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Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#71

Post by pbronez »

brownbat wrote: post #53
PakG1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say yes. Ronald Coase did some excellent work to explain how transaction costs get in the way of optimizing economic activity among and within firms. Traditional marketplaces would clearly have higher transaction costs than these newer marketplaces. Search costs are much higher, coordination costs are much higher, and data analysis is much harder. Tech has a huge advantage in making all three of these things…

I like the Coasean analysis. Now someone needs to build the Uber for unifying affected populations to demand rents for suffered negative externalities.

Yes.

Although that’s basically just a competent, empowered, uncorrupted government. Still working on that one...

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#72

Post by wslh »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #61

Using a different definition of Google than TFA : We have discussed recently a huge issue preventing new Google-like web crawling competitors from emerging : If you're not GAFAM(-like), and so aren't whitelisted, then anti-spam/DDoS filters like Cloudflare will simply prevent your crawler from working !

Are in some way robots.txt and those Cloudflare measures anticompetitive and/or against net neutrality?

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#73

Post by free_rms »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #55
unnouinceput wrote: post #45

Except there is another. It's called Chinese Google also know as Alibaba. And with EU regulations coming up I suspect another one will rise in Europe as well in next decade. Just give it time, Splinternet will happen and then each country will have its own Google.

>And with EU regulations coming up I suspect another one will rise in Europe as well in next decade. lol, what?! Just because Europe loves to regulate itself to death so that the useless politicians can justify their salaries doesn't mean that will produce successful software companies. That's not how innovation works. Just look at Russia, who despite having less wealth than the EU, has managed to produce its own Goo…

It's not so much "regulation vs non-regulation". Yandex is all intertwined with the government, and the Chinese giants have benefitted from a lot of government protection.

It's about political will. Like you say, Concorde, Airbus, or other government-sponsored and national-security-driven projects have succeeded. China and Russia saw their web properties the same way, while Europe has opted to not do that in the consumer web space, so the default is everyone just uses Google and FB.

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#74

Post by chris_f »

wslh wrote: post #72
BlueTemplar wrote: post #61

Using a different definition of Google than TFA : We have discussed recently a huge issue preventing new Google-like web crawling competitors from emerging : If you're not GAFAM(-like), and so aren't whitelisted, then anti-spam/DDoS filters like Cloudflare will simply prevent your crawler from working !

Are in some way robots.txt and those Cloudflare measures anticompetitive and/or against net neutrality?

>Are in some way robots.txt and those Cloudflare measures anticompetitive?

Article by Matt Wells from Gigablast on Cloudflare. Gigablast has one of the largest independent search indexes.

https://www.gigablast.com/blog.html

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#75

Post by m-i-l »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #42
benlivengood wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said with the benefit of more hindsight I think the reason there are no more Googles is that FAANG has a stronghold on the largest technology markets. And the FAANGs are willing to pay very large amounts of cash to acquire promising startups. EDIT: Also why is it that the majority of the large tech companies are essentially marketplaces? Is there really that much friction in traditional markets (physical goods…

Because in a tech gold rush, nobody wants to dig out gold, or even sell shovels - everyone wants to get rich by renting shop space to shovel sellers.

> everyone wants to get rich by renting shop space to shovel sellers.

That would entail having to own and maintain physical assets (assuming you mean physical shops rather than virtual shops). Isn't the preferred model now to be a "technology platform" that connects people with available shovels to people in need of shovels?

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#77

Post by pbronez »

ffrr212 wrote: post #52
benlivengood wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said with the benefit of more hindsight I think the reason there are no more Googles is that FAANG has a stronghold on the largest technology markets. And the FAANGs are willing to pay very large amounts of cash to acquire promising startups. EDIT: Also why is it that the majority of the large tech companies are essentially marketplaces? Is there really that much friction in traditional markets (physical goods…

> And the FAANGs are willing to pay very large amounts of cash to acquire promising startups. But I think FAANGs also drain the talent pool for startups by paying very high salaries (& partially equity) to employees such that startups have a hard time to competing on this level. At least it feels it's getting worse than, say, few years ago.

My theory is that the big firms can do this because those relatively fixed lob or costs over huge user bases. Smaller companies just don’t have the leverage.

