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Silicon Valley Values Shift To Customersploitation
theodp writes "Bill Davidow is the real Silicon Valley deal. Commenting on how Silicon Valley has changed over the decades, Davidow is not impressed, dishing out harsh words for Facebook, Apple, Google, and others. 'When corporate leaders pursue wealth in the winner-take-all Internet environment,' concludes Davidow, 'companies dance on the edge of acceptable behavior. If they don't take it to the limit, a competitor will. That competitor will become the dominant supplier — one monopoly will replace another. And when you engage in these activities you get a different set of Valley values: the values of customer exploitation.'"
come on - give me a break.
Customerspliotation? Are you fucking kidding me? Blogosphere was bad enough. Internet, stop making up stupid words.
-SaNo
PC's caught on was because IBM and other "enterprise" suppliers charged ridiculous amounts for their hardware and locked in customers with support contracts and being the only source for spare parts and upgrades
The incentive to create a business is to make money. Once your market saturation crosses a tipping point, the only way to further increase profits is to exploit, rather than serve your market. So you engage in monopolization, rent-seeking, and so on.
This is how business has always worked. This is an entirely predictable outcome of basic human nature. It should not be surprising at all. Nor, for the most part, should it be upsetting. We should simply expect that once the businesses get huge like this, we will have to either break them up or heap some government regulation on them in order to protect ourselves from them. We will *always* have to do this, so, let's get busy.
My first reaction to this article was a wry smile" "I think I've heard this story before." I spent 30+ years working in IT on Wall Street, and saw that industry change from relationship-oriented to a almost complete focus on short-term transactions. ("What have you done for me today?") IN both industries, there is a good deal below the surface that isn't visible, easily or at all, to the customer; that the customer often ends up getting screwed shouldn't really surprise anyone.
How are the exploited if they are signing up willingly? Trying to negate personal responsibility and play it off on the "evil corporation" is more played out than the buzzwords Davidow uses in his "blog."
I agree companies take things a bit too far at times but like a wise man once said "It's a crime to let a sucker hang on to his money." I feel no worse for people being "exploited" by these companies than I do the banks that gambled on them.
Those were customers, receivers of a at least sorta customized product or service. Also, in general, corporations not lowly humans. Consumers are a much more lowly social class. Like the difference between a diner eating while seated at a gourmet restaurant, vs the maggots in the dumpster eating the leftovers the diners didn't want. Its a social class thing.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I'm not sure that's a good comparison. What you describe is simple competition...supply a cheaper product that gets the job done and get that business. What he's describing is quite different. Actually the use of the term "customer" in this whole context seems a little grey to me. These companies real "customers" are the ones paying for add revenue, not those being exploited.
This is why we have internet bubbles. If you try and cheat your way to the top, the people will simply shift away from you. If value is non-existent in a service or product, the people will not buy it (even if it's free). If you keep fooling them, eventually there will be nobody left with money to fool, or the ones you fooled will ignore future false promises. Millions of Facebook users don't realize they are working for Facebook but not being paid, because Facebook earns all it's money based on the information those people provide, freely (including private messages).
When the negative behavior is revealed to everyone, we tend to just pull the plug. For example, I deleted my Facebook account because of their shady attitude towards privacy. For a while it looked like Facebook would continue to dominate social. But social has become very anti-social; ads, over-stimulus, email nagging... etc.
THE PROMISE
I will pull the plug on anything that turns out to be false. Invest in false companies at your peril.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
... Silicon Valley either would not exist or would have morphed into a university town or some non-academic research center.
No, PCs caught on, because their computing power and extensability was enough to fulfill a special need centralized systems weren't fit for: Doing your own spreadsheet at your desk, writing something to be edited heavily later, playing some games, combine arbitrary software adapted to your ideas how to work or recreate. The whole notion of "personal computing" was diametral to the centralized IT shop with the big irons serving multiple terminals. PCs weren't eating into IBM's or DEC's revenues. Only when the PC technology was mature enough to make inroad into the server business, the game was changed. But at that time, tens of millions of PCs were already sold.
nobody is forcing you to use facebook, google, twitter or any free internet service. i use them because i get value out of them.
oh noes, facebook knows i liked the page of some women's perfume my wife likes. its so evil the perfume maker may even send me a custom coupon before my wife's birthday because they will have her info as well.
Some people at slashdot look at Apple and it's walled garden app store and feel like Apple is creating a trapped audience who can only download what Apple feels is OK.
