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Google's Love For Small Businesses
bariswheel writes "The Fearless Frog is at it again: In his latest post, Cringely aims to slap some sense into Microsoft, Apple, and IBM altogether. From the article: 'What counts is that for Microsoft the platform is the PC while for Google the platform is the Internet and nobody can hope to control the Internet -- not Microsoft OR Google. Google is making a ton of money from people [small/medium sized businesses] who never were even in business before. This is not only a fundamental change in how advertising is done; it is a fundamental change in how BUSINESS is done.'"
Walk into a small business and you find employees that actually know things; employees that usually are more integrated with the local community; employees that are happier.
Walk into any big corporation and you find a bunch of uptight, miserable people who hate their jobs; don't care whether the customer is happy, and generally feel powerless to effect positive change on any grand scale within their operation.
There are obviously exceptions. Companies like Whole Foods treat their employees right, but these corporations are very atypical. Walk into a Wal-Mart and see if any employee there really gives a crap whether you find what you're looking for.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. It's also a fallacy that smaller companies don't employee more people. There are millions and millions of Americans working for small companies or self-employed. They are an intregal part of the workforce in the country.
Microsoft can build software for a handheld or tablet computer, a mobile phone or a TV set-top box and even though the wrapper is different, the feel is always very much the same -- that of a fat PC client. Microsoft can't allow a phone to be a phone because they can't dominate and control a plain old phone unless it is more Windows than phone. That's a problem.
It surely is. That was obvious in 2000 when they came out with "Pocket PC", their most successful spin on the handheld, and "Stinger", their fialed attempt to get into the cellphone market.
The Pocket PC meant the end of the Windows CE micro-notebooks and the Windows-CE-based tablets. They were pushing Windows NT as the new tablet... the problem is that while Windows CE felt like a spin on Windows 95, and the Pocket PC felt like a Palm on steroids, the Tablet PC was just an overpriced notebook.
Luckily for Microsoft, Palm had no idea what their product was, and has been trying to turn Palm OS into Pocket PC... and failing, big time. If Palm was smart they'd be selling black-and-white 68000-based Palms for $30-$50 in every grocery store in the USA, and they'd still own the business... because Microsoft couldn't do that. But, no...
But, anyway... Microsoft's platform is Windows. If you're not Windows... even if you look like Windows, Microsoft just wants to make you an annex to the Windows desktop. And if you don't even look like Windows, Microsoft doesn't want you to be a platform. That's why they completely redid the XBox, people were turning it into a platform.
But what's Apple's "platform"? It's not the Mac, and it's not Mac OS, or Mac OS X, because their "handheld/..." is the iPod, and it's nothing like a Mac. It's not even tied in to the Mac. Apple's platform is, near as I can tell, "whatever they can make money selling". That's not something they can control like Microsoft can control Windows. Microsoft isn't Apple's proxy, but what is?
I work for a small company. I used to work for several big companies. I don't make as much money now as I used to, but I have ten times more freedom and ten times more happiness and ten times less stress. I do more work than I did at the big companies, but it seems less like "work." Even though, technically I don't make as much money as I did working at some larger companies, somehow it feels like I do have more money. Maybe this is because the quality of my life has improved to the point where I am not engaging in consumeristic, distractive or self-destructive behavior as much as in the past, and this leaves me more resources as well as more peace of mind?
When I worked at big companies, there always was an illogical hierarchy that insured good ideas would get buried behind the ambitions of politically-motivated managers. People used internal memos to talk in lieu of face-to-face conversations. We had way too many meetings that didn't get a goddam thing done. And half the staff's specialization involved blaming others for things that went wrong. Normally accountability and responsibility go hand-in-hand, but not in big companies. And things constantly broke down and got lost in the cracks. When I was young, this was huge hit to my idealism and I had to make a decision: Did I want to live my life this way and end up being programmed to accept mediocrity as the status quo? Or did I want to find an environment where the people were truly appreciated and weren't constantly living in fear that some corporate boss would cut their job without even introducing himself?
I would never go back.
most small business ...do not pay for their [employees] health insurance
That is only an issue because of the dismal state of healthcare in this country. That is a serious problem that needs to be addressed on its own. Most industrialized "first world" countries provide healthcare for their citizens; don't blame the small businessman for the failings of government.
It seems to me that people have just automatically assumed that larger businesses are bad (by associating them with some bad actors among the super-big actors) and that smaller business are somehow intrinsically "good,"...
It's not a matter of "good" or "bad". The problem with large businesses is that they have a disproportionate amount influence on our lives. They own congress and rig the laws and tax code to favor them. They coldly lay off workers without remorse. They are large institutions who are beholden to no one but their shareholders. They do these things, not because they are "evil", but because they can. Any business, small or large, will do what it can to make money, it's just that some of the things large businesses are capable of are pretty nasty.
Small businesses are a part of the community, and have a human face. They're "one of us". Despite their relative inefficiancy, it is no surprise that people have a warmer opinion of them than their larger counterparts.
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
What it boils down to is management, not the size of the business.
Except that you can't be a crappy manager at a small business, and stay in business long.
Big businesses depend on economies of scale that don't exist in small businesses... there isn't ROOM for an incompetent boob in a three-man operation.
You get to three-hundred, and, "Well, Johnson may be a bullying misogynist, but at least he shows up for work."
You get to three-thousand, and Johnson's bullying misogyny is percieved as "leadership".
posting Cringely's articles. They're nothing but flamebait and don't deserve to make slashdot's front page.
Almost everybody who actually has a product to sell (that includes service) makes it in a far off land.
Better watch out... one of these days those far off lands are going to realize that they hold all the cards.
You do not have the whole market to be a monopoly, standard oil for example had 64% marketshare when it was broken up for something monopoly related. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Monopolistic _competition )
And there are things stopping others from selling products in markets which ms has a monopoly in, ms abusing it's monopoly, which they have been convicted of.
You have indeed surpassed me. I request to study under your tutelage. I aspire to the ultimate zen, profit with no product nor service nor any other material trapping.
I believe that both the US Government and the EU would disagree with you about Microsoft not being a monopoly.
...for they are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
[Yeah, it's an old one, but do I get bonus points for spelling 'ketchup' correctly?]
Most industrialized "first world" countries ration healthcare for their citizens;
Sure beats letting the market determine who recieves care. Here, the rich get vanity surgery and specialists for everything, while the poor are treated only in the emergency room. From a humanitarian standpoint, our system is a failure.
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa