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Facebook and social media companies rely on viral phenomena to sustain their monopoly. It will take 1 inciting event for them to fall into an irreversible death

by screye 4y ago

Facebook and social media companies rely on viral phenomena to sustain their monopoly. It will take 1 inciting event for them to fall into an irreversible death spiral. The instagram + whatsapp acquisition, feeling threatened by 100x smaller dev shops demonstrates that. Google's big advantage is that their core product has fundamental value (search and by proxy: ads) and their secondary products are such loss-leaders that outcompeting those freebies (Google office suite, Gmail, maps, YT, chrome, ml tooling) is where the real difficulty comes in. But building a core-search competitor is far easier than competition with Apple or Msft's core products. Google has a lot more scaffolding that FB, but they too have a single point of failure. A sea-change (like Mapreduce, pagerank, the smartphone) can see them collapse swiftly. On the other hand, enterprise / feature-checklist companies lie in a stable equilibrium. You can't really beat them unless you invest a similar amount of resources into it. And even if you defeat them, they'll catch up to you in time if they're run at similar levels of competency and can throw a ton money money at it. Microsoft and Apple are exactly that. It's like trying to start a Boeing or Nvidia competitor. You better at least be at Airbus's or AMD's level before even trying to compete against boeing. Microsoft's weakness is best displayed by Adpbe's acquisition of Figma. If Microsoft is run in a similarly predatory manner and a competitor gets 10 free years to catch up on 1 feature while you continuously fail to innovate, then you feel a mild threat, at which point you can simply outbid and acquire them. That shows how remarkably comfortable of a position Adobe is in, and Microsft and Apple sit a couple of orders of magnitude above that.

VirusNewbie 4y ago
I’m fairly certain gmail, youtube, and gsuite on their own would be unicorns still.
- IceWreck 4y ago
  Youtube wouldve never grown to that size without Googe's money. It wouldve inevitably shut down or made huge changes to their model. Gmail, yes it would be huge without google but its only so bug because google forced it down everyone's throats with mandatory google accounts for android, maps, youtube, drive, etc. GSuite again this would never be s big without google's backing. Just look at its non MS competitors.
- scarface74 4y ago
  YouTube is barely break even according to most reports and GSuite is really not that big in the enterprise. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3637079/as-google-moves-to-reshape-workspace-barriers-to-business-adoption-remain.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3637079/as-google-move... > Google grew its share of the productivity software market to 10.3% in 2020, according to research from Gartner, taking about 2% from Microsoft. Microsoft is still the clear leader however, with 89.2%. Overall, the productivity software suite market grew 18.2% during 2020.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Microsoft built a 3 trillion dollar company in the back of their productivity suite. Reaching 10% market share there is easily worth 10 billion. YouTube is making 10s of billions a year profit. Its margins on absolutely bonkers.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Microsoft’s latest quarterly report https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2022-Q2/segment-revenues https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2022-Q2... “Productivity & Business Processes” - $7.698 Billion in revenue. That segment includes Office 365 and LinkedIn and Dynamics As far as YouTube having huge margins https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/youtubes-huge-miss-shows-digital-media-ad-market-is-getting-hit-hard.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/youtubes-huge-miss-shows-dig...
      - colinmhayes 4y ago
        Azure and Microsoft's hardware business would be nothing without the productivity suite. They leverage their existing business and personal relationships to sell those products.
        scarface74 4y ago
        Yes and Google hired an Oracle executive to handle enterprise relationships and GCP. What could possibly go wrong? Google isn’t exactly known for great customer support or anything else that requires high touch.
scarface74 4y ago
What happens if Apple decides to or is forced to stop accepting a reported $18 billion a year to be the default search engine on iOS devices? Google will lose its most valuable customers. Microsoft Office adoption in the enterprise dwarfs GSuite.
- screye 4y ago
  Oh yeah, that's exactly my point. IMO, The vulnerability from most vulnerable to least goes: Facebook > Google >> Apple ~> Microsoft = Amazon
  - winnie_ua 4y ago
    Interesting observation. Need to reflect on this. What else busdines does Meta have beyond FB, Instagram, Whatsapp? I guess they are somehow wurnelable to search market problems(including regulations), but that won't make them collapse, just less wealthy. And they can start monetizing WA and Insta more agresively. Perhaps your concerns are one of reasons why they are investing so much in metaverse. Google on other hand has bigger hold. They have Hosting business(which is not profitable currently, if that is truth), and YouTube. If something happens with search business, YouTube would feed Alphabet. Also money from play store and licensing fees from android vendors. I bet, Google's investment in Android was great move. It makes them more secure than Facebook.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Android makes very little money for Google. It came out in the Oracle lawsuit that Google had only made $27 billion in profit from Android from its inception through the trial. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-google-lawsuit-idUSKCN0UZ2W9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-google-lawsuit-idU... Android was already dominant as far as market share. Also Google is non existent in the worlds largest mobile market - China. That’s Apple’s biggest market. Apple has to be making more from Google on mobile from the money that Google pays Apple to be the default search engine (a reported $18 billion) a year than Google makes from Android.
  - 4y ago

