The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple
medium.com
medium.com
First, the internet itself is only in danger if net neutrality is genuinely threatened by ISPs. Until then, the network itself is as open as it ever was.
As for the services on top, the meta-layer of products and infrastructure we rely on--social media, content sources, smartphones and smart devices, etc--there's a lot of reason to be concerned.
But Amazon's marketshare is tiny compared to traditional retailers. They're growing, sure, but they're not a monopoly yet.
Apple is already being beaten on many fronts, smartphones included.
Google is successful in a few areas (search, email, android), but they've proven incapable of pushing into other major areas (streaming services, social, etc).
And Facebook also has basically one core competency.
So, there's lots of reasons to be concerned. But this article feels more than a little hyperbolic.
And as a random aside, modern theories suggest that pyramid builders were paid employees and not slaves.
Are we talking about the same Google here? The one that owns YouTube, which created an entire culture around video streaming online?
The amount of people using it are extremely small, which is doubly bad when you consider it's almost-out-of-the-box on Android phones, which are so popular.
they purchased youtube because their own video services was terrible
during that time, youtube mostly stagnated in many ways. it failed to develop online streaming and developing original content in the way netflix did even though youtube had access to larger infrastructure and investment from google. even competitors like vine showed some success and innovation, where as youtube is mostly the same thing it was when purchased. they have a lot of users/views, but i do not see any of that attributed to google.
> even competitors like vine showed some success and innovation
what? Vine was shutdown precisely because it wasn't successful...
So you think the media collectively conspired to prop up Apple, and their subpar, irrelevant products that nobody actually likes? Well, that's creative.
Ummm, no. It is people who are willing to pay more for the extra service, strong integration, and a business model that does not build on pushing advertising.
I pay the premium for a MacBook every 1 1/2 year or so, because if there is a problem, I can go to the Apple store and they'll typically have it fixed in two hours, no questions asked. I had a two-year leave to Android, but after the excruciating experience having to deal with Motorola twice, I'd rather pay a bit more.
Besides that, Apple hardware and software is typically extremely well integrated. E.g. I have a HiDPI screen, on the Mac it works without a problem. On e.g. Linux I had to hand-patch Mutter to get proper scaling and even then a lot of applications used the wrong scaling or UI elements are blown up and blurry.
Finally, let's also not forget that Apple is typically a company that pushes new technology first in an integrated fashion. E.g. a fingerprint reader that is not a toy and works across apps, 120Hz refresh rate on the iPad Pro, force touch.
tl;dr: people drop money on Apple because their product generally work great and they provide excellent service.
Windows 10 has come a long way from its roots. Windows laptops are getting remarkably good (the latest line of Dell and HP laptops are excellent, and Lenovo always stands out). And the smartphone gap has been rapidly closing for years, both the hardware and software. I think you can lay this at the feet of Apple elevating customer expectations.
Meanwhile, Apple hardware refreshes have been lackluster at best, particularly in the pro category. The OS doesn't feel like it has the edge it once had. And top notch software exclusives are increasingly rare as software goes cross platform or moves to the web.
Now, by all accounts Apple's support is still some of the best in the business. And the overall platform integration across devices is excellent. So a lot of the benefits you cite are still present.
But you have to wonder how long that'll last...
IMO, this is the principle reason all of these guys are building easy-to-use, tied services offerings... because the OS is becoming increasingly irrelevant as things move to the web or apps go cross-platform.
Amazon isn't in the retail business. Amazon isn't in the cloud computing business. Amazon isn't in the logistics business. Amazon is in the business business. It is no longer The Everything Store; it is now the Everything Everything. It wants to be the platform around which all of the world's businesses depend.
This is about as ambitious a mission as a company has ever launched, in my opinion -- and Amazon may be the first company with a justifiable claim to such ambition. Its only business constraints at this point are geopolitical, really. I believe it aims even higher in the long run: it is aiming to become the macroeconomic backbone of at least the Western world.
When viewed in that context, traditional definitions of monopoly -- especially the most widely known definition of the state, which is based on market share within a specific industry -- almost feel antiquated. Jeff Bezos isn't JP Morgan; he's freaking Cohaagen from Total Recall.
It is not in his interest, in fact it is starkly antithetical to his interest, to monopolize any single industry. He wants to engineer a state wherein stronger competition within any given market makes Amazon better off, not worse off, because it is the seller to that market moreso than a competitor in that market. (Though it holds de facto monopolist power in at least the publishing business, and probably others, these positions were the stick that makes Amazon's pivot to being in the carrot business credible and effective.)
Concern about Amazon as potentially Too Big to Fail may be warranted, but not yet. I'd argue that the sudden failure of Amazon tomorrow would have a severe but ultimately noncatastrophic impact on the US economy, with competitors like Walmart and Google and Apple ready to absorb the fallout with net-minimal total economic loss.
It is not TBTF yet, though at some point it seems to be on trajectory to get there. Now the tricky part is in gauging what metric we should even be using to talk about Amazon in the next 5 years.
