Tech's Big 5 -- Here to Stay? (nytimes.com)

schwit1 tips a piece at the NY Times about the most entrenched companies in consumer technology: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. The article makes the case that these five have a such a strong grip on the modern tech industry that they're destined to stick around for the foreseeable future. From the article: Tech people like to picture their industry as a roiling sea of disruption, in which every winner is vulnerable to surprise attack from some novel, as-yet-unimagined foe. ... But for much of the last half-decade, most of these five giants have enjoyed a remarkable reprieve from the boogeymen in the garage. And you can bet on them continuing to win. So I’m coining them the Frightful Five. .... Though competition between the five remains fierce — and each year, a few of them seem up and a few down — it’s becoming harder to picture how any one of them, let alone two or three, may cede their growing clout in every aspect of American business and society. ... In various small and large ways, the Frightful Five are pushing into the news and entertainment industries; they’re making waves in health care and finance; they’re building cars, drones, robots and immersive virtual-reality worlds. Why do all this? Because their platforms — the users, the data, and all the money they generate — make these far-flung realms seem within their grasp."

Comments

Poop

[Anonymous Coward]

On them

Re:Poop

[Anonymous Coward]

poop+poop = poop . save your poop for the poopiest poop to poop on ( well you can waste a turd on Microsfot )

Re:Poop

[Anonymous Coward]

THERE
ARE
FIVE
POOPS!
(and they're here to stay)

Facebook is already declining

[Anonymous Coward]

In 10 years no one will remember what it even was.

Same for Microsoft if they keep releasing hostile, deficient spyware instead of actual products.

And Tim Cook is doing a great job of destroying Apple as well.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[MikeDataLink]

Not sure what conspiracy site you're getting your info from, but Facebook is still growing leaps and bounds.

Microsoft is turning it around under Satya Nadella.

Apple, you might be right on that one, but not for the reasons you think.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Viol8]

A social media site can vanish as fast as it arrived if the Next New Thing comes along - look at MySpace - so as you say, Facebook could well be gone in 10 years. Not sure about MS, their intrenchment in the business IT world is so vast that it'll take a lot longer than 10 years for them to die even if they made a bigger stuff up than Windows 8 once more. Apple? No chance, not while it keeps selling the New Shiny and with cash reserves larger than some 2nd world countries.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[TWX]

Facebook appears to have gone a lot further than MySpace did in integrating itself into basic web services. As such it will be harder to dislodge even if its core end-user business ceases growing or even shrinks, as they'll be able to be come a metrics and ratings and data company.

That said, there's still no reason to assume that any given tech or Internet services company will always be around. Go back a few years and AOL and Yahoo were juggernauts. Go back before that and IBM was hot.

Companies live and die by the research and development or the design they do that turns into products. Cut off the R&D, eventually the company withers on the vine. Apple has experienced it when Jobs wasn't at the helm, and other tech companies have folded because they myopically assumed that whatever thing they'd done to make their name would continue to bring in revenue. Look at how long Palm hung-on to PalmOS. Palm could have been what the iPhone and the Android platform have become if they'd not stunted themselves. Granted, their various corporate masters over the years didn't help, but the end result is that they're gone despite having been quite innovative when their products debuted.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[bondsbw]

MySpace was never anywhere as big as Facebook is today, so Facebook's decline will be quite a longer process. (Still possible within 10 years though.)

Microsoft isn't likely to make the same "stuff up" as Windows 8 in the next 10 years, because Windows 8 was the first step in a move toward faster and lighter upgrades, modern designs, and modern application models and APIs. Windows 10 2026 may look different from Windows 10 2016 but the journey there will be 20 small hills instead of 4 large mountains. I think they will start to once again build on their strengths instead of putting so much focus on the unknown.

Apple's ability to create shiny has diminished. It used to be easier to convince me that an upgrade was warranted sooner, now I don't see the point. Software is still an area they can improve but they refuse to in so many ways. (It's 2016, let me put a damn icon on the bottom-right corner!) But some people have accounts set aside for every September, regardless of what is brought up on the stage, so Apple isn't going away either.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Z00L00K]

You can't be sure about turning it around - there's no "too big to fail" in the industry. The risk Microsoft runs right now is to swing from one ditch to another. If changes goes too fast then customers won't keep up and if you alienate the IT professionals then you can end up losing corporate support. Especially if there's a breach in their "Office 365" online service solution which is now popular among a large volume of mid-size corporations.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Penguinisto]

Lousy time to run out of mod points... this was damned good.

I would add though that it's never one factor that makes a company grow, die, or stay steady-state. R&D is one of the most important, but believe it or not, so is marketing, product design, and the state of competition.

We can continue using Palm as an example... the combination of stuff that killed it? Well...

1) As you said, R&D was stifled and stymied, even by its own management.

2) The larger market moved, and gained speed as it did. PDAs were being eclipsed for the same reason pagers were; phones began gaining features that obviated both of them (SMS killed the pager, while Blackberry slowly killed off the PDA. the iPhone was simply the coup d' gras.) To Palm's credit, PalmOS was one of the most-licensed OSes in the North American smartphone market pre-iPhone, but they failed to capitalize on it early/fast enough.

3) competition kept multiplying with no reprieve, with new competitors arriving that were backed by much larger corporations: BlackBerryOS, WinCE/WinMobile, Symbian, iOS, Android, etc etc etc. PalmOS

4) management dithered way too much, and leadership became rather dysfunctional and inward-looking (according to folks who worked there, anyway)

5) investments were grossly misspent, leaving Palm cash-poor at critical junctures.

6) Marketing was AWOL... the Palm brand was incredibly stale by the time smartphones became a thing outside of CxOs and salesmen. While PalmOS did very, very well in North America, its market share was barely above statistical noise in Europe and Asia.

There are a lot of other, smaller factors, but the idea stands - it's more than one thing that determines the fate of a company and its technology, eh? :)

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Joce640k]

Go back a few years and AOL and Yahoo were juggernauts. Go back before that and IBM was hot.

Sure, but... nobody wanted any of those. They were just tolerated until the real thing came along.

The migration was swift when the real thing appeared.

People seem to want Facebook. It will be very difficult to overturn that (Microsoft and Google have both failed and I'm sure Facebook can copy/buy anything that looks like a threat).

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook is growing to the point where it is no longer cool anymore. It's quickly becoming a platform for middle-aged house wives to post pictures of their grandkids, and for men who are interested in sleeping with middle-aged housewives.

PS - your comment about Apple reminds me of one weird trick.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is turning it around under Satya Nadella.

Yup, turning it toward the grave.

Between Windoze 8, Winblows 10, and Windows Phone, M$ is really doing great things. NOT!

