wonder_bread

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting it because it seems like your making a pretty strong correlation between companies that provide physical goods as necessities and thus are worth more than those that provide digital goods that you could argue aren't. I'd argue that's increasingly not going to be true.

I think one could've argued at the time that Apple wasn't worth something because they were the struggling vertically integrated supplier of consumer based computers in a sea of horizontally integrated providers. It wasn't until they got more of a foothold everybody started seeing the benefits of software made to run on a single type of device.

Intermediaries have increasingly become devalued over time as digitization has meant there's less and less of a need for middle-men. Hence why Amazon's surge has come on the heels of providing Entertainment and Cloud services, something intermediaries in their space never did before.

Facebook yeah I suppose, the fact that they have margins almost no other company could dream of kind of rationalizes it to a strong degree though. All in all, I see where you're coming from.

Nike yes I see where you're coming from.

Disclaimer me posting that comment wasn't suppose to be a riot act that Snap's going to be the next $400+ billion dollar company, I'm as skeptical as most about the future prospects. However, I'd argue against saying they produce nothing. The fact that they are anti to the leading social media provider (of sorts) gives them a production point. As demonstrated in their reports, their user's incessant check in's on the app despite any Facebook-esque notification stream to keep them coming back is pretty envious (in my opinion).

You're telling me Amazon's financials were beautiful when they IPO'd? They're barely pretty now.

see response to lazerpants

Lol, as did Twitter, as did Diapers.com, as did a thousand others

this isn't me saying "Now's the time everybody! Pour your entire retirement fund into SNAP before it's too late!" it's an admonishment for the short-sellers sucking in the inevitable negative media headlines around any hot IPO as fact.

Truth be told I love Amazon for the innovation they've brought to most of the industries they've touched but it's like there's some aura of trust around them just because they have brought some of their might against Facebook and Google which seem to be considered the evil twins on HN.

Seems like kind of a prime time to increase your holding if you bought shares on the IPO and have any faith in the vision of the company. Having such an intense fight against such a dominating company could kill Snap, or it could be the disadvantage they need to be successful in the long term.

How often is it that the now-huge tech (or any industry) firms DON'T go through trying times when they first appeared on the markets?

-Apple kicked Steve Jobs out of the company convinced the monolithic giant IBM was going to cut them out of the equation.

-Amazon almost went bankrupt when the market crashed

-Facebook dropped for almost a year when it wasn't obvious how they were going to monetize their mobile platform profitably

-Nike got hit with a customs battle brought on by Converse for millions

Obviously it remains to be seen whether they will show the resilience the aforementioned companies did but the fact that some are already speaking of Snap in the past tense is kind of crazy, they've had ONE quarterly report come out since the IPO.

It seems unlikely given that Amazon has been rapidly scaling up the services they offer, with some of them conveniently taking the form of companies who run their entire operation on AWS (i.e. Twilio with AWS Contact Center).

If somebody can prove me wrong, however, that would be lovely :)

Regardless though, expecting Amazon to refrain from taking the proprietary information they have access to (in any form) and drilling you into the ground with their own twist on it seems like a bad bet, just ask Nucleus.

"So what's one more thing"

I'll concede to that to a degree.

Slack isn't in the business of offering competing services based on the data that flows through their systems. Something you can't exactly say is true with Amazon.

Which brings the point, who would ever sign on to use Slack/continue to use Slack when Bezos & Co. could be scouring through your sensitive company conversations?

Google must really be convinced smartphones are going to be turn-key for efforts in AR & VR because spending all this money on a product platform almost a decade old that they already have such a large presence in just seems odd on the surface.

My eyes are bleeding from all the bureaucratic jargon. "Special Committee", "Oversight Committee", "Independent Committee" for the promotions process, checklists for alcohol consumption, human resources training, etc. I dearly hope it doesn't take this many layers of control within a company to ensure a livable atmosphere for its employees.

So Schiller taunting Amazon and Google about their then-lack of screens was just a pump fake?

What I'm saying is Bezos & Co. might be gaming for the next generation of the handset. Bezos loves his 2-year runways so I doubt he's interested in any current smartphone ecosystem but in making inroads with consumers and developers.

What good would it be for Amazon to go after Microsoft's bread and butter? Google's already made its move towards them (Microsoft) with Chrome OS so I doubt there's really going to much more room for another titan.

This could almost be seen as a trojan horse for Amazon to break into new markets without having to do any of the heavy lifting Google and Apple do. Increased brand recognition + Amazon's growing developer community interested in bringing apps to their platforms only reinforces their clout in consumer technologies. As the app stores of old fade away in importance their efforts in consumer hardware and developer communities are being further pushed into prominence. I.e. eventually they won't need Google's play store and can more ambitiously take on the market.

"I’m meeting with the safety team every week and would like to meet every injured person as soon as they are well so that I can understand from them exactly what we need to do to make it better. I will then go down to the production line and perform the same task that they perform."

Whether it's true or not, once again Elon's genius shows in a solution that makes him a PR dream for his companies and a titan leader for his employees.

Which can only mean something else happened today that Trump's covering up in the headlines by firing Comey