Comment by jw2013 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jw2013 | Hacker News Reader

> by 2020, the biggest tech company in the world — Apple — will cease to be the most important, and won’t even be in the top three....he predicted that the top three tech companies, instead, will be Google, Facebook “and one that we’ve never heard of.

Okay, a couple of questions here:

1. Is Apple the top three most important company even right now? Don't mistaken me, I love Apple.

2. Like many doubters here, I wonder if Facebook can even be relevant in 2020. Google succeed because it does not limit itself to its original service (searching) and created tons of other cool services that a lot of people want. The question is whether Facebook can pull that off? Not yet at least.

3. If there is some company beating Google I am thinking of a company in AI with some tech breakthrough. But then the question is, would Google have enough smart people to "copy" it and make it better? I am somewhat awed at what Google can achieve at this moment. Next Google please comes up.

I'll broadcast my opinions on your questions:

1) AAPL is arguably the most important company, full stop -- not just in tech. With the highest market cap in the USA, and a substantial share of mobile phones using both its hardware and software, it is the top dog.

2) I'll take the other side of that bet without hesitation. Google makes headlines because it does a bunch of cool shit, but it still makes its money on advertising. (Something like 65% of its revenue comes from google.com search: http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html)

I think the fact that Facebook has been leveraging its expensive stock to aggressively counteract (i.e. buy) potential rivals makes me somewhat confident that it will be relevant in 6 years. The fact that they are investing in potential big future winners like Oculus VR increases my confidence. At the very least it's cool shit, and that puts them in the headlines :)

3) Who knows what future crazy tech breakthroughs will occur. There are unknown unknowns, and they will change the world and make the pioneers wealthy. Google embraces that possibility and continues to strive for more breakthroughs. If none of them succeed, at least they have their 50 Billion dollars of yearly revenue from advertising sales to fall back on...

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