I think it will be a close race betwen M$ and Facebook as to which one dies first.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[0100010001010011]

Facebook is 'pivoting'. They've taken over as the defacto 'forum' software for a large demographic. There are a lot of private invite only groups that people are on. It was just last year that they rolled out half assed threaded discussion. You can reply up to 1 level deep.

My wife was invited to one for her profession that's ~5000 MDs and she loves it. She's buried into it like I used to be to Slashdot. They have pretty good discussion and discourse despite Facebook's shitty "discussion" system.

Every time I try to move one of my groups to a forum or even Reddit it's a constant "But I'm already signed in with Facebook". If there was any way to describe how Facebook has embedded itself the online space it's like a cancer. It'll take years to cut out all the 'share on facebook' links and tracking hooks.

I would kill for a Facebook 2004 to come out. As a social network Facebook is absolutely terrible. As a "place where people are on the internet" it's not bad.

Re: Facebook is already declining

[Type44Q]

In other words, Facebook's become boring... but that's precisely because it's become ubiquitous and mainstream. Sure, we can only hope for its demise... but what're the odds?

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft isn't going anywhere. AD, Exchange, and SQL server are must haves (where pretty much the world runs on those platforms, with very few exceptions.) Just because MS is as critical to the data center as the CRAC and PDU, they will be around.

Apple? They have a ton of cash, and if pressed, can expand into any market. Already, CarPlay is so important, that it is taking the auto market by storm where car makers either apply to Apple for a license, or apply to the local government for a bailout if they don't have it. Apple always can throw a few billions, enter the enterprise with a bang, either directly, or with a subsidiary. If they make a directory service as scalable as AD, companies will be tripping over each other to adopt it.

IBM? They are betting a lot on OpenStack. OpenStack advancing by leaps and bounds, but is not ready for primetime. Basic stuff like fault tolerance that has been baked into VMWare for ages, but still isn't present in a usable form for production critical use. Plus, with HP running away from the public cloud foray, it may or may not be a profitable endeavor, especially when fighting against Amazon's tried-and-true services.

Facebook? They replaced E-mail, scheduling, messaging, websites, forums, and many other items. Some sites even rely on them for authentication. They are not going anywhere, as there is nothing out there that can do what they do.

VMWare? They will still be around. Even now, nothing even comes close to their offering for polish and usability in the enterprise. Hyper-V is nipping at their heels, but definitely still behind.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is turning it around under Satya Nadella.

Yup, turning it toward the grave.

Between Windoze 8, Winblows 10, and Windows Phone, M$ is really doing great things. NOT!

I think it will be a close race betwen M$ and Facebook as to which one dies first.

We have on Slashdot for many many years proclaimed with certainty that Microsoft is dying. I guess many businesses would hope to be dying this way..

Re:Facebook is already declining

[spire3661]

I LOVED my Palm Pre Plus. It took YEARS for Google and Apple to catch up to the card system WebOS used. It felt great in your hand and had a unique shape that you didnt hate. I used it proudly for a long time. Its a damn shame it all fizzled out. (yes i know WebOS lives on)

Re:Facebook is already declining

[deiksac]

only that yahoo and aol are not really the best examples as neither of them had a strong global presence, both cases had a majority of american user

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems oversimplified. The only real measure is traffic (and acceleration thereof), and Yahoo had plenty. I'm not sure I particularly wanted Google but some time in my teens made the switch for reasons that had nothing to do with algorithms. People don't really want most new tech until they're marketed heavily, and free to use.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[microTodd]

As a "place where people are on the internet" it's not bad

I think this is where you hit it on the head, at least from a business perspective. Now I know there's a lot of Facebook haters ("You'll never catch ME on there!"). And hey, good for you. Seriously. But the bald truth right now is that facebook has like a billion users, so if you're in any sort of consumer-facing sector, if you're not leveraging Facebook in some way you're really missing the boat.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Falos]

#unfortunatetruths

[Like] [Follow] [Share] [About] [Press Kit] [Refer A Friend] [Newsletter] [Get the mobile app!]

Re:Facebook is already declining

[interval1066]

Yeah, have to agree, to a point. The only consumer penetration they have appears to be windows, zune failed, their tablets aren't exactly on fire, their phones are on life support. But their business facing products are probably more or less indispensable. I mean, I know their market share is being eaten away a little, but I can't count the number of times I've heard managers say that they aren't looking to gut their digital infrastructure any time soon for any OSS options, and they usually laugh when you mention Apple, so, I dunno. Maybe they'll be able to get Surface or some variation of it to catch consumer fire.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[interval1066]

I loved my Palm V. I found graffiti very usable. I would love to have had the opportunity to try out the Palm smart phone OS they started shipping a few years ago with those two models, but by the time they started shipping, they cancelled the effort, or whatever. Wasn't able to get my hands on one.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[interval1066]

I rather like google+, but of course I'm the minority. As usual.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Anonymous Coward]

X-box has consumer penetration as well. Solid and relatively close 2nd-place, and currently turning a profit (yes, you can bicker over lifetime profits, but they aren't going to get those profits back by cancelling a now-profitable xbox today).

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Your.Master]

People may not have loved AOL, but they loved Yahoo. They really did. There were Alta-Vista holdouts, dogpile holdouts, etc..

Then Google came along and just got better results at the time (remember, not only has Google and its competitors improved, but the actual content of the web has also changed drastically).

Re:Facebook is already declining

[0100010001010011]

if you're not leveraging Facebook in some way you're really missing the boat.

I gave up using Facebook as a social network and am starting to use it like 'normal people'. I moved to Snapchat for my 'social network' to keep up with family and friends. But when I need to call out a company I'll do it on Facebook and Twitter. Nothing gets PR reps moving faster than a bad experience waiting to go viral.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car bent over backwards on and after Facebook after ignoring e-mails and phone calls.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Anonymous Coward]

Leveraging core business?

#downwitholdspeak

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Grishnakh]

You'll have to explain the bit about men interested in sleeping with middle-aged housewives. Facebook isn't a dating site, so the only way I can see that working out is if the man is already "friends" with these housewives and talks them into an affair. That's not much different than people sleeping around with their neighbors or people they work with or go to church with: people they already know. Maybe I'm missing something, but if you're looking for someone to have an affair with, FB seems like the last place to go.

The other thing I see FB being popular for (besides people posting pics of their grandkids) is for right-wingers to repost their crazy shit they found on right-wing websites about FEMA concentration camps and the like.

As for its survival, unfortunately I don't see how even the complete loss of under-25 people would hurt them much. All those middle-age right-wing nuts (who comprise 25-50% of the US population) aren't going to give up on it for at least a few decades, and are also prime fodder for advertisers.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook isn't a dating site, so the only way I can see that working out is if the man is already "friends" with these housewives and talks them into an affair.