And they are right. But some people who want a simple "it just works" device are willing to accept that model and they don't care about concepts like open source.
I'll extend that to many of IT professionals who have spent years getting the dreaded "my computer is broken" phone calls. They have pointed friends and family in Apple's direction because... it's just works.
Grandma doesn't build her own kernel. She doesn't see a walled garden. She sees a device that works without throwing a ton of alarming messages at her.
Okay, as companies get further away from 'making something', I'd say that the area may grey . . . but is this a bad comparison or what?
Apple (yes, I'll get flamed for saying this) has yet to prove they're exploiting their customers aside from the fringe that think they're crazy.
Google has an unprecedented (legally, in private hands) amount of people's info, but again, as long as search results give me what I want, I don't see a problem.
Facebook? Well, yes, they're exploiting idiots, but aside from the above two 'cornering the market' on something, they're not all that much alike.
So where is St. Amazon in this and why are they excluded? Because we're still 'getting stuff' from them I'm guessing. TFA is trollbait.
The major difference between Google and Facebook.. and HP and Intel is that the "customer" for FB and Google is the advertisers. The general public is the product. Having used Google adwords as a customer, I can assure you the customer is treated well. They contact you with offers of free support from real live people.
This is in no way similar to, say, my telephone number being sold or traded by businesses to telemarketers.
This isn't new, and this isn't unique to IT.
Nobody forces anyone to go to work, stop at red lights, wear clothes outside, or the like either. However, consequences do happen.
Until I got my current job, every previous would-be employer asked what my FB ID was. When I told them I didn't have one, I was told directly that the interview was over, and that someone without FB was a fossil too ignorant/old/stupid to be working there.
If I want to listen to Spotify or other services, guess what? They use FB for their access.
The more I think about, the more impressed I am by the Craigslist model. There is no constant addition of features just for the sake of appearing to do something or for the sake of growing revenues. That's a service that is truly focused on its users.
my father in law is a millionaire and he never uses facebook. in fact he rarely uses the cheapo laptop i bought him. i know other successful people who don't use facebook. some have accounts but never use it, others don't even have an account.
"Nothing! Because if I take it to small claims court, it will just drain 8 hours out of my life and you probably won't show up and even if I got the judgment you'd just stiff me anyway; so what I am going to do is piss and moan like an impotent jerk, and then bend over and take it up the tailpipe!"
-- Fletcher (Jim Carrey) "Liar, Liar"
Different scenario, same outcome.
And how they are acting any different then say 90% of the other companies in the USA?
Nobody forces anyone to go to work, stop at red lights, wear clothes outside, or the like either.
Actually the police do (other than the going to work part).
If I want to listen to Spotify or other services, guess what? They use FB for their access.
Actually they don't. I have Spotify fully disconnected from Facebook.
Something for nothing.
Napster simply provided exactly what the consumer had been demanding all along and what was native to the enframing of digital technology itself: copies of data, for free (or nearly free). Something for nothing. A customer would have been much more wary of such a proposition, but consumers are like honey badgers, they don't give a shit.
So, as interesting a lament as the article is, in fact, it points at large issues it cannot address (customer v. consumer) and also the disappearance of HP and its way of doing business. My wife worked at HP for 25 years, so I have some insight on this as well. The HP way started to collapse in the 1990s and took a BIG hit in 2001 with Carli Fiorina's incompetent reign at HP 1999 - 2006. She and her cohorts dismantled HP and the HP Way part by part, and basically gutted the company. Now it is basically a subsidiary of Compaq, even though it's called HP, most of the important decisions are coming out of Texas, not Palo Alto. I remember hearing back in 2000 how the HP way was under attack and people lamenting the "good old days" at HP. I think the article has a lot of that nostalgia clouding its view.
How we get out of the infinite regress of infantile consumerism remains to be seen. I am thinking that when oil production goes into a permanent decline after 2017, that's going to evacuate a lot of wealth that was being pissed away on meaningless junk, and people will have to snap to attention and get on the stick or experience enormous suffering. At that point, the ICT industry will evolve customers and relationships. How that will evolve out of the massive monopolisation process from above seems unlikely, so I would think it will have to come from below as consumers empower themselves back into being customers working with companies to get (work/play/etc.) done, and then become citizens who are compassionate and contributing active members of a society instead of taxpayers griping about "the gubmint".
