Visualization of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft’s Consumer Product Lines
papercutslibrary.com
papercutslibrary.com
I don’t see how any of these are to be considered a “product”, especially since they can’t be purchased or acquired in any way apart from some actual product:
* Touch ID
* Apple ID
* FairPlay
* bridgeOS
* any of the apps bundled with the OS, such as Automator or StickiesEDIT : Also, tensorflow (not a product) is making his way on the google "cloud", but not .NET onto Microsoft's. What's the reasoning there ?
.NET is in there, just above Azure, but as with many of the more technical pieces of this puzzle, I did my best research while also being a little out of my league to make super-consistent calls.
While some aren't consumer options, I consider them a heads-up to the average consumer, as a reminder of how much they don’t know, or to spark connections like looking up Body Labs and then thinking about Amazon Go. Or with the ads, it’s just a reminder that those ads are part of the business.
And then there’s probably a class of them that are "things I’ve seen discussed on Hacker News and know are important without complete understanding them” like AlphaFold on the front page today… as I'm an average lay-consumer too… but in this book, I try to stick with making points well within reach.
It's all about calling out how low the bar seems on consumer technical knowledge.
Thanks for the question and for taking a look!
As an Apple user, I avoid Safari to fragment (the tip is about switching to Firefox), and also have changed to Neeva to fragment my Google exposure.
Otherwise, I hear you, and definitely hoped for more clean lines and opportunities, but the book turned into being more about raising awareness of these companies' reach and incepting the mere suggestion that a user could (or even want to) fragment or limit their exposure in any way.
Checking with my web host about what to do now, but love having this problem!
Hope to have the site back up to share this visualization with you soon!
My site basically crashed within moments of being on the front page, but it turned out to be just as much about the traffic as it was a few technical elements I have not been on top of.
It was only down for an hour, but I was chatting with support within minutes, and the same person stuck with my ticket through resolution.
WooCommerce cart ajax and cron jobs were partially to blame, but DreamHost suggested a few new plugins, and I can tell on the backend that everything is happier now.
Meanwhile, traffic has been flowing in happily since. (What a day!!!)
Anyway, I’m using DreamPress Plus and have been very happy with the service and support!
The only downside is that it’s not obvious up front which area maps to what business segment, eg if I want to find “Mobile” I have to scan the cloud for things that mentally match to that (eg Android, iOS).
It does make the comparison of products in each area clear though, by virtue of density, but not what the area represents.
There were so many competing design notions to consider, and while I eventually went heavy on adding things, it was partly due to the seeming bare minimum already being too much, so why not see how far I could reasonably push it.
Unfortunately I admit that the chart is less impactful than hoped because of it… but hopefully it is also a little fun, and maybe someone picks up something from it (like IMDb below!).
On the positive, I agree that being able to eyeball the “comparison of products in each area” is the one element that works nicely, once you pick up on it.
https://github.com/ilyas-it83/CloudComparer
Tangentially related, and more cloud focused, but this tool is the best resource I have come across to compare cloud services and offerings between the six cloud providers.
Yes, even has IBM, Oracle, and Alibaba :)
I was very nervous about sharing here... but while this viz is part of a book meant for a lay-consumer audience, it was written with the goal of being able to withstand the general scrutiny of the Hacker News crowd... so thanks for taking a look and sharing your thoughts and comments!
Also, no idea IMDB was Amazon.
IMDb being Amazon is so big. As if the rating system wasn’t already degrading enough, their ownership of it blows the whole deal in my book.
Goodreads was a discovery for me. We are purposely not selling the Papercuts Library on Amazon, but I had been eyeing a Goodreads account. Skipping it as well now.
Haven't been able to bring a designer onboard yet so definitely going art brut with the style for now.