"Just three companies—Google, Apple, and Facebook —generated most of the new ideas (at least the mainstream ones) and most of the business momentum. (If I had more room and time, I’d work Amazon into the argument, but as a technology company, it ranks well behind the other three.) " I find this puzzling. What great new ideas have emerged from Facebook, exactly? It's just one of multiple very similar social networks t…
Google is just one of multiple similar search products that prevailed through better execution and marketing.
This is a deep fallacy. The amount of science and technology behind Google's prevalence is absolutely huge. Google prevailed through better search results, not through execution and marketing.
Published the exact day Google announces his Loon Project? I can't say for sure, but if this project is successful, I'd call it a major innovation...
"I'd call it a major innovation..." The company behind the Loon concept has been working on this for over a decade. http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Space_Data_Awarded_USAF_Cont... Innovation on an existing idea, no doubt but
Sure, but Google has the motivation and money to make it work on a massive scale, which arguably nobody else does. That's what innovative big companies are supposed to do.
I went into this article expecting to get mad, but it's actually quite reasonable: just like how incredibly rare it is that Microsoft releases something as capital-i important as Windows, the odds are against companies one-upping the innovations that vaulted them into success. That doesn't mean they're destined to failure or even to obscurity: but innovation favors the young. (Somewhat ironically, I think Google has…
Google dares. MS and Apple compete within their domain. Googles keeps on expanding its domain to solve the problems of other industries. MS and Apple are software / hardware companies. Google is a technology company.
Google is just one of multiple similar search products that prevailed through better execution and marketing.
This is a deep fallacy. The amount of science and technology behind Google's prevalence is absolutely huge. Google prevailed through better search results, not through execution and marketing.
As someone who remembers just how dreadful search results were before google, I concur wholeheartedly. All the brilliant execution in the universe won't do you any good at all if no one wants to visit your site because your search results suck. Google was able to dominate because their far superior search results gave them lots of users to sell to advertisers.
Agreed. It's really hard to read the rest of the article without questioning every statement after reading that ridiculous paragraph early on. You're telling me Facebook, who's killer app was photo tagging for the first 3 years of its existence and who has, over the last few years, been struggling with transitioning its platform to a mobile audience, somehow ranks ahead, technology-wise, of the biggest e-commerce sit…
It's because he's not measuring greatness by technical achievement, he's measuring greatness by how much you have changed the average consumer's behavior. Amazon's big as far as e-commerce goes...but people bought things before, they can buy things from other websites, and they'll continue to buy things even if Amazon didn't exist. Facebook somehow managed to get people to spend 2-3 hours/day throwing sheep at each o…
Building Facebook is one thing, scaling Facebook is an entirely different beast.
Agreed. It's really hard to read the rest of the article without questioning every statement after reading that ridiculous paragraph early on. You're telling me Facebook, who's killer app was photo tagging for the first 3 years of its existence and who has, over the last few years, been struggling with transitioning its platform to a mobile audience, somehow ranks ahead, technology-wise, of the biggest e-commerce sit…
It's because he's not measuring greatness by technical achievement, he's measuring greatness by how much you have changed the average consumer's behavior. Amazon's big as far as e-commerce goes...but people bought things before, they can buy things from other websites, and they'll continue to buy things even if Amazon didn't exist. Facebook somehow managed to get people to spend 2-3 hours/day throwing sheep at each o…
I agree with you that Zuck deserves praise for taking the idea of Social networking and running with it far longer and more successfully than anyone else. But, I can just as easily make the argument that people were using the Internet to interact socially before, they can interact socially on other websites, and they will continue to interact socially online even if Facebook didn't exist (we could be spending 2-3 hours a day on myspace or instagram right now). All of these companies (except for maybe Apple, who introduced a completely new paradigm with the consumer PC back in the 80's) took something consumers were already doing and did it better. Therefore, I think the argument has to be made from a technological perspective, where Amazon is the clear innovator.
I disagree with the comment "If I had more room and time, I’d work Amazon into the argument, but as a technology company, it ranks well behind the other three."
IMHO, Amazon is up there as an equal peer with G/A/F.
Edit: I agree with the rest of the article though. I expect (hope for?) more interesting things happening from small players, especially in non-USA markets.
It's because he's not measuring greatness by technical achievement, he's measuring greatness by how much you have changed the average consumer's behavior. Amazon's big as far as e-commerce goes...but people bought things before, they can buy things from other websites, and they'll continue to buy things even if Amazon didn't exist. Facebook somehow managed to get people to spend 2-3 hours/day throwing sheep at each o…
Building Facebook is one thing, scaling Facebook is an entirely different beast.
Agreed, but I find scaling Amazon's physical and digital infrastructures in tandem is equally impressive.