Ah, you've never joined a group on Facebook have you? I'm going to guess your use and experience with FB is still quite limited.

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Toshito]

and other tech companies have folded because they myopically assumed that whatever thing they'd done to make their name would continue to bring in revenue

*cough cough* GoPro :-)

Re:Facebook is already declining

[Grishnakh]

No, I actively avoid it. What groups are you talking about?

Re:Facebook is already declining

[toddestan]

Do people actually want Facebook? I can't say I know anyone who really likes Facebook. I know lots of people who just seem to bitch about it. Blah blah timeline blah blah blah. It's just something the people seem to tolerate because that's where all of their friends are at. It's true there have been some pretty high-profile attempts (and failures) to dislodge Facebook from it's throne, but I wouldn't say that's because people wanted Facebook - it's just that the other services really weren't compelling enough to get a critical mass to switch over.

Buy disruption

[plopez]

This is the age old pattern used by established monopolies or oligopolies. See the purchase of Lyft, investment in Uber, the purchase of Foxpro, how the oil and gas industry purchases wildcat operators as just a few examples. If you have a large amount of cash and are too large to innovate, buy the innovation before someone else does and threatens your business.

Re:Buy disruption

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I was thinking about the story post the other day about Clinton alluding to these companies' acquiescence to government demands on compromising the encryption these companies make available to users. (Her statement at the time smacked of such unbearable condescendence. The whole mentality that the administration (any of them) has such a right to any such power is truly stupefying.) Does that make these companies semi-governmental now? Will the government provide protections in the vein of "too big to fail" banks? Make sure that the companies remain dominant in their fields and thus ensure ease for the government when it wants to eavesdrop on the citizenry.

Of course, if the government can compel these corp's to follow the government's lead, then I suppose that the government can do that to smaller companies. What changed at those "big 5" companies that they decided to play ball with the government on encryption?

I suppose you can mark 2016 as the year that any shred of democracy was eliminated. You 2nd amendment folks who think that liberty is safe because you still have guns are fooling yourselves. Freedom is gone.

captcha:thatch

Re:Buy disruption

[Anonymous Coward]

While historically it has not been uncommon for slaveowners to arm selected slaves as overseers, the USA is on track to be the first country in history where all slaves had the option to be armed and yet chose to remain slaves.

Because they thought that owning guns was the same thing as being free.

Re:Buy disruption

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like they bought yo mama and then you came out of nowhere

Nerver try to predict the future

[NotDrWho]

20 years ago, only two of those five companies even existed. And if you had asked the prognosticators back then who would still be on top 20 years later, you would have gotten a very different list.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Dins]

Yep. TFS even says, "But for much of the last half-decade, most of these five giants have enjoyed a remarkable reprieve from the boogeymen in the garage." Half decade. 5 years. So the entire point is that because something has stayed somewhat stable for 5 years that's probably going to continue into the foreseeable future. In the tech industry, no less...

TFA is horribly near sighted.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[ranton]

This all depends on what their actual prediction is, which I don't think is very clear even after reading the article. All it really says is they will remain major players in the industry for the foreseeable future. It is so broad, unspecific (and useless) that it will almost certainly come to pass.

Very few companies of their size just go away. At worst one of them could be bought out by a rival, but I doubt their brand name would ever be discarded. If the prediction was that all 5 of these companies would be among the 10 most influential tech companies 20 years from now, that would be the kind of silly prediction you are referring to. But will some people still be employed by all five of these companies in 20 years? That prediction will probably pan out.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[gstoddart]

No, because in part patent consolidation means the boogeymen in the garage have no hope in hell.

Come up with new and disruptive technologies? We'll buy you out as soon as you're on the radar.

Won't sell because you have visions of being the next big thing? We'll ensure our lawyers make it so you'll never see the light of day.

The tech industry has fundamentally changed. There IS no way a startup could do something which isn't covered under patents and other agreements between the big companies who have all mutually agreed to licensing deals.

Time was people started companies because they had a cool idea for a product, and wanted to start companies.

These days it's give the illusion of a cool product long enough to cash out and run like hell.

It's stable because it's becoming increasingly impossible to get into the game.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Junta]

Yeah, 20 years ago, Microsoft is the only one of those that would have made such a list. AOL, IBM, Yahoo, and Netscape probably would have rounded out a 'top 5' list in that timeline,

10 Years ago, Google is the only one I'd unambiguously considered to have joined the list. . If I had to make a top 5 list for that time frame, Microsoft, Google, Myspace would be firmly in it. Amazon as a retailer was of course a slam dunk, but less so as a 'tech' company, so I'm not sure. Apple is tricky, since as a music player platform they clearly had ascended as a dominant player (and therefore had enough leverage to effect good change for DRM in music), but the real overwhelming Apple presence happened with the iPhone.

At each time, it was difficult to *imagine* how those players could be unseated given how much they dominated that particular time. MS is the only one that really held on to their position. Netscape, Yahoo, AOL, and Myspace being gone and/or essentially defunct is something no one would have believed in their respective heights. Most of those enjoyed a similar 5 year period where no apparent competitor was coming for them, so the metric of 'it's been 5 years and still going strong' isn't very good by itself.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[siphonophore]

Right?! There's a very "end of history" vibe in this piece. Remember when we almost had all of physics understood in 1910? Remember when desktop computing finally got good in 2005? Remember when the perfect sailing ship came out in 1840?

Writing a piece that essentially says "ah, the future is finally clear to me" is a sure-fire way to get a humbling dose of revolutionary disruption.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[unixisc]

20 years ago, only two of those five companies even existed. And if you had asked the prognosticators back then who would still be on top 20 years later, you would have gotten a very different list.

Only change I'd make from the top list - Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft - is that I'd replace Microsoft w/ Twitter. Other than that, I think they are on target.

I do agree w/ you, however. 20 years ago, who would have predicted that Sun, SGI, DEC and Compaq wouldn't be around, that IBM would be a IT outsourcing company and that any version of Unix/Linux would be so popular?

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. TFS even says, "But for much of the last half-decade, most of these five giants have enjoyed a remarkable reprieve from the boogeymen in the garage." Half decade. 5 years. So the entire point is that because something has stayed somewhat stable for 5 years that's probably going to continue into the foreseeable future. In the tech industry, no less...

TFA is horribly near sighted.

Speaking of nearsighted, how well does your eyesight really need to be when the defense of Too Big To Fail is now a legal precedent funded by taxpayers?

Let's not be ignorant in understanding how the rules have fucking changed. 5 years or 50, the concept of a monopoly being forced to shutter its doors has become a punch line.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon as a retailer was of course a slam dunk, but less so as a 'tech' company
 
Amazon may be known for selling physical goods but you'd be a fool to think that they aren't as much a tech company as any you listed. Amazon is a prime example of a world class company who's product may keep the cash flowing but it's not the reason that they're successful.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[phantomfive]

but the real overwhelming Apple presence happened with the iPhone.

