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The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple

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Re: The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple

#81

Post by petra »

jonnathanson wrote: post #74
sacheendra wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of sounds like Berkshire Hathaway. Or an private equity fund for that matter. A business which owns businesses. Amazon is taking the concept to the extreme in that it starts its businesses.

Right, but Amazon doesn't want to own businesses so much as own the business infrastructure.

I don't think this is unique to Amazon. Because that transaction costs have become so low(and becoming lower), almost everything is out-sourceable, and naturally in many fields there are advantages to scale, and network effects - common characteristics of infrastructure - a lot of business tasks are becoming infrastructure-like.

Amazon maybe saw it before others. But also, they are in a position that enables them to gradually take more parts of that emerging infrastructure, by owning the customer.

But let's say every stable, low-risk, repeatable task is outsourced outside of businesses into a few large corps. Can new businesses live in that environment? And how will competition look like ?

Re: The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple

#82

Post by woodandsteel »

zzalpha wrote: post #6

I'm genuinely unsure how I feel about this article. First, the internet itself is only in danger if net neutrality is genuinely threatened by ISPs. Until then, the network itself is as open as it ever was. As for the services on top, the meta-layer of products and infrastructure we rely on--social media, content sources, smartphones and smart devices, etc--there's a lot of reason to be concerned. But Amazon's markets…

>Apple is already being beaten on many fronts, smartphones included.

And the OS for those other smartphones is made by Google, which is one of the other Big Four.

Re: The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple

#83

Post by pchristensen »

zzalpha wrote: post #6

I'm genuinely unsure how I feel about this article. First, the internet itself is only in danger if net neutrality is genuinely threatened by ISPs. Until then, the network itself is as open as it ever was. As for the services on top, the meta-layer of products and infrastructure we rely on--social media, content sources, smartphones and smart devices, etc--there's a lot of reason to be concerned. But Amazon's markets…

>Apple is already being beaten on many fronts, smartphones included.

Just like they are every year in Q4 before their new phones come out.

Re: The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple

#84

Post by zitterbewegung »

zzalpha wrote: post #6

I'm genuinely unsure how I feel about this article. First, the internet itself is only in danger if net neutrality is genuinely threatened by ISPs. Until then, the network itself is as open as it ever was. As for the services on top, the meta-layer of products and infrastructure we rely on--social media, content sources, smartphones and smart devices, etc--there's a lot of reason to be concerned. But Amazon's markets…

Apple doesn't care if its being "beaten". It always has cared if they can keep their margins.

Re: The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple

#85

Post by omg_ketchup »

codazoda wrote: post #37
jon-wood wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is successful in a few areas ..., but they've proven incapable of pushing into other major areas (streaming services... Are we talking about the same Google here? The one that owns YouTube, which created an entire culture around video streaming online?

The comment is talking about paid monthly services as YouTube Red vs Netflix. Sure Google has the worlds most popular (mostly free) video site, monetized by advertising, but it can't seem to beat Netflix at paid subscriptions. It hasn't been able to beat Facebook at social networking either. Keep in mind that YouTube was a purchase for Google, as was Instagram for Facebook. Both probably very important for them long…

I'm loving Google Play Music, although the branding really sucks.

Re: The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple

#86

Post by bad_user »

falcolas wrote: post #57
wadeboggs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to a public university or high school and count the MacBooks you see.

Or the number of apple earbuds and airpods. Those white buds are ubiquitous. And where they are lacking, Apple's other property - Beats - steps in.

I can tell you from my experience as somebody that never liked Apple products, those Apple earbuds are popular because they are cheap and good, having an insane quality/price ratio.

I have an Android phone right now, but I'm using Apple earbuds, even though the volume controls don't work.

Re: The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple

#87

Post by MBCook »

bad_user wrote: post #86
falcolas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the number of apple earbuds and airpods. Those white buds are ubiquitous. And where they are lacking, Apple's other property - Beats - steps in.

I can tell you from my experience as somebody that never liked Apple products, those Apple earbuds are popular because they are cheap and good, having an insane quality/price ratio. I have an Android phone right now, but I'm using Apple earbuds, even though the volume controls don't work.

That's nice to hear.

As someone using AirPods right now... they're AMAZING. The 'magic' pairing is nice but it doesn't go as far as I hoped.

However as Bluetooth headphones they're so tiny it's easy to always carry them. They're a cinch to charge. They sound great (for their size) and now I always carry them with me. Music? Podcasts? Videos? Way more than good-enough.

Just fantastic little things. Shame they're STILL 6 weeks behind demand. They must be REALLY hard to make if Apple hasn't sorted it out after all this time.

Re: The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple

#89

Post by solotronics »

staltz wrote: post #56

Fun experiment to try out on your computer and experience the gradual death of the internet: block all domains and subdomains from Google and Facebook in your `/etc/hosts` file, and see how many other websites fail to function. I've had this enabled for 6 months and I've seen websites stopped working as they should, e.g.: - I couldn't reset my password in Twitch, it required (for some reason) access to both Facebook…

I wonder if anyone has tried decentralized peer to peer CDN for things like JS.. code seems a perfect fit for a distributed CDN.

Re: The war between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple

#90

Post by savanaly »

staltz wrote: post #56

Fun experiment to try out on your computer and experience the gradual death of the internet: block all domains and subdomains from Google and Facebook in your `/etc/hosts` file, and see how many other websites fail to function. I've had this enabled for 6 months and I've seen websites stopped working as they should, e.g.: - I couldn't reset my password in Twitch, it required (for some reason) access to both Facebook…

Analyzing how websites work without Google or Facebook given that they were designed with the availability of those in mind is pointless. To truly see what it would be like without Google or Facebook we'd have to test how websites work without Google or Facebook given that they were designed without the availability of those in mind.

The saying "if things were different, things would be different" comes to mind.

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