The history of the “free economy” is one of concentration of market power. Good reference is Galbraith’s “1929 the great crash”
To quote the dictionary “a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services”
It’s my understanding that HN is for technical discussions and business discussions. That’s exactly what my comment discussed. Further, that book by Galbraith is widely considered the gold standard for the Great Depression.
TLDR: if you want hacker news to be taken seriously as a place to discuss business and tech then my comment is appropriate in a merger discussion.
Some of the same conflicts of interest exist in both modern cases, notwithstanding, both have opposite contribution histories.
Am I missing something?
IBM is a consulting company and their model is really different than RedHat.
Competing with AWS and Microsoft is pretty crazy and does not make sense to me. RedHat’s value is in its software, not its cloud delivery.
And, frankly, I depend a little more on centos/fedora than I do Github.
If you want enterpricey Kubernetes, scratching those auditing and authorization itches it carries, Openshift is probably on your short list.
> IBM is a consulting company and their model is really different than RedHat.
Maybe the complementariness of this could be good?
(Yes, Microsoft is a software company, but they produce a particular type of software which is why many people weren't thrilled about their acquisition of Github.)
Has it?
Let's look at the whole TV chain; traditionally, you've got as chain of consumer <- multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD; classically cable/satellite) <- channels <- studios, with a few channels available outside an MVDS by way of terrestrial broadcast.
So, what has streaming done to break up consolidation, working back from the consumer?
Well, at the MVPD level, it's added a few alternatives, but that weakens consolidation less than you'd think because you've got as major streaming players:
- YouTube TV, controlled by one of the best biggest corporations on the planet, but a genuine new player in the MVPD industry.
- PlayStation TV, controlled by a major player in TV studios and channels who wasn't previously in the MVPD business in the US.
- Sling TV, owned by Dish Network, an existing MVPD (satellite) player
- DIRECTV NOW, owned by AT&T, an existing MVPD (cable and satellite) player
- Hulu with Live TV (owned primarily by a handful of major players in the TV content industry, two of which—Comcast and AT&T—are also major players are MVPD industry.)
- Xfinity Instant TV from an existing major MVPD, and only to their ISP customers.
Well, what about channels?
You can get what amount to individual premium channels with decent first and sometimes third-party on-demand catalogs without and MVDP now, but is there less consolidation? Not really. There's a couple of big new independent players (e.g., Amazon, Netflix) and a lot of new brands offered (individually or jointly) by existing big players who continue to consolidate.
Streaming hasn't really done anything to reverse TV consolidation.