Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 660 posts

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#231

Post by jollybean »

jarjoura wrote: post #96

All of these companies are too big to fail at this point. They all have at least a decade of reserves to power through anything that gets thrown their way. However, I do predict that they will change in significant ways in the next decade. * Apple is one Supreme Court ruling away from ending their App Store monopoly that could disrupt the entire world, since it would also affect all other digital marketplaces. * Amaz…

TBTF is a term usually applying to companies like banks and Beoing, that have to be rescued due to some kind of economic importance.

These companies will not fail, but could face existential headwinds that no amount of money will 'fix'.

...

"Netflix has some of the worlds brightest minds in data science"

Their data science is a 3rd tier issue. #1 is their incumbency, #2 is the content they produce.

-> Netflix 'problem' is increasing competition from HBO, Disney and others.

...

"Apple is one Supreme Court ruling away from ending their App Store monopoly that could disrupt the entire world"

No, their App Store will do just fine. They will reduce their 30% cut to something lower and companies will stay there because of the distribution opportunity: being in App Store will mean considerably more downloads.

-> Apples 'problem' is that their iPhone is slowly becoming a commodity - there's only so many ways to 'improve' upon it and those margins will probably come down.

...

"Google and Facebook both lost a key ability to micro-target on their ad platforms"

No, they have not, they have enough data.

-> Facebook's problem is that FB usage is going down, Insta is a bit stagnating and they have little to replace it with.

-> Google's problem is that they have no obvious new products on the horizon to grow and that it's possible DDG and others may actually start to eat away at them (probably not, but possible).

...

"Amazon is about to enter a decade of unionization all over the world."

Probably not so much, and, rules are entirely different around the world.

Amazon's problem is that it's never been profitable and there's only so many ways to make that business work.

As fast delivery and one-click purchase work out in regular retail, AMZN advantage is limited.

AWS however, the profit base doesn't show any signs of slowing down.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#232

Post by whyenot »

lbrandy wrote: post #62
ecshafer wrote: post #25

Facebook is currently ahead, but I wonder how much of that is perception. There is a lot of media about how Facebook is evil, but that is mostly from a pretty small circle of media and political people, that Facebook is naturally in opposition to. Facebook also owns instagram and whatsapp as well. But everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook, heavily. Instagram is also used very heavily. Amazon has threats from other E-…

FWIW, I joined HN 14 years ago (wow) and there's never been a time in those 14 years that HN wasn't convinced that facebook's demise was just around the corner.

I joined HN 12 years ago and I don't remember things that way at all. My impression is that it's extremely rare for anyone to claim that FB's demise is imminent, but it seems like it has become more common for HN posters to comment on FB's decline in recent years. ...but you could say the same thing for Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google as well -- it doesn't seem to be FB specific to me.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#233

Post by raydev »

I'm shocked that FB has so many votes here.

FB may be getting slaughtered by the media, hated by both the left and the right, but the truth is no one is actually leaving FB. It's still the #1 place to find restaurants, buy/sell used items, neighborhood groups, etc etc etc. And if FB Proper were to ever fall behind, IG still has a lot of stamina left.

I don't think it will happen any time soon, but I would like to see Apple decline. Their ideals and design and software quality from the previous decades are nowhere to be seen. Their software and UX especially have suffered from mismanagement, and I wonder how bad it will need to get before people start switching away. The alternatives are still behind, but the gap is closing in a bad way.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#234

Post by throwawayboise »

lbrandy wrote: post #62
ecshafer wrote: post #25

Facebook is currently ahead, but I wonder how much of that is perception. There is a lot of media about how Facebook is evil, but that is mostly from a pretty small circle of media and political people, that Facebook is naturally in opposition to. Facebook also owns instagram and whatsapp as well. But everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook, heavily. Instagram is also used very heavily. Amazon has threats from other E-…

FWIW, I joined HN 14 years ago (wow) and there's never been a time in those 14 years that HN wasn't convinced that facebook's demise was just around the corner.