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
When EVERYONE becomes a patent troll and predatory lawsuit machine are those things still bad? Best case, the whole tech industry will implode into not making or creating or selling ANYTHING preferring instead to make all their money by suing each other continuously and shifting the same unproductive bag and cash back and forth among them.
The old HP was a great company, but it was always atypical. Suggesting the there has been a shift because few if any other companies followed Mr. Hewlett's and Mr. Packard's model is a bit of a stretch.
When times get tough, you find out what people are really like. When you're living in times of plenty-for-all, it's easy for people to be kind and generous. The truly good, nice people won't change much, if at all, but the rest? The pretty mask and the kid-gloves come off. Businesses are run by people, and they reflect who those people really are.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Huh?? PCs were around before the IBM PC, although they were called "microcomputers" back then. The IBM PC was a hit because IBM designed and manufactured it, and the mantra was "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". IBM pretty much wiped out every other microcomputer manufacturer except Apple after that, for almost ten years when Compaq cloned IBM's BIOS and produced a faster, more full-featured, cheaper PC that would run all the programs IBM's PC did.
IBM PCs never locked customers in with support contracts and being the only source for spare parts and upgrades, and in fact there were a whole lot of companies selling memory, hard drives, video cards, etc. for it. These spare parts were always commodities, and as soon as Compaq came along you could put an IBM board into a Compaq and vice-versa with no problem whatever.
You're confusing their PCs with their mainframes, which do lock customers in with support contracts and being the only source for spare parts and upgrades, but so did every other mainframe maker.
In short, you're 100% incorrect, kid. Ask your grandpa first next time.
Free Martian Whores!
Please list the companies that told you that. I'd really like to know.
In a better world, we're more than just slightly smarter animals. More and more that's all people seem to be, is animals.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
And articles like this are like the better business bureau. It's important to share information about which corporations are trustworthy and which are sleazeballs.
Corporate culture has brainwashed people into believing that you can't have a happy, healthy, productive life without being "connected" to everyone else 100% of the time through online services and smartphone. The irony is that people are even less connected to each other than they've ever been, since everything online is just an illusion of that. Words on a page and pictures on a screen can't ever take the place of actual face-to-face interaction with other human beings. The sooner people come back around to that very basic fact, the better off everyone will be.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I am NOT a millionaire, and never use Facebook.
Your point was?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
PCs caught on because clone makers *didn't* charge ridiculous amounts for their hardware and didn't lock in customers with support contracts, etc.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When was this better world?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
These spare parts were always commodities, and as soon as Compaq came along you could put an IBM board into a Compaq and vice-versa with no problem whatever.
That's not quite true. The original Compaq PCs were *not* plug compatible with the original IBM PCs. Also, IBM moved beyond the ISA bus to MCA bus, which was, most certainly, proprietary. At the same time, Compaq was pushing the EISA bus which was almost as (un)successful (at least in consumer terms -- the Corps bought lots of MCA and EISA hardware) as the MCA bus.
But I guess that was so long ago you've forgotten the bus wars.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
>>>the mantra was "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". IBM pretty much wiped out every other microcomputer manufacturer except Apple after that, for almost ten years when Compaq cloned IBM's BIOS.....
You make it sound like the IBM PC was instantly dominant when it was released (1981) but that wasn't the case. It wasn't until six years later that the PC (and clones) became the #1 selling computer. Prior to that point it was the Commodore 64 (1983-86) and the Atari 800 (1981-82) that were the best-selling models.
Source: Ars Technica
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I have never purchased anything from Google. I use their email and search engine and let them crawl its content so I can be pitched with some fairly unobtrusive ads. I guess I am a viewer or a user. Maybe even a mark. I am a Microsoft customer. They do push stuff at me and I push back. But then so do car salesmen, and the guy haunting the men's department at Macy's. It is, and always has been, a caveat-emptor kind of world. Basically, most people seem up to it and rarely get fleeced with everyday purchases. With tech, however, it is simply a lot easier to trick people into buying stuff they do not need, because, frankly, most people have very little idea of what they are buying. Tech is shyster heaven. One laments, perhaps, the fading of the academic ethic (or at least the pretense of it) that characterized the early years of commercial tech. But to my eye it is just business doing business as usual. Never very nice.