And even then, it's not hard to imagine Android overtaking them and Apple mostly losing the market.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's stable because it's becoming increasingly impossible to get into the game.

What made it impossible was that Microsoft was able to stomp on any threats. It could do so with vaporware, with buying the company, by using contracts and 'loyalty discounts', or by simply copying the idea (or the code) and implementing their own version.

Examples are:
Netscape - the 'free' IE strangled revenue (and killed Spyglass)
BeOS - extra discount if the OEM didn't install it.
Novell - 100 users could access a 10 user Novell server using MS Advanced server killing Novell's revenue.
Symbian/Maemo/Meego - MS paid a $billion a year to Nokia to kill those.
WebOS - MS had WOA (Windows on ARM) so HP would lose all 'loyalty' discounts if they used a competing OS.
Linux on Netbooks - OEMs would lose discounts on all products if they didn't put XP instead of Linux.
DR-DOS - AARD code in Windows killed that.

The result of this is that the only software able to survive was FOSS. It couldn't be bought by MS, it couldn't have its distribution channel killed.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[gstoddart]

The result of this is that the only software able to survive was FOSS. It couldn't be bought by MS, it couldn't have its distribution channel killed.

No, but it could be vaguely threatened as being in violation of a bunch of patents Microsoft refused to name, thereby insinuating that it might not be safe to use.

There were a bunch of years they did that.

Oh, and there's that whole secure boot/UEFI thingy in which they can try to deny you access to the hardware.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Junta]

In that timeframe (10 years ago), Amazon didn't offer an 'platform' for tech. The subject matter is tech companies entrenched by owning a platform. They may have had a lot of tech internally (clearly they did to enable creation of the platform), but they had not yet moved to build a business out of that. If you said 5 years ago, that's different, but 10 years ago they had not even announced anything EC2 like yet.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Anonymous Coward]

This is also true in every industry. Pick one and you'll find just one or two major players that have dominated the game a long time. It doesn't make them evil by default. It also doesn't mean an innovative idea in an industry can't shake it up. (See Tesla Auto) Changes outside of the industry's control can also shake it up. Ask the energy companies how their fiscal year is shaping up after a decade of ridiculous profit.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[PopeRatzo]

20 years ago, only two of those five companies even existed.

I especially object to the term, "foreseeable future". What does that even mean? 20 years? 5? Maybe six months?

I remember when IBM and Sun were the tech companies that were going to be on top for the foreseeable future.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Junta]

It's not hard to imagine any of those companies fates changing dramatically. It's just that most people won't believe such scenarios plausible. That's the point of my skepticism, the article proclaims them as the unstoppable entrenched 5, but history has shown a lot of unstoppable entrenched companies getting surprisingly upended, at least in the tech field, where the barrier to entry isn't as high as most people believe. It takes surprisingly little for a competitor to start seeing runaway success and very little time and money required to keep up with scale (in relative terms, compared to something like a major energy company or the like).

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[doom]

The advertising apocalypse arrives, the value of internet ads drops to zero, and google's main revenue stream evaporates. Google goes on life support living off it's cash reserve for years while it goes casting around for a great new idea that never quite comes off. (See, Yahoo, SGI, etc.)

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[gstoddart]

Well, the reality is it's a short term way to sound like you know something you don't, with no real long term consequences. In 10 years think anybody is going to lose sleep over how wrong he was? Or even remember?

I long ago decided that when I hear pundits, prognosticators, and futurists telling me what the future will hold that they're mostly full of shit.

They generally fall into the category of people who have something to gain by that particular prediction coming true ... or people making predictions because they get paid to but who otherwise don't know any better than you or I.

The guy who tells you what the future is because he'll profit from it can be ignored, because he's got too much on the line to be credible. The guy who tells you what the future will be because he's paid to, well he can be ignored because he's too full of shit to be credible.

Ignore the shills, because they stand to profit from what they tell you -- think Gartner reports about any technology, or bond ratings agencies, or stock brokers pushing something specific. They're all getting paid to push a product. Their opinion is for sale.

And then ignore the yahoos telling you the future because they need to fill a column or otherwise convince people they know something.

I don't think there's much risk of a "humbling dose" of anything here. More like yet another prediction by yet another tech guy which carries all the weight of a fart in a hurricane.

I just don't listen to such things any more. I sure as hell don't believe them. And I most especially try not to validate them by pretending they're credible.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Junta]

Yes, we can write up a plausible scenario to any of them. AWS, google compute engine, and azure are one catastrophic hypervisor compromise from a mass loss of confidence. Apple and Facebook are one fad away from being rendered history (regardless of the technical strength of their offerings, consumers are really fickle). Like you say, a sudden loss of confidence in internet advertising would crush Google's main stream. Also any company is generally a couple of board members away from being driven into the ground by bad leadership. Similarly tech companies generally have a core of less than a dozen people that the company may not even realize are critical to their core business that could get poached away and collapse their whole ability to compete.

These are 5 companies that right *now* people can't imagine losing their iron grip. Just like over tech industry history we've seen different sets of a few companies that people couldn't imagine losing their grip. The vast majority of those darlings of the industry have folded.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[R3d M3rcury]

Yeah, 20 years ago, Microsoft is the only one of those that would have made such a list. AOL, IBM, Yahoo, and Netscape probably would have rounded out a 'top 5' list in that timeline[...]

Wow, I feel old. I remember when Ashton-Tate (dBase), Satellite Software (WordPerfect), and Lotus Corporation (Lotus 1-2-3) were unassailable.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Anonymous Coward]

I learned this the hard way. If you have a cool product, a VC will not look at you until you find a way for -them- to cash out at any time. Even with that, you will wind up with your stuff stolen, and made in some obscure factory overseas, once enough details are gotten by the VC.

I started a company to work on a tape silo that would use raw 2.5" and 3.5" drives. This way, cartridges wouldn't be needed, but the drives could be moved to shock-mounted containers for removal. The magic was the fact that to the front end, the silo could appear as drive volumes, a VTL, or any number of different things.

Well, I ran around, found that the guys in China were the best at making it cheap... however for making it -good-, pretty much everywhere else was a toss-up. So, I was going to use some local factories.

Well, the VCs didn't care about having it work properly out of the box. They wanted the cheapest stuff from China, tech support from the cheapest country that could elucidate syllables sounding like English, and would use EULAs to mitigate sue-damage. The firmware was going to be coded by a reliable design firm, with former NASA engineers, in assembly, on QNX (a realtime OS). Instead, it was going to be done in Java (because experience in that is cheap), and overseas.