I mean, MySpace died, and rather quickly too. At one time most people probably thought they had critical mass.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#235

Post by throwawayboise »

ecshafer wrote: post #25

Facebook is currently ahead, but I wonder how much of that is perception. There is a lot of media about how Facebook is evil, but that is mostly from a pretty small circle of media and political people, that Facebook is naturally in opposition to. Facebook also owns instagram and whatsapp as well. But everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook, heavily. Instagram is also used very heavily. Amazon has threats from other E-…

> everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook

What about over 50?

I have never used any mainstream social media. I do participate in this and a few other online forums. For communicating directly with others online, I use email.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#236

Post by raydev »

littlestymaar wrote: post #81
ecshafer wrote: post #25

Facebook is currently ahead, but I wonder how much of that is perception. There is a lot of media about how Facebook is evil, but that is mostly from a pretty small circle of media and political people, that Facebook is naturally in opposition to. Facebook also owns instagram and whatsapp as well. But everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook, heavily. Instagram is also used very heavily. Amazon has threats from other E-…

> But everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook, heavily That's an interesting perspective, I was pretty convinced that facebook was almost dead since all of my friends (in France) have almost completely stopper using it. Well most of us are still casually browsing it every once in a while, but it's far less often than it used to be, and worse: we don't have interactions together on that platform. The last remaining usag…

No one's posting to their news feed anymore. They're spending all their time commenting on news posts, posting in neighborhood groups, and and buying/selling on Marketplace.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#237

Post by sciolizer »

Depends on what you mean by "decline". But if you're talking about stock price, then the current Shiller PE Ratios are:

Amazon = 238.08 Netflix = 219.32 Google = 73.95 Facebook = 68.36 Apple = 63.17

The Shiller PE Ratio of the S&P 500 is current ~30. All of these companies are overpriced, and Amazon and Netflix significantly so.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#238

Post by andrewflnr »

kkcorps wrote: post #68
andrewflnr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strongest signal that Facebook will fall is the recently publicized trouble they're having in hiring people. I expect that to have rather strong knock-on effects... 10-15 years down the road. For example if VR turns out to be as big as everyone says and FB/Meta/whatever are only able to put up a weak offering. I tend to agree that they'll be harder to kill than a lot of us wish.

Do they really? It seems to be blown up by media. Talented people are still applying in droves for a job at FB. The competition has definitely increased with good options out there for candidates but hiring trouble is bit preposterous.

I guess I could be wrong, but I remember reading that they were having to give even higher offers than other SV companies. That indicates a real, widespread reluctance to work there.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#239

Post by nr2x »

cogman10 wrote: post #185
monkeybutton wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is facing the rise of competing streaming platforms. They're forced into creating their own content because other producers would rather release content on their own platforms and keep all the streaming revenue, rather than license it to Netflix. Streaming video on demand isn't a technical moat that is stopping anyone.

Agreed. What made netflix successful initially was their access to IP. That's going away fast as every IP producer is pushing for their own paid streaming service (which sucks, btw). With big heavyweights like Disney that own a huge percentage of content having their own services, netflix is really going to struggle being anything more than niche media providers (anime) and their own inhouse media. If they are lucky,…

That said, until other streaming services entered the scene I didn't appreciate exactly how good Netflix's engineering is. The only service comparable is YouTube, but even then, Netflix has much higher quality. HBO Max has a great content library, but barely works.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#240

Post by phkahler »

This was hard to answer, I had to think carefully about weather I thought each one will decline, or weather I want them to decline. In short IMHO:

Amazon - Needs to clean up the 3rd party seller mess, but that will just make them better. They still offer good service.

Netflix - They're being replaced (unfortunately) by a bunch of different streaming services so they will never have as full a catalog as they did.

Apple - Hmmm. Still making great products people want to pay for. Probably near their peak customer value like MS circa 2003.

Facebook - Just make it go away. Doesn't mean it will though.

Google - Fading in search relevance but hasn't been displaced yet. They'll be here for a while longer.

So I'm going with Netflix as most likely to decline over the next few years.

Post reply on HN