10 ms·

There is a tendency to believe that the companies which are doing well right now have 'won' in some sense. We need to understand that this is the state of affai

by sheri 13y ago

There is a tendency to believe that the companies which are doing well right now have 'won' in some sense. We need to understand that this is the state of affairs right now. There is a non-trivial possibility that Facebook/Google etc become lumbering giants just like MSFT.

yogo 13y ago
> There is a non-trivial possibility that Facebook/Google etc become lumbering giants just like MSFT If history serves as an indicator, I would say the chances of that happening are relatively high.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  I would say that it's actually inevitable.
- adwf 13y ago
  When you look at it, Google probably already has. 20% time is practically gone, Reader gone, iGoogle going, etc. All the various little projects that may not have had huge numbers of users, but still indicated that Google was a fast moving, innovative company are disappearing. It may take a few years for people to realise they are a lumbering giant in decline now, but the seeds are already planted, maybe even full grown...
EthanHeilman 13y ago
>There is a non-trivial possibility that Facebook/Google etc become lumbering giants just like MSFT. It might already be true, how do you distinguish between a lumbering giant and not without the help of hindsight? The public consensus on such things lags a few years behind reality. What signs have you seen in 2013 that Google is not a lumbering giant?
- incongruity 13y ago
  I think it largely is - the late follow-on and then anti-user insistence that has driven Google+ is clearly out of the playbook of a lumbering giant. That having been said, it still has points of excitement - things like glass and driverless cars and parts of the Android world still feel exciting to consumers and that's part of what keeps lumbering giant company syndrome at bay - innovation leading to consumer excitement, repeated again and again keeps companies lively.
- SiVal 13y ago
  Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. Others would come up with new stuff, and Microsoft would "embrace and extend" whatever got traction in the market by adding it to their near-monopoly OS/app stack at whatever price served the purpose of eliminating the inventor and taking their market. This strategy always made Gates paranoid, because the risk was that some alternative to the MS stack would take off too quickly to be killed. Without their near monopoly power as a weapon, they would have no special competitive advantage. What they feared happened in the mid-90's when the Web took off and the browser/Java combo threatened to be a universal VM on top of every PC. Gates fought back with every weapon he had to fragment the universality of the meta-platform. He was able to greatly slow, but not stop, the emergence of an OS-independent Web, because he controlled the majority of the OS market underneath it. But then the second shoe dropped. Mobile came along and MS was not able to stop its explosive growth. The growth of mobile made MS just another minority OS underneath the Web, and they lost their ability to disrupt the standardization of the Web platform. They were in the position they had always feared: having to support the standards of others or be abandoned by their customers as the Web became the new monopoly platform. If Ballmer could have created the mPhone and mPad and given away for free an mOS for phones that was a mini, modified version of .Net, maybe they could have kept the Web fragmented and continued their platform dominance, but whether that was even possible (MS did things second, not first, was only a minor hardware developer, and seldom gave things away except when tied to something they sold), I'll never know. Gates got to wield monopoly power; Ballmer didn't. MS's monopoly-based business model has to be abandoned, but do they have any other? They'll come up with something, as IBM did, but I don't think they'll ever be leaders again, because they didn't really "lead" before, except in market share. Google's business model (expand the Web platform for free, dominate Web advertising, and employ an army of PhDs looking for something besides advertising to do) is nothing like Microsoft's. If they ever lost advertising, they'd go down harder than MS, and they could lose it if they ever lost much search mindshare. And Facebook? They're a website. They are completely dependent on the psychological inertia of their users, which I wouldn't bet on long term.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    Personally, my favorite is the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/12/about-ms-os2-20-fiasco-px00307-and-dr.html http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/12/about-ms-os2-20-fiasco-... Notice I mentioned the "Microsoft Munchkins" and other unethical attacks against OS/2 later on was far worse than the Joint Development Agreement between MS and IBM, and the mention of DR-DOS at the end.
- harshreality 13y ago
  What signs have you seen in 2013 that Google is not a lumbering giant? Google Glass (even if it's not commercially viable in its current incarnation). Self-driving cars. Android. Hot air balloon internets. They've also moved the industry forward on web security. (Not to defend their Gmail and Google Plus divisions)
mathattack 13y ago
It is inevitable that as companies get bigger, the things they do to allow them to scale takes away from their nimbleness. I can't think of a single instance of where the largest company in an industry is the most nimble. Coordinating people takes effort and standardization. Also, the larger you get, the harder it is to outgrow your market. This is the price you pay for winning. It's also why employees leave as companies grow. They say, "It just doesn't feel the same" because what got the firm from 100 to 1000 employees isn't what scales them to 10000.