The FOSS movement, for all its flaws, is a ray of sunshine in the 'dark' world of commerce. It really is a pleasant surprise. Like Jazz, maybe. Creative energy from the bottom up. If not always polished or complete, then beautiful nonetheless... But face it... capitalism works. It generates wealth far better than more nobly conceived economic experiments. But it will always spin out of control if left only to itself. Price fixing? Monopolies? Fraud? Markets do not self-correct these built in problems. However, the implementation of thoughtful measured regulations and laws can really put government squarely into the same role with finance and industry that coaches and referees play in sports. Without them... chaos. But too much from them and they spoil the game. In the end it is all about optimizing "the public good." whatever that is at a given moment
The scary thing is corruption. And for that there seems to be no answer. And over the last decade there seems to be more and more of it. On every side of the aisle. And at every level of power. Yikes!
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
This Guy comes across as a Socialist that does not understand that without a profit The internet would die. Money Making Commerce is what makes the internet viable without it we would be back to pre-www days. He really needs to get a grip.
That when you look at IT related job offers in the Silicon Area it is hard to find something that is NOT "advanced breakthrough customer advertisement mobile targeting management" platform (in the cloud of course)...
And this is quite boring in the end, and soul crunching, what self respecting geek really wants to do this, of course making money is cool, but spending your life....
so where are the really interesting companies ....
"How are the exploited if they are signing up willingly?"
You can be both. Ever read a book where a con man invoked the cliché of "sheep shearing themselves"? Or less savoury agricultural inducements?
Literature aside, that was basically what tobacco advertising has always been about. For that matter, anti-persperants, junk food, and any number of other commodities that have their darker aspects.
No, PCs caught on because the clone manufacturers jumped in and created a sizable market with plenty of competition. That allowed consumers to afford them.
At the same time, there was the true blue PC sold by the suit and tie brigade to convince corporate America that it was a 'serious' product and not just a consumer toy.
The insult to injury is that it's not really "customer" exploitation at all. Most of Silicon Valley's customers are companies buying advertising. It's consumersploitation. Working at a huge MNC myself, I'm keenly aware of the difference between customers and consumers.
PC's caught on because they were made from off the shelf hardware, and so could be made by multiple completing companies, and so were cheap ....
IBM designed them, and sold them for huge amounts, until someone realised they could undercut IBM ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Google and facebook haven't tried to keep their business model a secret. They provide services to me for "free" (in terms of actual dollars) in exchange for using my personal information to create more precisely targeted advertising. So far, I feel that I have benefited from this arrangement, so I'm not sure how I am being "exploited." Does the author believe that facebook and google benefit "too much" relative to the amount that I benefit? How can he tell? Shouldn't I be the one to decide that? (Actually, more than anything else, this entire line of thinking reveals how the word "exploitation" is mostly used for emotional effect, not to convey objective information about a relationship. But I digress.)
I am sympathetic to this guy's complaints to the extent that these companies have actually iied to people, but beyond that, it sounds like pointless whining that not every company makes its money the way Intel and HP used to.
Was it so hard to write "Silicon Valley Values Shift To Customer Exploitation"?
Everyone will use this as an argument against capitalism and libertarianism. As if we lived in a truly capitalist or libertarian society. Hell, we're not even in a true democracy by it's very definitional.
Capitalism only works as intended when unfettered by regulation AND it is relatively transparent. Unfortunately our economic system is drowning in regulation and most of that regulation does nothing more than obscure the true market. All regulation of financial markets should be for the sole purpose of increasing transparency into that market. An example of good regulation is weights and measures legislation. A gallon of a fluid is the same size no matter where you get it. Date stamping on foods. Ingedients lists. etc... etc...
We don't need legislation that dictates what these companies can and can not sell... that never works. We need laws that require them to disclose obviously what it is they are selling, what they will do with your information, and how long it will be stored. Then the public can make informed decisions about what they are doing online rather than have the government trying to constantly catch up to technology so they can "protect" us.
So they win by offering products people flock to?
This is bad because...?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
That's not quite true. The original Compaq PCs were *not* plug compatible with the original IBM PCs.
Didn't the Compaq Portable use the same 8bit ISA expansion cards as the 5150 IBM PC?
So in your world there's only the option of either being a total zero, or being into kitten rape -- wait, what?
And of course you assume everybody else has to be a mediocre rollover like you are, right?