I walked away from the project. Nobody would buy what the VCs wanted to turn my product into.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[spire3661]

Amazon launched July 5, 1994.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[spire3661]

EC2 is 9 years old... While you are technically correct, it seems many in this thread are forgetting how much actual time has passed and how rapidly things have changed.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Junta]

Yes, the mid 80s.... It would be sort of amusing to see this same article written about the 'tech' industry written assuming the perspective of the middle of each decade for the last 50 years. It's really amazing how at any give time people feel like 'ok, *now* things are settled and here are the players and the components are known'.

Probably a good rule of thumb is if someone feels like it's interesting enough to actually write an article about, it's probably not settled. Only when pretty much *everyone* considers some facet of the ecosystem to be terribly boring and thankless is it possibly settled (and even then....).

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[spire3661]

Twitter's only accomplishment is gathering a shit ton of users they cant monetize. They have nothing else. I do not see them being an independent company for very long. Twitter as a concept is cool, Twitter as a business is a joke. They are the Yahoo.com of the tech group.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Junta]

But that's the whole point, things have rapidly changed and the article feels like this rapid change has led these companies to unstoppable status. History shows that a *lot* of companies have risen, seem stable long enough for people to pronounce them the unambiguous victor for eternity, just to turn around and crash and burn.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Karlt1]

Apple -- the only computer maker that survived making computers that were not running MS operating systems -- been making non compatible computers for 30 years. Now could any one company duplicate Apple's combination of hardware, logistics, supply chain, retail stores, etc.?

Microsoft - has been the number one operating system vendor for at least 20 years. MS has survived many would be long dead competitors.

Amazon - has such a massive infrastructure that it would be hard to topple, They've been around basically since the dawn of the commercial Internet.

Google - Nothing they have done outside of advertising has been a real revenue generator. The price per click is already going down and moving toward mobile. Most Android phones that are sold worldwide are not using Google services or advertising.

Facebook is in the most danger. Once old people started using it, It lost the cool factor. But as long as Facebook the company keeps buying potential competitors, it should be around for awhile.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Anonymous Coward]

(and therefore had enough leverage to effect good change for DRM in music),

Amazon launched full catalog DRM free music before Apple, at same price Apple was selling DRM music. Apple initially tried to offer a very limited catalog of DRM-free music as a higher priced offering in parallell with their eco system locked offering, using DRM-free bundled with higher bitrate as a reason to increase prices.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Karlt1]

By 1995. IBM was already smelling funny. The writing was already on the wall for OS/2 and most people weren't buying IBM.

Twitter is struggling and has nowhere near the dominance in it's field that MS still has.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[squiggleslash]

Trying to figure out who would have been on the list in 1996: Microsoft, Yahoo, Dell, Compaq, and Nokia? (Genuine attempt to think back then - today, Microsoft and Dell are still independent and strong, Yahoo is in danger but is still around, and Compaq and Nokia no longer exist in the same form as they once did.)

Apple wouldn't have been on anyone's list, not even a die-hand Apple enthusiast's. At that point it really was "beleaguered"...

Ten years ago: Microsoft, Google, Apple, Blackberry, and Dell?

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Dins]

Let's not be ignorant in understanding how the rules have fucking changed.

That's just it, though. Things have changed. Things can change again. Not saying it'll be an easy change, and who the hell knows what the end result will look like. But proclaiming the current "top 5" tech companies to be secure in their leadership IS nearsighted.

10 years ago the big 3 US car companies were GM, Ford, and Chrysler. Now Tesla, Google, or Apple appear ready to eat their lunch.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Anonymous Coward]

The result of this is that the only software able to survive was FOSS. It couldn't be bought by MS, it couldn't have its distribution channel killed.

No, but FOSS can be co-opted, a la Android and OS X. Don't think for a second people haven't noticed and understood the implication. If MS needs to, it still has enough engineering talent to do so.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[SoftwareArtist]

Furthermore, 20 years ago there was just one company (Microsoft) that was totally dominating the industry. It was hard to see how they could ever fall, or any other company could rise to challenge them. Yet look how much things have changed! Now they're only one of five, and probably not even the most powerful of the five.

Things do change, and sometimes much faster than we expect. What if Apple loses their shine and people start saying, "This iPhone is just an overpriced Android lookalike?" They could fall very quickly. What if Microsoft continues to have minimal success in mobile, and PCs continue to decline? They could quickly become less and less relevant. What if Google loses their dominant position in advertising, which pays the bills for everything else? And so on.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Anonymous Coward]

Flying internet balloons and self-driving golf carts don't count?

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Anonymous Coward]

i am not sure about this doomsday prediction; look at Uber - at ~ 60B in valuation, it's the next facebook. And I'm sure we have a couple lurking about. I remember the same stories when Yahoo bought up anything in sight and google came out of nowhere to clean their clocks! it's going to happen again and we'll see this in the next 5 years or so if trends are anything to go by

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Grishnakh]

The result of this is that the only software able to survive was FOSS. It couldn't be bought by MS, it couldn't have its distribution channel killed.

Not exactly: you're forgetting about Oracle, and some other big-iron databases like DB2. Oracle competes directly against SQL Server, but MS never managed to hurt them too badly.

I think you're also forgetting about Blackberry. It isn't doing so hot now, but that's not Microsoft's fault, it's because of Apple and Google.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Anonymous Coward]

The result of this is that the only software able to survive was FOSS. It couldn't be bought by MS, it couldn't have its distribution channel killed.

But FOSS is very vulnerable to infiltration like they had Elop do to Nokia

So what happened to Gnome3 and systemd?

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[Plumpaquatsch]

What if Apple loses their shine and people start saying, "This iPhone is just an overpriced Android lookalike?" They could fall very quickly.

If Apple suddenly didn't sell a single iPhone anymore, they'd still have as much revenue as Microsoft has.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[turbidostato]

"20 years ago, only two of those five companies even existed."

20 years ago, the computers-and-internet thingie was still inventing itself.

Now, it comes more and more towards maturity. Look at History, this is no news nor it's the first time it happens. Look at what happened then and you'll have quite a certainty about what's going to happen now.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[turbidostato]

"They may have had a lot of tech internally (clearly they did to enable creation of the platform), but they had not yet moved to build a business out of that."

Or maybe yes. I remember one of the first hiring announces from Bezos (not that I saw it at the time, but I've seen it later). It went more or less like this "I want the best Unix coders; I'll pay the best wages in compensation". It's my bet that from very early on it was in Bezo's brains that he wanted the best at any cost and probably already thought of selling out the "overcapacity". The overcapacity ended up being AWS but it might have been services or something like that.

