correction: In Technology, Big Fish, if they get eaten, are almost always eaten by Small Fish. Also, Small Fish almost always don't survive.
In Technology, Small Fish Almost Always Eat Big Fish
21–30 of 34 posts
Re: In Technology, Small Fish Almost Always Eat Big Fish
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know. I look at the rise of mobile OS's as a good example of small fish taking over.
What do you mean by that? You look at Android and iOS and say small fish?
When they came out, yeah, Android and iOS were tiny. iOS couldn't even run third-party apps for the first 6 months, and lacked basic features like cut & paste for the first couple years. Android had a clunky UI. Both of them faced the problem of "What can you possibly do on a 4-inch screen with a tiny on-screen keyboard?"
Re: In Technology, Small Fish Almost Always Eat Big Fish
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by that? You look at Android and iOS and say small fish?
When they came out , yeah, Android and iOS were tiny. iOS couldn't even run third-party apps for the first 6 months, and lacked basic features like cut & paste for the first couple years. Android had a clunky UI. Both of them faced the problem of "What can you possibly do on a 4-inch screen with a tiny on-screen keyboard?"
I think the article was intended to be about company/firm size.
Calling Google or Apple small is kinda wrong ;-)
But also, if you interpret it as technology, then it's still pretty wrong to describe the original smartphones as small or simple -- they're not the sort of thing you could slap together and make work. The partnerships and supply chains and software and scale necessary to get smart phones working "well enough" would have been extremely difficult for a small player to pull off.
Re: In Technology, Small Fish Almost Always Eat Big Fish
#24Painfully close but wrong. Big fish are almost always eaten by small fish. On the other hand, almost all small fish fail. It's the rare exception among small fish that bests a big fish. Stated correctly it sounds unremarkable because it is unremarkable. So much for "Leslie's Law". His DEC/IBM comparison shows that he somehow stopped reading the tech press around 1990. Intel's decomposed platform ate them all and open…
Big fish are almost always eaten by small fish. Small fish are almost always eaten by big fish. At least there's a nice symmetry to it.
Eh. Small fish eat other small fish. Sometimes they mutually eat each other, to abuse the metaphor.
Re: In Technology, Small Fish Almost Always Eat Big Fish
#25Maybe I'm not thinking about it long or hard enough, but this article just seems kind of wrong.
Acquisition events are way more common than small-company-eats-big-company events. It's literally logically impossible for small fish to always eat big fish, because there would then never be any big fish to start with, all fish would work out to the same size +/- one fish.
[EDIT] - After reading some more of the article it's just the title that is linkbaity/exaggerated... I made too cursory an evaluation
Re: In Technology, Small Fish Almost Always Eat Big Fish
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
When they came out , yeah, Android and iOS were tiny. iOS couldn't even run third-party apps for the first 6 months, and lacked basic features like cut & paste for the first couple years. Android had a clunky UI. Both of them faced the problem of "What can you possibly do on a 4-inch screen with a tiny on-screen keyboard?"
I think the article was intended to be about company/firm size. Calling Google or Apple small is kinda wrong ;-) But also, if you interpret it as technology, then it's still pretty wrong to describe the original smartphones as small or simple -- they're not the sort of thing you could slap together and make work. The partnerships and supply chains and software and scale necessary to get smart phones working "well eno…
For Android at least, it holds. Android was a 6-person startup when it was acquired by Google.
The point, though, isn't the size of the company that sponsors the product or even the size of the team involved in the product itself. It's the product's power level relative to incumbents in the space. When Android and iOS came out, they were both significantly less powerful than the PCs and laptops that were previously used for general-purpose computation. But they had the useful attribute of being able to fit into your pocket. When the platforms came out, mainstream PC vendors didn't even view them as competition, because you obviously cannot do the same things on a phone that you can on a laptop. Many mainstream PC vendors still don't view them as competition. But with new input methods, changing social patterns, and increased hardware power, phones are being used for more and more things that you would previously have had to stick a laptop in a car for. Think of FedEx delivery computers vs. Uber or Instacart.
Re: In Technology, Small Fish Almost Always Eat Big Fish
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the article was intended to be about company/firm size. Calling Google or Apple small is kinda wrong ;-) But also, if you interpret it as technology, then it's still pretty wrong to describe the original smartphones as small or simple -- they're not the sort of thing you could slap together and make work. The partnerships and supply chains and software and scale necessary to get smart phones working "well eno…
For Android at least, it holds. Android was a 6-person startup when it was acquired by Google. The point, though, isn't the size of the company that sponsors the product or even the size of the team involved in the product itself. It's the product's power level relative to incumbents in the space . When Android and iOS came out, they were both significantly less powerful than the PCs and laptops that were previously…
Essentially what you're saying in this post is that new products emerge over time and cannibalize the market for old products. Not exactly an earth-shattering observation, nor one that's unique to the past 50 (or 500) years. Which is probably why it's (hopefully) not the observation Leslie was attaching his name to...
Re: In Technology, Small Fish Almost Always Eat Big Fish
#28"Leslie's Law" would have just a bit more credibility if someone other than Mr. Leslie himself had bestowed the label.
Re: In Technology, Small Fish Almost Always Eat Big Fish
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the article was intended to be about company/firm size. Calling Google or Apple small is kinda wrong ;-) But also, if you interpret it as technology, then it's still pretty wrong to describe the original smartphones as small or simple -- they're not the sort of thing you could slap together and make work. The partnerships and supply chains and software and scale necessary to get smart phones working "well eno…
For Android at least, it holds. Android was a 6-person startup when it was acquired by Google. The point, though, isn't the size of the company that sponsors the product or even the size of the team involved in the product itself. It's the product's power level relative to incumbents in the space . When Android and iOS came out, they were both significantly less powerful than the PCs and laptops that were previously…
> Android was a 6-person startup when it was acquired by Google.
So a big fish ate a small fish?
Also, Android wasn't successful because it was small. Android was successful because it was bought by a big company that could use its size and capital to build the brands and partnerships necessary to succeed in the space.
Finally, msartphone provides didn't initially follow the advice at the end of the article. Smartphones were definitely serving the high end of the market for a long time.
Re: In Technology, Small Fish Almost Always Eat Big Fish
#30Painfully close but wrong. Big fish are almost always eaten by small fish. On the other hand, almost all small fish fail. It's the rare exception among small fish that bests a big fish. Stated correctly it sounds unremarkable because it is unremarkable. So much for "Leslie's Law". His DEC/IBM comparison shows that he somehow stopped reading the tech press around 1990. Intel's decomposed platform ate them all and open…
Big fish are almost always eaten by small fish. Small fish are almost always eaten by big fish. At least there's a nice symmetry to it.
This reminds me of Agar.io.