by screye 4y ago

VirusNewbie 4y ago

I’m fairly certain gmail, youtube, and gsuite on their own would be unicorns still.

IceWreck 4y ago
Youtube wouldve never grown to that size without Googe's money. It wouldve inevitably shut down or made huge changes to their model. Gmail, yes it would be huge without google but its only so bug because google forced it down everyone's throats with mandatory google accounts for android, maps, youtube, drive, etc. GSuite again this would never be s big without google's backing. Just look at its non MS competitors.
scarface74 4y ago
YouTube is barely break even according to most reports and GSuite is really not that big in the enterprise. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3637079/as-google-moves-to-reshape-workspace-barriers-to-business-adoption-remain.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3637079/as-google-move... > Google grew its share of the productivity software market to 10.3% in 2020, according to research from Gartner, taking about 2% from Microsoft. Microsoft is still the clear leader however, with 89.2%. Overall, the productivity software suite market grew 18.2% during 2020.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Microsoft built a 3 trillion dollar company in the back of their productivity suite. Reaching 10% market share there is easily worth 10 billion. YouTube is making 10s of billions a year profit. Its margins on absolutely bonkers.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Microsoft’s latest quarterly report https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2022-Q2/segment-revenues https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2022-Q2... “Productivity & Business Processes” - $7.698 Billion in revenue. That segment includes Office 365 and LinkedIn and Dynamics As far as YouTube having huge margins https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/youtubes-huge-miss-shows-digital-media-ad-market-is-getting-hit-hard.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/youtubes-huge-miss-shows-dig...
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      Azure and Microsoft's hardware business would be nothing without the productivity suite. They leverage their existing business and personal relationships to sell those products.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Yes and Google hired an Oracle executive to handle enterprise relationships and GCP. What could possibly go wrong? Google isn’t exactly known for great customer support or anything else that requires high touch.

scarface74 4y ago

What happens if Apple decides to or is forced to stop accepting a reported $18 billion a year to be the default search engine on iOS devices? Google will lose its most valuable customers. Microsoft Office adoption in the enterprise dwarfs GSuite.

screye 4y ago
Oh yeah, that's exactly my point. IMO, The vulnerability from most vulnerable to least goes: Facebook > Google >> Apple ~> Microsoft = Amazon
- winnie_ua 4y ago
  Interesting observation. Need to reflect on this. What else busdines does Meta have beyond FB, Instagram, Whatsapp? I guess they are somehow wurnelable to search market problems(including regulations), but that won't make them collapse, just less wealthy. And they can start monetizing WA and Insta more agresively. Perhaps your concerns are one of reasons why they are investing so much in metaverse. Google on other hand has bigger hold. They have Hosting business(which is not profitable currently, if that is truth), and YouTube. If something happens with search business, YouTube would feed Alphabet. Also money from play store and licensing fees from android vendors. I bet, Google's investment in Android was great move. It makes them more secure than Facebook.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Android makes very little money for Google. It came out in the Oracle lawsuit that Google had only made $27 billion in profit from Android from its inception through the trial. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-google-lawsuit-idUSKCN0UZ2W9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-google-lawsuit-idU... Android was already dominant as far as market share. Also Google is non existent in the worlds largest mobile market - China. That’s Apple’s biggest market. Apple has to be making more from Google on mobile from the money that Google pays Apple to be the default search engine (a reported $18 billion) a year than Google makes from Android.
- 4y ago