I also think this applies to internal applications at huge enterprises. The number of users for any given internal application is small, so you can’t spread the development costs out very far. You have to connect the initiative to something that impacts the whole firm, the whole customer base to really invest in it. Even then you’re dealing with a user base that is way smaller than the big tech firms enjoy, so you still get outspent... unless you have dramatically better margins.

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#78

Post by graycat »

nwatson wrote: post #49
graycat wrote: post #35

Yup: When I was looking for VC funding, lots of VC Web sites claimed to like innovation . Eventually I concluded much the same as in Phil's essay. The nutshell description I formulated was the VCs want a startup with a product/service easy enough for any grandmother to understand, traction growing up and to the right , in a huge market, with five founders, with all credit cards maxed out, with at least four of the sp…

The damage from nuclear bombs in Japan was marginal or on par compared to the damage from massive firebombing in a typical Japanese city in 1945. The effects of atomic bombs on Pacific Theatre outcome in WW2 is overrated.

You are correct about the fire bombing. But the "effects" of the atomic bombs were fantastic -- ended the war in about a week when the fire bombing didn't.

So, what happened? One answer is that the atomic bombs were dramatic enough to shift the balance of political power in Japan.

Yes, generally it is believed that just before the atomic bombs, Japan was defeated, knew they were defeated, were out of oil with no chance of getting more, short of food, etc. and were interested in negotiations to end the war. It appears that then the US insisted on something really simple, definite, final, humiliating, etc. -- "unconditional surrender". In the end Japan did get to keep their emperor which was good for the US since it meant that the US occupation of Japan was easier -- just work with the emperor instead of civil war in the streets.

Drama or not, the atomic bomb was darned scary -- one bomb, one airplane, one city, and the fire bombing was not nearly that powerful, that is, required lots of airplanes.

I don't know how many bombs the US had ready then, but Japan could fear that the US could destroy a city a day, including Tokyo.

But this is a bit off the subject: If you don't like the atomic physics, math for the critical mass calculation, the shaped charges, etc., then pick GPS, radar, penicillin, the SR-71, and the transistor as examples of where wildly successful projects were based on science, math, and engineering, proposed just on paper, and could be and were accurately evaluated and funded just from the paper.

And whatever Japan's response was to the atomic bombs, the bombs do illustrate one of my points -- they were evaluated, justified, and funded just from paper and worked as predicted.

Also notice that the US has lots of long range missiles with warheads based on nuclear fission and fusion but not based on the firebombs.

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#79

Post by jiofih »

prox wrote: post #25
bruceb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem with them was the massive about of money they were burning on servers and being sued by RIAA (Music companies) and MPAA (Film companies) among others. They needed a big infusion of capital. Instagram on the other hand could have remained independent and succeeded.

I think instagram is one of the (few) companies that could eventually have eclipsed Facebook really.

Which is the exact reason they paid a billion dollars to acquire it.

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#80

Post by vlovich123 »

ffrr212 wrote: post #52
benlivengood wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said with the benefit of more hindsight I think the reason there are no more Googles is that FAANG has a stronghold on the largest technology markets. And the FAANGs are willing to pay very large amounts of cash to acquire promising startups. EDIT: Also why is it that the majority of the large tech companies are essentially marketplaces? Is there really that much friction in traditional markets (physical goods…

> And the FAANGs are willing to pay very large amounts of cash to acquire promising startups. But I think FAANGs also drain the talent pool for startups by paying very high salaries (& partially equity) to employees such that startups have a hard time to competing on this level. At least it feels it's getting worse than, say, few years ago.

Those high salaries though arguably just allow people to build nest eggs to go the startup route whenever they want.

The real challenge is that, rationally, startups an extremely large gamble on a lottery where your expected value is As an anecdote, I have a friend who was working at a startup that got acquired by Google recently (he’s a Staff SWE so he’s making really good salary). He noted if he had just stayed at Google instead of working at a few startups over the years he would have been at least break-even or better based on salary + google RSU performance over that time. My personal experience with startups was a bit different. While the acquisition I went through was larger for me at the time, the biggest impact was that it pushed me into a far higher salary band. Startups and smaller companies can be a better way to “level up” some times than the traditional corporate ladder climbing.

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