All unilateral contracts are, by definition, exploitative of the party not in control of the contract terms; Think cell phone contracts.
noted, "customersploitation" is an abjectly moronic term. I prefer the normal pronunciation myself; to quote one B. B. Rodriguez, "the 'X' makes it sound cool."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You are a marketable data point. That's all. You're not their customer, or even their consumer. You're their unpaid intern, creating content for their benefit, so that more marketable data-points join the hive-mind.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
yep, it's a myth. But there was a time when there was hardware development, but the chip companies didn't sprout up in the orchards by themselves, http://www.inc.com/eric-schurenberg/inconvenient-history-of-silicon-valley.html
I heard this before, and then of a presentation at local INCOSE meeting in November by Sam Araki who worked on the Corona program for Lockheed. He presented and showed how much effort was pumped into developing the electronics needed for these new recon satellites. And there was is serious need since we had not much knowledge of USSR military buildup. Unlike USSR, USA efforts resulted in huge turnouts of civilian products and uses. He also showed charts of why our economic recovery system is broken. Unlike previous economic downturns we were able to recover. In early 70s Lockheed Missiles and Space in Sunnyvale employed 28,000 people. Now this same place (LockMart) it is 8,000.
mfwright@batnet.com
slides used by Sam Araki, http://www.incose.org/sfbac/2011events/111108Presentation-50YearsInSpace_v5.pdf
mfwright@batnet.com
Dude, it's not about my facebook profile; heh, I hardly use the thing. I just like to think further than my own fucking nose; I'm aware this concept probably boggles your brain. And hey, if you can speak your mind without pissing anyone off, what does that say about your mind?
Yes, it's possible to not speak your mind in public. It's also possible to not make a stand, ever, or to always do so anonymously (which is kind of an oxymoron IMHO). I just don't find that desirable -- I'd much rather put needy snoops in their place. Kinda like it's possible to not have children, but we prefer to instead jail child molestors.
And before you ask, I'm not saying shoot them outright, I'm saying roll your eyes unto them, so they may blush; instead of rolling your eyes at the other party, which is just fucking stupid. That's why I usually skip to the insults; none of this can be explained to someone older than 15 who doesn't already know it. Those who never move don't notice their chains, la-di-blah -- you're either angry or part of the problem.
Also, what is this "controversial" you are speaking of? That huge groups of people are spineless turds isn't "controversial", it's just that these same turds wouldn't like to hear it.
Even nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
Now get off my lawn!
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Its not just customers. Its also employees who have been exploited worse and worse for decades. And its not just in IT industry or Silicon Valley - its all of the US employment spectrum. Just look closely over the last 20 or 30 years, you'll see it easy enough.
C|N>K
Of course not. Just like a complete recounting of every thought that ever crossed someone's mind should not be their resume.
Hmm I can't speak for others, but I'll totally accept that for myself hahaha... I kinda like it.
Uhm yeah I agree, but this isn't about Facebook -- you either misunderstood me or are beating up a strawman. Anyway, Facebook just enabled (or should I say, motivated) people to have website-ish things, who wouldn't otherwise. And that apparently gave employers the idea they should know these things, just because it's easy -- not because they need to know, not because there is actually any measurable gain of knowing, just because they can. It's not like it's actually useful for a background check or anything else serious, seeing how you can fake it completely; I think it's mostly to see if people are wearing enough flair. That kind of "culture" is what pisses me off. I don't like Facebook either, but for different reasons, not because people use it for evil bullshit on top of the evil bullshit Facebook is pulling.
But generally, and while I'm ranting, I'm not so convinced of the whole choice thing. When someone says "this is great product, the price is a steal, my baby blue eyes cannot lie", I either have the experience to see through that, or don't. But there is no choice involved; that's just what intelligent people tell themselves as their fellow brains prey on the stupid. It's a common defect to think it's okay to see if someone falls for X, but not okay to fall for X. Yeah fucking right.
This just seems like another form of manufactured wealth creation, where business isn't really producing anything new or novel but instead rearranging what already exists.
while I agree Facebook, Apple, MS and others are just about making money, Google isn't.
Google has been about making products for people. some have been miss, and others have been a great hit. Sure, they make money from Advertising, yet before them, search engines sucked.
They made a phone OS that is a big success, yet they aren't charging phone manufactures a tax to use their OS or another phones OS. Can you say the same about MS?
Look, I might get labled a Google fanboy, but all of the companies listed in this article, they are the only one who seems to actually care about their customers and the products they are working on.
Be seeing you...