(To be very clear, I say all of this in admiration of Jeff Bezos, not in fear or criticism of him. His business acumen is mindblowing. Whether you think of him as Business Yoda or Business Palpatine is your choice to make. But either way, you have to admit that the force is strong with him)
A business which owns businesses.
Amazon is taking the concept to the extreme in that it starts its businesses.
Amazon maybe saw it before others. But also, they are in a position that enables them to gradually take more parts of that emerging infrastructure, by owning the customer.
But let's say every stable, low-risk, repeatable task is outsourced outside of businesses into a few large corps. Can new businesses live in that environment? And how will competition look like ?
- Google and Facebook capture all the value in online ads
- Amazon, Google and Microsoft control the cloud
- Apple and Google have a duopoly mobile OS
- Apple and Microsoft dominate desktop OSs (sorry linux bro)
- Facebook essentially controls online political advertising, and its founder is gearing up for a run at office
Even if the pyramids were made by happy, paid, unionized workers with a good health/mummification plan (which seems a stretch), they were a terrible misuse of resources.
https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11711714/chromebooks-outs... Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US - The Verge
Heck we have.
http://9to5google.com/2016/06/20/chromebooks-taking-over-mac... At Apple CEO Tim Cook's old high school, they are selling their ...
But beyond that if people don't want "high end" and are buying "low end" that still does not change the argument. Chromebook uses is growing and apple laptops usage is not, so maybe apple is providing a product people don't want... And that is sort of the point the parent made.
As an aside, why did you buy a Chromebook that was that high spec?
MacBook Air (A1466) seems to be the closest competitor to Chromebook Pixel (Google), which is at the top end for Chromebooks. These both seem prohibitively expensive for the type of computing that the mass-market seems to prefer.
MacBook (A1534)... I have no idea why anyone would buy it in lieu of a cheaper, faster MacBook Air.
Other models of Chromebook, like ASUS C202 or Samsung Chromebook 3, have lower price points, that Apple has never realistically tried to compete with. What Mac would you ever be able to buy with $160 (2017 dollars)?
I am guessing that is the MacBook 12"? For many good reasons: the 12" is much more compact and lighter than the MacBook Air, it has a Retina display, it does not have big, ugly bezels, it has much faster SSD storage than the Air, and it is fanless.
My wife has a MacBook 12" and loves it. I had a MacBook 12" (moved to the Pro 2016) and I miss the form factor and the weight of the 12".
Not if you're measuring profits and not just sales. They're still the dominant manufacturer by far. But maybe I'm just being pedantic.
Otherwise, I pretty much agree with all of this. The article comes across as hyperbolic to me as well.
This distinction is not terribly meaningful especially for bronze age manual laborers. One could argue that slavery might have been better than getting paid for this kind of work. A slave is at least a nominal investment. A worker is infinitely replaceable.
This is in no way excusing or apologizing for slavery or saying eh, it wasn't so bad.
And the OS for those other smartphones is made by Google, which is one of the other Big Four.
Just like they are every year in Q4 before their new phones come out.
I've had this enabled for 6 months and I've seen websites stopped working as they should, e.g.:
- I couldn't reset my password in Twitch, it required (for some reason) access to both Facebook and Google servers. I had to temporarily disable the `/etc/hosts` restrictions
- National Geographic site fetches jQuery from Google and the website is unusable
- No more embedded Google Maps on many small websites (like local restaurants etc)
- Say bye to embedded YouTube videos
- Many small websites just display in blank
- Other websites have default ugly fonts but are still usable
So Google and Facebook's reach is not just related to direct visits to their sites. Essentially, without them, it's a very crippled internet. The one site that works great is Wikipedia, even its videos are self hosted.
The saying "if things were different, things would be different" comes to mind.
Try this. It might help with a lot of the issues you're experiencing.
- Amazon not allowing the sale of chromecast
- Amazon keeping its instant video app off generic android TV devices for a long time, even though they had an app that worked with the Sony android TV.
- Amazon using its instant video app as a trojan horse to get you to install the Amazon app store on your Android phone. (and weakening your phone's security, due to having to "allow unknown sources"
Google requires Play Services to be installed and enabled in order to allow Chromecast, which is why no Google apps are on Amazon Fire devices. If anything Amazon's approach is less intrusive since it's just one extra app (unless they also install services).
What I just don't get is why Amazon are trying to force people to get their video app via their app store, rather than putting it in Google play (where it is apparently available, but just for non-US regions). Is Google trying to take a cut of in-app transactions, like Apple does?
The article he references talks extensively about how the campaign effectively used social media for fundraising and advertising instead of tv, not echo chambers for brainwashing people. After all this time people still can't admit that echo chambers are what propped up Clinton in every media outlet and poll.
As soon as I saw that graphic I knew what quality of article I was in for.
I would say that iPhones and MacBooks are almost mass-market these days. Sure, they are more expensive than the alternatives, but they are so ubiquitous that can't really be considered status symbols anymore, can they?
