3 ms·
Wow. Making money is anything but commoditized. What is commoditized is often the business itself. That's the problem for these guys who don't make any mone
by trimbo 14y ago
Wow. Making money is anything but commoditized. What is commoditized is often the business itself. That's the problem for these guys who don't make any money. Twitter has taken $1B in investment. Google makes three times that in profit in a quarter. It's cheap enough for Google to keep at it with G+ for the next century if they have to.
If you think being connected is worth something, AT&T had 99.9% of the nation connected to the rest of the world with a dialtone for a century. And then they got completely owned within the span of 5 years. Long distance is worth exactly zero today. The copper itself is worth more. Being connected in itself was worth nothing to the company that did it. Someday maybe people will look back at Facebook and say the same thing. Who knows.
BTW, non-search-related ads are a fight for eyeballs. There is a limited amount of eyeball time in the world. The graph of growing internet presence is nothing but a pyramid scheme is this regard. Ad money is not endless. Ask NBC (now, Comcast).
- beambot 14y agoNot to belittle your point (since I agree with you), but didn't AT&T get owned simply because the MaBell monopoly no longer existed and thus couldn't simply acquire the up-and-coming wireless carriers? Perhaps that's not the best example.
- trimbo 14y agoThat certainly marked the end of something for them. But they continued to be a very powerful company for another 10-15 years. They leveraged their long distance business to buy everything in sight in the 90s (cable, mobile, even NCR). But by the time the internet bubble came, and everyone built out massive amounts of fiber, that ate the lunch of long distance in a matter of a few years (hence my "5 years" claim above -- they had to start selling assets in 2000 and were acquired in 2005).