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@0x00 @mrsaturday @holot @p @igel @canidaeportent@kiwifarms.cc @stargoose
You're comparing a market sector that was still in it's infancy, with one that is highly matured (if not fully). Not the same thing.
> You're comparing a market sector that was still in it's infancy, with one that is highly matured (if not fully).
All right, then pretend that, instead of IBM (which was not new) the example said "Wal-Mart" and instead of Microsoft, "Amazon".
@p @holot @canidaeportent@kiwifarms.cc @mrsaturday @stargoose @0x00
I think you missed the point. He was comparing the tech industry of IBM and Bill Gates time, that was still just starting up, with the movie industry (of today), that even at that point was a fully establish thing.
@p @holot @canidaeportent@kiwifarms.cc @mrsaturday @stargoose @0x00
You forgot the part where Amazon is going back to creating small grocery stores.
You don't topple a monopoly by doing exactly what they do and competing harder. You don't win by directly competing at all.
@p @holot @canidaeportent@kiwifarms.cc @mrsaturday @stargoose @0x00
Sure, you gain market share by innovation. But you're not gonna innovate unless you're incentivised to do it because of market competition.
"Competing harder" means precisely trying to find out what the others' weak points are and attacking them. You somehow think that Amazon wasn't "directly competing", but it's exactly what they did. They found out that everyone else was shit at diversity of products and infrastructure and worked at that to steal away clients from every company with physical stores. Battling over the same customers, and getting them to buy toilet paper from you instead of Wall-Mart is exactly what direct competition is.
> But you're not gonna innovate unless you're incentivised to do it because of market competition.
I disagree. Wal-Mart never saw Amazon as a competitor until it was too late. Microsoft thought it was competing with Apple and Netscape, not Google. The NYT thought of Twitter as an outlet, not a competitor.
Even if you own 100% of a market, there are more markets. Nobody has ever gotten to the to of the hill, failed to notice the other hills, and stayed at the top of the hill.
> "Competing harder" means precisely trying to find out what the others' weak points are and attacking them.
That's not how you become Google. That's how you become Coca-Cola or Pepsi: deadlocked for 50 years. Sears is dead from that exact struggle. You go ahead and pitch to the Burger King shareholders that this is going to be the year you wipe McDonald's off the map and they'll laugh at you.
> Battling over the same customers, and getting them to buy toilet paper from you instead of Wall-Mart is exactly what direct competition is.
@p @holot @canidaeportent@kiwifarms.cc @mrsaturday @stargoose @0x00
>Wal-mart never say Amazon as a competitor
So companies aren't competing against each other unless they acknowledge each other? That's interesting perspective on the market you have there... (that was sarcasm).
>That's how you become Coca-Cola or Pepsi: deadlocked for 50 years
Again, you're making the same mistake, of comparing long established markets and companies, whose days of youthful innovation after innovation are basically behind them, with a sector that is still very young and still growing at a frightening pace. Let's look at this in another 50-100 years, and see if Facebook vs Twitter vs Google vs Microsoft don't also end up in a deadlock.
> So companies aren't competing against each other unless they acknowledge each other?
No. The comment was obviously about how monopolies don't have the durability that you ascribe to them.
> (that was sarcasm).
Oh, I see what you did there.
> comparing long established markets and companies, whose days of youthful innovation after innovation are basically behind them, with a sector that is still very young and still growing at a frightening pace.
No. You have missed the point.
This is why I brought up the NYT and Sears and part of why I brought up Walmart (the other reason being that the lines between industries are not as sharply defined as you seem to believe). You know how old Sears was? You know how old IBM was when Compaq ate its lunch?
That's all pointless to argue, though. It's just bickering. So let me take a step back:
Once in a while, everything changes. You cannot foresee it, you cannot stop it, and you do not know the implications. Yesterday, there was no such thing as a black swan, today we have discovered Australia and it's full of them. Organizations (including corporations) do not survive these changes unless they can adapt to the change, or their scope is small enough that they can absorb the change.
Large corporations that attempt to control every aspect of your life are not flexible and are not limited in scope. They can't see the black swan coming, either, and they do not know what to prohibit to stop the black swan from arriving. There are externalities that they cannot control and their competitors are not who they think their competitors are. There are externalities that they cannot even see, let alone prevent.
You cannot tell without the benefit of hindsight whether you have optimally balanced missing opportunities against overreaching, balanced driving out good people against removing rent-seekers from inside your organization, or even something as trivial as balancing the risks of blinding yourself by ossifying lines of communication versus losing focus and direction and inviting chaos. You can't build the perfect system, and when you just manage to get some stability, the real estate market collapses, 9/11 gets 9/11'd, Atari files Chapter 11, Castro takes Cuba, Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated, the Czar is executed, the Dutch East India Company withers, Sulla crosses the Rubicon Hannibal crosses the Alps and frustrates your expansion north and the Etruscans mint commemorative coins depicting your humiliation, the Sea People show up and kill everyone, the Toba Event kills everyone.
Governments and corporations and everything, everything falls over. Everything. It's a matter of scale: Amazon takes Walmart, this is small. Yosemite blows up, San Francisco is a crater and everyone else on earth starves, that's bigger. Uncle Ted 2.0 unibombs the shit out of Bob Chapek or Chapek himself turns out to be a complete idiot, this supposed stranglehold Disney has evaporates. Shit, the guy has an Ambien adventure too close to his corporate email or gets Epstein'd/Weinstein'd and that might be enough. Broadcast TV was worried about Tivo's ad-skipping feature and Youtube blindsided them.
What is happening right now that Disney doesn't notice? Think about it a minute.