"We investigate the idea that women’s flaunting of designer products functions as a signaling system directed at same-sex rivals who pose a threat to a woman’s relationship. We hypothesize that some women use pricey possessions to signal to other women that their romantic partner is especially devoted to them. In turn, flaunting designer handbags and shoes helps women deter romantic rivals from poaching their relationship partner"
Today iPhones and MacBook are mostly mass market for the middle class, as you can see from their presence in universities. Out of all the women owning an iPhone, and there's a lot, I've yet to meet one whose iPhone was bought by their 'devoted romantic partner'. They either bought it themselves, or their parents bought it in the family plan. And usually the phone itself is paid monthly with the plan.
Showing an iPhone does not have the same signalling effect as wearing "luxurious designer handbags", designer shoes, and "expensive jewelry".
And the point is: It doesn't seem to fit Apple any more, by your reckoning.
But it did at some stage. You don't get to mass-market acceptance without a phase where you dominate the signalling markets. Those middle-class students with MacBooks' are the norm today - but there was a phase where it wasn't so, in Apples' history. Don't overlook that transition.
I have an Android phone right now, but I'm using Apple earbuds, even though the volume controls don't work.
As someone using AirPods right now... they're AMAZING. The 'magic' pairing is nice but it doesn't go as far as I hoped.
However as Bluetooth headphones they're so tiny it's easy to always carry them. They're a cinch to charge. They sound great (for their size) and now I always carry them with me. Music? Podcasts? Videos? Way more than good-enough.
Just fantastic little things. Shame they're STILL 6 weeks behind demand. They must be REALLY hard to make if Apple hasn't sorted it out after all this time.
While I think it'd take a very long time for Americans to actually be convinced of this, the reason why this is happening (because facebook might as well be THE internet for these users) is a lot more worrisome. Particularly when Mark himself is running soon.
(1)https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id...
Large scale innovation happens in one of two ways: a strong industry leader, or via government. The latter is relatively rare because government is necessarily usually more conservative; the former happens more easily, especially because industry leaders often are either formed or maintained because a private venture was able to move fast enough to develop a technology in a way that has large societal implications.
The side effect, though, is that people who work at those private industries that have innovated and developer something new (which may or may not have short term deleterious effects) eventually leave and either diffuse their knowledge or start their own ventures. When this happens, as time passes, many other new ventures - which can often have an effect directly opposite to said deleterious effects, or otherwise have positive effects - spring up and take hold. And that's a net positive.
There are people who worked at (or currently work at and will leave) Google and Facebook, advertising companies that have disproportionately much power, but will use the knowledge they gained from those places to put into effects efforts that they might not have known how to otherwise and that may make the world better, long term.
Articles like the one posted here are passionate and persuasive, but they also focus on the short term (if not solely the present); it is worthwhile to remember these sorts of long term effects.
Minority, in fact. You're wildly exaggerating, as is the article.
Half of Facebook's monthly actives barely use the core social network service. That leaves a billion people or so. There are 7.x billion people on the planet. Your majority premise just collapsed.
Google has about 1/3 of global adults as users, with varying frequency. Gmail as an example, has a small share of global email. Again, minority.
Amazon is still a trivial ecommerce presence outside of the US, as a whole and in relation to the number of adults shopping on their service versus the total number of people on earth.
And Apple? Their reach, like the others, is dramatically less than the "majority of humans." Apple reaches a billion people.
Facebook: nothing else has the network effect.
Google Drive: online documents are really convenient
Google Voice: what else has seamless integration with either android or ios.
Amazon: Buying household items like toilet paper, dishwasher detergent, etc, saves me a ton of time.
Google Drive: Dropbox, Box, OneDrive....
Google Voice: Depends what you're using it to do. Amazon & Microsoft have apps you can use that do similar tasks. Whichever you use does require access to a lot of personal data to be useful though, no matter what company you pick.
Amazon: Target, Walmart, Jet, etc... Lots of competition here. Amazon's online experience is typically better but their is plenty of competition & they often have cheaper prices. FYI in case any Target person reads this. Your site is terrible & full of bugs.
Voice is probably the hardest one to replace all 4 of them on.
For Facebook's network effects, I mentioned Twitter which is not one of the four. I did mention that my main use I've replaced with Google Photos. I did that because it's free & great. If I hated Google, I could use several paid services that offer similar benefits. Snapchat is becoming more popular with the older people I know. Instagram was great before getting bought out by Facebook so we can't count them now.
I think maybe one point that needs to be made, is if you want a "free service" you must be willing to let your data be sold. That is the big problem that many people have with a lot of the above free services.
You can even install an open-source replacement for the core Play Services Framework that many non-Google apps seem to require.
Take phone as example: You almost only have two main options for a smart phone OS here: iOS (+ Apple) and Android (+ Google).
FAMGA - Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon
GAFA - Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple
FANG - Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google
If you could run multiple parallel universes starting from early 90's, you would end with just handful of companies dominating the markets and using one service or product to leverage to other areas in almost all of them. Just the names of the companies would change.
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The "status" argument is a bit silly. An iPhone costs about the same as a dog annually, [1].
Well, that's stupid. I have an iPhone, but attractive is definitely not a word that ought to be associated with me