Until I got my current job, every previous would-be employer asked what my FB ID was. When I told them I didn't have one, I was told directly that the interview was over, and that someone without FB was a fossil too ignorant/old/stupid to be working there.
I call astroturfing by a FB employee unless your applied for job title was "social media consultant". Everyone in mgmt where I work hates FB with a passion because FB seems to inevitably get the workplace drawn into the middle school girl drama that is FB. "Well coworker A posted on my wall that coworker B's butt looks fat in those jeans on coworker Cs page so I want you to switch her shift times and seating arrangement so I don't have to work with her and coworker D makes me cry because she won't accept my friend requests and its all your fault because you're the boss and you guys act like you're baby sitters half the time anyway so you gotta be baby sitters for the bad parts too". Oh and stupid mandatory corporate wide training videos about not acting like an official corporate representative on FB merely because FB happens to list that you work there, and not even tangentially mentioning internal corporate information on FB, not revealing internal corporate information such as coworkers home addresses and phone numbers or even work numbers on FB "Oh random FB person you're unhappy with our service? Here's our CEO's direct cellphone number". And not posting pics of the inside of our labs and data centers and to a lesser extent offices on FB. The agony of FB goes on and on, and where I work they more or less officially hate it. There's a palpable sense of relief when they hear that I don't have a FB account. At least there's one thing they won't have to yell at me about. Perhaps as a result of all this, only about 1/3 of my coworkers have an account on FB, or at least 2/3 are smart enough to not admit they have an account and completely separate their public/private lives.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Could you please list the companies you applied to that asked this? Because I'm engaged in a job search myself right now, and have interviewed and phone screened with 15-20 different companies. And not a single one has asked me for my Facebook account details. I can't help but think that you're either making shit up because it gives you a reason to complain about Facebook.
Or he's a paid astroturfer employed by FB. I'm calling him out on that, that's my theory why he made up a story like that. Thats why he's posting AC, if we looked him up we'd find current employer listed as media relations or something like that at FB.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Old accounts were grandfathered in, but all new accounts require you to go through Facebook. I think they changed this a year ago. I learned this the hard way recently when I tried to create a Spotify account. I've deleted my Facebook account, and I have desire to create a dummy account for bullshit like this.
Oh for fuck's sake.. I wasn't being nostalgic, damnit, I was being theoretical!
Humans are capable of some pretty amazing things.. but they're also capable of some of the most senseless, animalistic, disappointing things imaginable. What I was referring to was a theoretical human race that actually rises above the stupid animal they tend to be!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Spelling aside, I actually didn't mean to use the phase "paying for add revenue" either, as that doesn't really make sense. It was a pre-coffee post...what can I tell you.
"the winner-take-all Internet environment"
What does that even mean? The internet is more of an 'everybody wins environment', if one can even make any general statements about the internet at all. Any elements of winner takes all in the internet is a result of our economic and financial systems, and also patent and copyright law. There are some exceptions for services like social networking where you need to be on the same service as everyone else to get the benefits of the system, but even that is partly a result of a competitive corporate system. If for example social networking sites used an industry standard data format which you could download from your current social networking site and migrate seamlessly to another one, then the current monopolistic system would likely cease to be a problem. To make such a statement about the internet as if it is an intrinsic property of a distributed self routing information network is just absurd.
Well, yes, there were changes; the original keyblard plugs looked like they belonged on a Mac truck, the busses have chenged a couple of times, but I had an IMB XT I bought used, and simply kept upgrading it. Added a Hercules card for graphics, later a VGA card; added a sound card (not available at all from IBM), memory, joystick, none of which were IBM. At one point, the only original parts were the case, power supply, and keyboard; I'd changed out the motherboard for a 386 (probably was the world's fastest IBM XT if you could still call it one).
One of the reasons the PS2 never took off was because of its parts incompatibility.
Free Martian Whores!
You're right, it didn't happen overnight, and Tandy and Commodore and others continued to sell relatively cheap computers for the home. I should have said it pretty much killed the CP/M machines that businesses had been using.
Free Martian Whores!
If consumers are being exploited, why are they staying with the company?
Actually they don't. I have Spotify fully disconnected from Facebook.
Can you explain how you managed that? I want to use Spotify, but I'm fucked if I'll sign up for Facebook.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
It appears I'm wrong. I signed up when it was first available in the US and at the time you didn't need Facebook, but it looks like you do now. Which is incredibly stupid.