Back when Amazon the shop was starting, it was not the only one all around the world. Most of them took their MBA lessons and said to themselves "we need to focus on our core competencies -i.e. selling books, not technology: we'll outsource that" while Bezos understood the technology's critical value for his vision and made it a strategic core. Now, where is it Amazon and where are all those wannabe competitors?

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[turbidostato]

"AWS, google compute engine, and azure are one catastrophic hypervisor compromise from a mass loss of confidence."

No, they aren't. If recent History (past 20 to 30 years) has taught us anything is that there's neither big enough shit nor big enough fan for joe sixpack to loss confidence in big players -in IT or anywhere.

Facebook and Google are in bigger danger. It's obvious Google knows it, that's why they are trying to find their next cash cow (self-driving cars? IoT?...) but Facebook acts like completely ignoring how easy can their "empire" fall.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[ath1901]

I was surprised to see Apple on the list. Most of their revenue (69%) comes from one product single line, the iPhone. People change phones every couple of years and if it goes out of fashion, the fall of Apple could be very quick. They would probably lose a lot on all their other sales as well since the main point of buying a Mac/iPad is the common ecosystem/vendor lock-in. Apple has basically put all eggs in one basket and if it breaks, they could be of no importance in no time.

Really, the more I think of it, Apple has nothing that could not be replaced in a couple of years. Compare that to Microsoft. People are still buying their stuff despite Microsofts best efforts at stopping them (W8 and 10, ribbons etc).

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[toddestan]

Apple is a company that makes smartphones and mobile devices. Their computer business is pretty much irrelevant, and at this point is probably gets most of its sales by the need having to use OS X to develop for iOS. As a mobile device company, their situation is a bit more tenuous. People switch phones every couple of years, so all it would take is to release a couple duds in a row to make iOS a has-been. Their only saving grace would be that it would take some time to burn through that massive pile of cash they have.

Microsoft is another interesting case. I don't see them going anywhere in corporate environments in the short or medium term thanks to AD, SQL Server, Exchange, MS Office, Visual Studio and so on. Granted, if they keep on screwing up their Windows releases, they'll lose this market but they are too entrenched for this to happen in the short or even medium term. On the consumer side, their future is a bit more cloudy. If people switch away from Windows (or just stop using PCs altogether) then they could turn into that company that makes the stuff you use at work. Oh and they make the XBox too. Of course, if they get their act together in the mobile side they could some real marketshare pretty quickly.

Amazon - It seems that they really only compete on price. Granted, with their infrastructure they are going to be hard to topple, but are people really loyal Amazon customers?

Google - Their problem is that it's really easy to switch away from many of their products and services (search, Chrome, and to a lesser extent Android). About the only place they've managed to entrench themselves well is with Gmail. I don't see a lot of money in click-through ads either, but they do have their analytics.

Facebook - I agree they are in the most danger. They already have a bit of an "uncool" aura to them, and seem to be starting their decline. If Myspace is any indication, once a critical mass moves away, their decline could be sudden and swift.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[toddestan]

Microsoft is way too entrenched on the corporate side to go anywhere anytime soon. In 20 years there's still going to be companies running Windows desktops, SQL Server, Windows Server, AD, Exchange, TFS, etc. In may very well be on the way out by then, but businesses move too slowly for Microsoft to be gone in 20 years. I could easily believe Microsoft could be dead on the consumer side by then though.

On the other hand, Twitter could easily be gone in half that time.

Re:Nerver try to predict the future

[toddestan]

1996 is really before the Internet really hit it big. I'd switch out Yahoo for AOL or maybe Compuserve. Same thing withc Cell phones. Nokia was a big company then (they used to make all kinds of things other than phones) but in 1996 I don't think many in the US knew who they were. Could go with Motorola, or perhaps a company like US Robotics or 3com. Another safe bet, then, 10 years ago, and today would be Intel.

Re: Nerver try to predict the future

[Karlt1]

Apple makes enough just on Macs to rank at least 200 in the Fortune 500. It's Mac division is more profitable than any other PC manufacturer.

In the U.S., Apple has a 12% market share. That many people are not developing for iOS.

Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they will stay relevant just like sun and ibm, oh wait

Re:Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM may not be doing great but don't fool yourself, IBM is still bigger than Amazon and they're much more embedded in the infrastructure that allows entities like Google, Facebook and Amazon to exist. They're far from going anywhere anytime soon.

Re:Nah

[Z00L00K]

And the only reason IBM is alive today is that they have the banks and large corporations in their hands through their Cobol systems. Those systems are expensive as heck to run and when the large corporations and banks starts to realize that they are overcharged then they will migrate to other solutions.

Banks are probably going to be the last hold-out for IBM Cobol systems because few people, if anybody, understand the whole system that the banks uses today.

Re:Nah

[RabidReindeer]

IBM may not be doing great but don't fool yourself, IBM is still bigger than Amazon and they're much more embedded in the infrastructure that allows entities like Google, Facebook and Amazon to exist. They're far from going anywhere anytime soon.

IBM may not be doing great but don't fool yourself, IBM is still bigger than Amazon and they're much more embedded in the infrastructure that allows entities like Google, Facebook and Amazon to exist. They're far from going anywhere anytime soon.

So they think.

IBM got to be so big, not because it was a mainframe company - there were half-a-dozen mainframe companies at one time. They got to be so big because they were a service company. Any incompetent idiot was assured a well-paid career as a "DP" manager (IT wasn't yet the term) simply by doing exactly what the IBM salesmen told him to do.

They threw that all away when they offshored most of the support jobs and gutted the domestic teams. Even back circa 1994 I could get better support for Linux (with no corporate owner) than I could for OS/2 with Big Blue allegedly backing it up. On the rare occasions when we did get a competent OS/2 support rep, they'd be gone within 6 months.

I worked at a major IT shop that was totally IBM-free and never missed it. They had Sun, Compaq, Microsoft, Oracle, and even a SCO machine or 3, but no in-house mainframe despite processing millions of transactions per day. No overpriced IBM design tools, no WebSphere, no IBM. Period.

I think there's a lot more shops like that and odds are that as new companies begin expanding that IBM will shrink for lack of business. Unless they stop trying to be a cross between Wal-Mart and Quickee-Mart. IBM's biggest customer base are the old-line businesses who generally started with them when they were using punched-card equipment. IBM simply doesn't have anything to offer to anyone who's not entrenched in that culture.

Re:Nah

[Hognoxious]

Perhaps if you actually thought about what you were saying you wouldn't contradict yourself so much?

I suspect that if it was feasible and cost-effective to migrate they'd have done it 17 years ago.

Re:Nah

[KGIII]

In an earlier life, I can confess to personally being responsible for giving Sun MILLIONS of dollars over time. Truly, millions. (We even had their workstations for a long while.) Oracle may own them but I *hope* they're gonna be around for a while to come.

