Hacker News Reader

Even in the uber technerd sphere, a huge amount of the services that we take for granted are done by large companies. For example, Steam is the entire reason why gaming is becoming viable on Linux. Sure, a lot of work (by large companies) has gone into the backend to make it easier to write games for more libraries, but that work wouldn't have happened if there wasn't an enormous distribution platform that sells games for Linux.

View on HN

You're right. And I agree with you on the point that some features that even someone who doesn't like corporations uses and loves were made possible by said corporations.

What I'm worried about is corporations becoming so powerful that they can just change the whole economic landscape in their favour.

For example, I'm a HUGE fan of Steam, but if Valve grew large enough that you can only buy games from Valve, the only programming jobs available were at Valve for 20k$ pa whilst "Lord Gaben" was close to becoming a trillionaire along with his shareholders I'd definitely stop using their platform, even if that meant I can't play games as conveniently or not have access to them at all.

Bottom line, companies can do good, but governments need to keep them in check if they become too powerful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com