Hacker News Reader

Comment by hamidpalo | Hacker News Reader

Tech isn't only the internet. Microsoft and Apple both went public before the Internet and managed to do quite well without it.

Correlation != causation. Might as well graph it against the number of World Cup or Euro championships in that year and get a much higher correlation since the IPOs seem to all be in an even year.

It'd be much more interesting to look at perfomance vs sector and performance vs the index.

View on HN

> Microsoft and Apple both went public before the Internet and managed to do quite well without it.

That's because Apple's and Microsoft's products don't (or didn't at the time the companies went public) rely solely on the internet. A big reason why Facebook has such a massive valuation is precisely because the population of the internet has increased so strongly.

Have you taken into account Facebook being the reason a lot of people joined the Internet?

I would find that a hard claim to believe.

I find it plausible. For anything more I'd want evidence, but all I can offer is anecdote. In the UK over the last few years most Android/not-iPhone adverts I saw made it very clear that the phone did Facebook - implying to me that Facebook was a major driver for people buying a smartphone.

You get my upvote for 'Correlation != causation'. I say that probably twice a week myself - i'm still looking for a way to solve for causation, when I figure it out, i'm heading to Vegas.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com