Re: Nah

[cyber-vandal]

IBM have been overcharging for decades but these organisations show no signs of migrating because the cost and risk of rewriting these systems is vast compared to the cost of renting mainframes every year.

Re: Nah

[Hognoxious]

By what definition, then, are they overcharging?

Why no article about the new planet yet?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Why no article about the new planet yet?
http://www.sciencemag.org/news...

Christ, this is SlashDot. Someone cut through this shit and post the article of the year, please!

Re:Why no article about the new planet yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is boycotting astronomy stories until the blatant sexual harassment and oppression of women in the astronomy field has been properly addressed.

Re:Why no article about the new planet yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Slashdot is waiting for Ethan to plagiarize the news and release a new blogspam post of his own.

Re: Why no article about the new planet yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

That shit stain Ethan has to put together a Forbes 'article' before it can appear here.

No doubt whatsoever this will be the next startswithabang post.

Re:Why no article about the new planet yet?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Finally. It's posted now: http://science.slashdot.org/st...

Re:Why no article about the new planet yet?

[Z00L00K]

You were in too much of a hurry, the article is up now. Just half an hour after you posted.

âoeHere to stayâ

[farlukar]

Since when has Amazon actually been making a profit, then?

Re:âoeHere to stayâ

[Anonymous Coward]

Q3 2015

Not Facebook

[petes_PoV]

All the long-term successful technology companies have had to re-invent themselves to adapt to changes in the way people and technology interact. They diversify, experiment and can fail without it being fatal.

So far Facebook, which has only been going for 12 years (yes, I know that for all the NOOBS, that seems like forever - and considering their age, it probably is) and has no history of changing itself to adapt to radically different challenges. It might be able to, but until it has gone through a couple of metamorphoses, I wouldn't put any money on it's ability to change and survive.

Re: Not Facebook

[AvitarX]

Facebook treated mobile like a joke, completely ignored it, then realized they were wrong.

Very quickly they became one of the companies best at monetizing mobile. They've also found a pretty good way to sell add space that isn't too annoying.

They've gone fromna way to find friends in college to an address book of all of the people in your life with stupid news, jokes, and photos mixed in.

I actually think Facebook is fairly adaptable, and actively trying to stay ahead of the competition.

Stupid article is stupid

[the_skywise]

Yahoo will be king of search engines forevah!

AOL is indestructible!

Prodigy? Silicon Graphics? Sun?

Naaah, naah... These "frightful five" companies will be with us "forevah!"

Re:Stupid article is stupid

[peon_a-z,A-Z,0-9$_ !]

...$USER tips a piece at the NY Times about the most entrenched companies in technology: ...IBM, Compaq, HP...

Re:Stupid article is stupid

[MMC Monster]

Don't forget AT&T and IBM.

How can you have a Frightful Five without them?

And IBM will be with us until cockroaches rule the Earth.

Re:Stupid article is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Altavista would always be the king of search engines....

Re:Stupid article is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

And IBM will be with us until cockroaches rule the Earth.

I believe you seriously underestimate IBM's ability to market to cockroaches.

Its about how fast they can move

[Anonymous Coward]

The big 5 can move markets at speeds a smaller shop can only dream of. When your new product is software, not overly complex, and does one specific thing very well, the big shops can replace that product with there own offering very quickly. See Dropbox vs online storage lockers (and Amazon S3).

The big firms are also looking for those small emerging products to copy, acquire, or watch, as they have the money.

Re:Its about how fast they can move

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me? Seriously? What market exactly has MS 'moved at speeds a smaller shop can't'...MS isn't 'moving any markets', though it certainly is still controlling alot some of them & making money or dabbling in others. MS hasn't moved any 'entertainment markets' very far at all based on its controller of the PC OS or 1/2 share (or there abouts) in the 'gaming console/entertainment industry'...it certainly wasn't MS that pushed & helped develop the 'on-demand entertainment' market...that was Netflix. Where exactly is MS embedded & developing their own entertainment content other than a few games? Decent games I'm sure but hardly a major market. MS has been a 'me too', johnny come lately in almost all the major techology markets & changes over the past 30 years that I can think of...seriously what innovation EXACTLY has MS brought us that actually 'changed or moved a market', if you say the PC OS or Windows interface all you demonstrate is you are young & don't know the history of those developments.

Not to pick on MS but I ask the same questions about Facebook but even more so...besides social media what EXACTLY has FB done or is doing to 'change the market at a speed a smaller shop can only ream of? I don't see alot of changes in the market being driven by FB or innovation being provided by FB that's for sure.

How do you expect your example of Dropbox to prove your point? Is Dropbox the 'big company replacing a small company' in your example or vice-versa...if its the former than WTF?...Dropbox is NOT part of the 'big 5' mentioned so can't be used at all as a 'big 5 influential company' and if the latter (their the small company) they completely destroy your point as Dropbox is an example of a 'small company' revolutionizing on-line storage & actually disrupting the market versus the 'big 5'...Now, don't get me wrong, I've never been a big user of Dropbox (I figure that's just 1 step too far in allowing my information to go outside my control) so I don't use it alot but I haven't heard about Dropbox being replaced or hurting or going away any time soon....For Dropbox to be a relevant example they'd have to be dying quickly due to pressure from say Google Drive...I don't see that happening any time soon, certainly not at a 'speed that a smaller shp can only dream of'...

The fact is that big, established companies move VERY slowly & are very risk adverse....Google for example is working on self-driving cars but nobody expects those to be a reality in a year or even two (for commercial, everyday use that is). Self-driving cars are effectively still a 'toy'/research device, it keeps Google in the news but isn't changing markets drastically (versus Uber, Lyft etc...o look another crop of 'innovative small companies that isn't one of the chosen 'big 5').

The fact is I wasn't going to take issue with the summary/article's premise but now I have to...I don't know anyone in technology that thinks that a company actually IN technology is 'vulnerable to some surprise attack'...in fact that is not necessarily the premise at all but rather that companies in industries still working in a 'traditional' way are the ones drastically vulnerable to innovation & replacement overnight...Once they are replaced by a fundamental technological innovation it is usually (though not always) the 'first mover' that wins or should I say the 'first mover with a sufficiently compelling product using the new innovative ideas'...

Re:Its about how fast they can move

[Locke2005]

Microsoft isn't moving entertainment markets? Hey, the Zune is going to take over the music industry any day real soon now!

Re:Its about how fast they can move

[Locke2005]

Amazon seems to have the ability to move quickly. Microsoft can reinvent itself when it needs to. Of the big 5 mentioned, Apple now seem slowest to innovate and is falling behind, in my humble opinion.

Re:Its about how fast they can move

[Sperbels]

Zune is going to take over the music industry any day real soon now!

