3 ms·

This is kind of what's sad at working at a big company. If the same team was doing the same work at a startup, every one of their meetings can be "this feature

This is kind of what's sad at working at a big company. If the same team was doing the same work at a startup, every one of their meetings can be "this feature will kill the competition". Personally I think it's a great attitude; if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. And you're certainly entitled to try. (And, sometimes ideas do kill their industry. Called someone on your landline recently? Bought a DVD at the store? Listened to music on a Walkman? It happens.) The devil is always in the details. If you kill the US steel industry by being a government that pays people to buy steel from your country, that's problematic. If you just make shit and people like it, though, that should never be illegal.

spywaregorilla 3y ago
It is not problematic to put people out of business by having a superior product. It is problematic to abuse the fact that you have more money, connections, lawyers, political power, market control, customer interaction control, etc.
- GauntletWizard 3y ago
  Absolutely, and the fact that our lawmakers cannot distinguish the two, and rely on fighting the last war with dumb heuristics based on phraseology is a real social problem.
  - spywaregorilla 3y ago
    Most of the cases in question are absolutely about abusing platform economics.
pyrale 3y ago
> if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. The issue is that, once you reach Google scale, you have so many tools to put the competition out of business that are unrelated to product fit. And, in the case of Google, they've been known to do just that. So yeah, you can't really compare an incumbent with monopoly power to an underdog, just like some sentences from young kids are hilarious, that would be chilling if adults said them.
ryandrake 3y ago
> Personally I think it's a great attitude; if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. I think this "Others must lose so that I win" attitude is one of the more toxic attributes of this Thunderdome Capitalism so many industries have somehow ended up in. Wouldn't it be great if we could have dozens of businesses all successful, all doing "somewhat good" rather than having to always have a small number of winners that take everything? If I'm going to open a laundromat a block away from Paul's competing laundromat, I'm not doing it to try to put Paul out of business. I'm just trying to capture enough business so that we can coexist comfortably. Some entrepreneurs just don't know the meaning of the word "enough".
- jrockway 3y ago
  I'm not sure how applicable this is to software. If you're making nails or something, then sure, your factory can only turn so many tons of coiled steel into nails per day. So other companies can exist that also make nails. In software, it's a little different; you moving a billion copies doesn't necessarily take any more work than selling one copy, so even if you "want to leave enough for everyone", you might not be able to. I doubt the Chrome team was saying things like "we shouldn't add tabs, that would be so bad for Internet Explorer".
  - lazide 3y ago
    Uh, Standard Oil? Antitrust has a long history and it has nothing to do with tech.
- thegrimmest 3y ago
  But if your laundromat is better in some way (service, cost, marketing), why wouldn't you want to grow? And if the market is a fixed size, (which just about every market is) doesn't that inevitably result in Paul adapting to keep up or closing down? When did it become immoral to realize this and strive for it? In this scenario everyone besides Paul benefits. And so it will be when you become the incumbent and face a competitor with a similar edge. In Google's case, I suspect "search" will die to AI like Blackberries died to iPhones. Google is already proving that its size and bureaucratic unwieldiness are major obstacles to its competing in the AI space. Would we really hold back the vast social benefits of this progress because we object to some people becoming obscenely wealthy?
fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
I think the “winner takes all” attitude is the problem. It’s perfectly fine to run a tech company with a limited market but it doesn’t generate the spectacular returns current investors are looking for.

spywaregorilla 3y ago

It is not problematic to put people out of business by having a superior product. It is problematic to abuse the fact that you have more money, connections, lawyers, political power, market control, customer interaction control, etc.

GauntletWizard 3y ago
Absolutely, and the fact that our lawmakers cannot distinguish the two, and rely on fighting the last war with dumb heuristics based on phraseology is a real social problem.
- spywaregorilla 3y ago
  Most of the cases in question are absolutely about abusing platform economics.

pyrale 3y ago

> if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. The issue is that, once you reach Google scale, you have so many tools to put the competition out of business that are unrelated to product fit. And, in the case of Google, they've been known to do just that. So yeah, you can't really compare an incumbent with monopoly power to an underdog, just like some sentences from young kids are hilarious, that would be chilling if adults said them.

ryandrake 3y ago

> Personally I think it's a great attitude; if your technology is better than everyone else, you deserve to put them out of business. I think this "Others must lose so that I win" attitude is one of the more toxic attributes of this Thunderdome Capitalism so many industries have somehow ended up in. Wouldn't it be great if we could have dozens of businesses all successful, all doing "somewhat good" rather than having to always have a small number of winners that take everything? If I'm going to open a laundromat a block away from Paul's competing laundromat, I'm not doing it to try to put Paul out of business. I'm just trying to capture enough business so that we can coexist comfortably. Some entrepreneurs just don't know the meaning of the word "enough".

jrockway 3y ago
I'm not sure how applicable this is to software. If you're making nails or something, then sure, your factory can only turn so many tons of coiled steel into nails per day. So other companies can exist that also make nails. In software, it's a little different; you moving a billion copies doesn't necessarily take any more work than selling one copy, so even if you "want to leave enough for everyone", you might not be able to. I doubt the Chrome team was saying things like "we shouldn't add tabs, that would be so bad for Internet Explorer".
- lazide 3y ago
  Uh, Standard Oil? Antitrust has a long history and it has nothing to do with tech.
thegrimmest 3y ago
But if your laundromat is better in some way (service, cost, marketing), why wouldn't you want to grow? And if the market is a fixed size, (which just about every market is) doesn't that inevitably result in Paul adapting to keep up or closing down? When did it become immoral to realize this and strive for it? In this scenario everyone besides Paul benefits. And so it will be when you become the incumbent and face a competitor with a similar edge. In Google's case, I suspect "search" will die to AI like Blackberries died to iPhones. Google is already proving that its size and bureaucratic unwieldiness are major obstacles to its competing in the AI space. Would we really hold back the vast social benefits of this progress because we object to some people becoming obscenely wealthy?

fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago

I think the “winner takes all” attitude is the problem. It’s perfectly fine to run a tech company with a limited market but it doesn’t generate the spectacular returns current investors are looking for.