by sheri 13y ago

yogo 13y ago

> There is a non-trivial possibility that Facebook/Google etc become lumbering giants just like MSFT If history serves as an indicator, I would say the chances of that happening are relatively high.

mindcrime 13y ago
I would say that it's actually inevitable.
adwf 13y ago
When you look at it, Google probably already has. 20% time is practically gone, Reader gone, iGoogle going, etc. All the various little projects that may not have had huge numbers of users, but still indicated that Google was a fast moving, innovative company are disappearing. It may take a few years for people to realise they are a lumbering giant in decline now, but the seeds are already planted, maybe even full grown...

EthanHeilman 13y ago

>There is a non-trivial possibility that Facebook/Google etc become lumbering giants just like MSFT. It might already be true, how do you distinguish between a lumbering giant and not without the help of hindsight? The public consensus on such things lags a few years behind reality. What signs have you seen in 2013 that Google is not a lumbering giant?

incongruity 13y ago
I think it largely is - the late follow-on and then anti-user insistence that has driven Google+ is clearly out of the playbook of a lumbering giant. That having been said, it still has points of excitement - things like glass and driverless cars and parts of the Android world still feel exciting to consumers and that's part of what keeps lumbering giant company syndrome at bay - innovation leading to consumer excitement, repeated again and again keeps companies lively.
SiVal 13y ago
Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. Others would come up with new stuff, and Microsoft would "embrace and extend" whatever got traction in the market by adding it to their near-monopoly OS/app stack at whatever price served the purpose of eliminating the inventor and taking their market. This strategy always made Gates paranoid, because the risk was that some alternative to the MS stack would take off too quickly to be killed. Without their near monopoly power as a weapon, they would have no special competitive advantage. What they feared happened in the mid-90's when the Web took off and the browser/Java combo threatened to be a universal VM on top of every PC. Gates fought back with every weapon he had to fragment the universality of the meta-platform. He was able to greatly slow, but not stop, the emergence of an OS-independent Web, because he controlled the majority of the OS market underneath it. But then the second shoe dropped. Mobile came along and MS was not able to stop its explosive growth. The growth of mobile made MS just another minority OS underneath the Web, and they lost their ability to disrupt the standardization of the Web platform. They were in the position they had always feared: having to support the standards of others or be abandoned by their customers as the Web became the new monopoly platform. If Ballmer could have created the mPhone and mPad and given away for free an mOS for phones that was a mini, modified version of .Net, maybe they could have kept the Web fragmented and continued their platform dominance, but whether that was even possible (MS did things second, not first, was only a minor hardware developer, and seldom gave things away except when tied to something they sold), I'll never know. Gates got to wield monopoly power; Ballmer didn't. MS's monopoly-based business model has to be abandoned, but do they have any other? They'll come up with something, as IBM did, but I don't think they'll ever be leaders again, because they didn't really "lead" before, except in market share. Google's business model (expand the Web platform for free, dominate Web advertising, and employ an army of PhDs looking for something besides advertising to do) is nothing like Microsoft's. If they ever lost advertising, they'd go down harder than MS, and they could lose it if they ever lost much search mindshare. And Facebook? They're a website. They are completely dependent on the psychological inertia of their users, which I wouldn't bet on long term.
- yuhong 13y ago
  Personally, my favorite is the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/12/about-ms-os2-20-fiasco-px00307-and-dr.html http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/12/about-ms-os2-20-fiasco-... Notice I mentioned the "Microsoft Munchkins" and other unethical attacks against OS/2 later on was far worse than the Joint Development Agreement between MS and IBM, and the mention of DR-DOS at the end.
harshreality 13y ago
What signs have you seen in 2013 that Google is not a lumbering giant? Google Glass (even if it's not commercially viable in its current incarnation). Self-driving cars. Android. Hot air balloon internets. They've also moved the industry forward on web security. (Not to defend their Gmail and Google Plus divisions)

mathattack 13y ago

It is inevitable that as companies get bigger, the things they do to allow them to scale takes away from their nimbleness. I can't think of a single instance of where the largest company in an industry is the most nimble. Coordinating people takes effort and standardization. Also, the larger you get, the harder it is to outgrow your market. This is the price you pay for winning. It's also why employees leave as companies grow. They say, "It just doesn't feel the same" because what got the firm from 100 to 1000 employees isn't what scales them to 10000.