possibilities.
- wikfwikf 5y agoMaking WhatsApp into a payments app is going to lead to the most difficult content moderation problems ever known. Everything from content by casual OF performers to extremely illegal and damaging content would be on that platform if it was easy to make payments and still fairly easy to send pictures and video privately.
- giansegato 5y ago> FB have never built a successful product besides Zuck's original. Can we argue the same point for Google? Considering their dominant position in digital ads, I wonder what this implies.