Or the paperweight industry. Mine is functioning perfectly in this regard. In fact, it holds papers down way even better than my Ipod. Apple still has a fight on its hands. Grab some popcorn guys, this is going to be good.

Re:Its about how fast they can move

[Karlt1]

How is Apple "falling behind" when it is the most profitable of the bunch and whose revenue and profit is still growing? Microsoft is adapting because they have to. Google on the other hand has been the least successful at adapting and moving into new markets successfully.

Android doesn't count as a success. It barely makes any money for Google and most Android phones being sold worldwide are not using Google services.

Automotive's Big 5

[Nidi62]

A 1940s article headline:

Are some of America's best car companies-Studebacker, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Packard-here to stay?

You can never predict what will be around a year or 2 from now, much less over the next 10, 20, 30 years.

Also, Car Analogy!

Re:Automotive's Big 5

[the_skywise]

Dude, Tucker automotive is gonna take them down!

Re:Automotive's Big 5

[Chris Mattern]

I would note that Oldsmobile and Pontiac were GM nameplates--the names may be gone, but GM's still here.

Re:Automotive's Big 5

[Anonymous Coward]

Pontiac was a brand, not a company. You can pretty much say the same for Oldsmobile. Ransom Olds should be better remembered by history but his cars had little to do with it. And Studebacker [sic] was never a real force in the industry either. They're more popular today than when they were being built.

If you're going to make a car analogy, know something about cars.

Re:Automotive's Big 5

[Chris Mattern]

Oldsmobile was picked up by GM in 1909 (which was the year GM was founded--GM started out with only Buick and Oldsmobile was their first major acquisition.) Pontiac was always a GM nameplate--GM brought out the first Pontiac in 1926. I think you're a little dismissive of Studebaker; while it's true their sales figures didn't match the Big Three, they did all right until the 1950s.

Re:Automotive's Big 5

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you have more sources for this than I do but my understanding is that Studebaker did ok during the war while working on contacts for the government and quickly declined when the defense contracts dried up.

Re:Automotive's Big 5

[toddestan]

They did pretty well up to the war with their car and truck business, and the defense contracts kept them afloat during the war. However, they just couldn't compete with the big three after the war. The yearly model changes in the 50's and 60's were brutal for the smaller manufacturers. It just cost too much to keep having to retool every year to keep up with the big players, and offering the same car unchanged for more than a couple of years was basically a kiss of death.

Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[HerculesMO]

I have friends who work and who have worked there.... the job climate is basically ridiculous. Lots of hours, the pay not as great as their neighbor in Seattle (Microsoft), the advancement not very good either. Not to mention, Amazon is basically falling down in the enterprise space. They have made a lot of gains with CIOs/CTOs who are infrastructure focused and have a mission to "cut costs," so they have companies like GE and the like moving over to use their IaaS, but their platform services are a joke.

Everything at AWS is rehashed open source that is made to fit into a 'cloud' world... nothing wrong with this of course, but most of the basis of their products never really was meant for humungously distributed systems. Microsoft on the other hand (love them or hate them), made a totally new stack for cloud and the development community is embracing it on the enterprise side. This is Amazon's game to lose, but given the way their storage is segregated, their platform is one-way (come to us, no migration path anywhere else!), and their costs are nothing to write home about (because everybody price matches the IaaS pricing now).... I dunno, it's not going to be great for them going into the future. Of course I could be wrong, but right now I think given their human resource problems, their platform issues, and their inability to focus on developers (since they cater more to the ITPro crowd with IaaS solutions), it doesn't look good long term for them.

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[jopsen]

Microsoft on the other hand (love them or hate them), made a totally new stack for cloud and the development community is embracing it on the enterprise side.

Having used them, I would say that have a lot of downtime. And their APIs are obscure...
Also their storage services don't scale beyond 500TB and some fixed amount of bandwidth and request rate.

But yes, up and coming IaaS companies like packet.net is making very interesting offers. Price/performance wise, and if these companies eventually do services like S3, SQS and dynamodb they will be in a really good position.

Unfortunately, I don't really see any open source dynamodb-like solution... Guaranteed request rate, per-request/capacity pricing and per-GB pricing is impossible to find. It's only Google, Microsoft and Amazon that does this. And their NoSQL services are so cheap it's hard to consider using anything else.

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I don't claim to see the future so you could very well be correct but that's not the impression I get from having hung out in Vegas at AWS:reInvent...the number of companies either working to build something on or for AWS & those looking to leverage it are huge...I work in the healthcare industry, a particular 'niche' that we 'own'...I wanted to investigate using AWS or Azure for something we were doing, given our status I thought that I'd get some human help fairly quickly to get me up to speed on using their platforms or what kind of 'business pricing' I might expect for our market etc...with AWS I got assigned an 'account manager' right away...I'm still waiting after MONTHS for MS to call me back....that doesn't surprise me, MS is MS after all & their arrogance knows no bounds.

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[mveloso]

Dunno, I've been a happy AWS user for years. Compared to everything out there they're the cheapest, best performing, most transparent, and easiest to use. I say that as someone who's getting abused by softlayer on a daily basis.

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[HerculesMO]

I was also at ReInvent but that's like saying that there's a lot of people excited about baking at this cupcake convention... it's not a surprise.

As for the account reps well... MS has always been great in the enterprise space in general, so not sure if it's a $ issue or your existing relationship with them, but for any EA holding customers, they are basically on call 24/7 for anything you need. Granted I don't work for them, so fuck if I know... but guess you know better than me :)

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[microTodd]

I guess you're modded up because you sound interesting, but really? I'm not trying to be insulting but do you know what you are talking about?

This article is a little old but AWS really is that far ahead of everyone else.

Plus, in terms of services and features, AWS is also ahead.

Now where Azure has benefit is if you're an MS shop and you want to just outsource your entire backoffice. But if you're developing....AWS has a lot more features than Azure, if you know what you're doing. No, you can't throw together a .NET wizard-based project, but if you're using an open source stack, or more of a LAMP-like MVC environment (python, rubyonrails, etc) then AWS throws so many tools for you to use (RDS, Dynamo, S3, etc) then its hard to see how you DON'T think AWS is a good environment for developers.

And what do you mean by "Platform Issues"?

And actually, all the enterprise developers I've worked with are looking more at AWS than Azure (not that I'm some sort of worldwide development expert or anything).

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[HerculesMO]

I am a happy AWS user as well, and have been for years. But they exist in the IaaS space (which is why you saying Softlayer is kind of apt), and their developer tooling pretty much sucks. I've found this out only over time, but they have a very narrow way of doing things for developers where MS seems to be giving a lot more options. For Lambda for example, you really only have a few ways of inputting a script, and it only goes against AWS resources. Azure WebJobs (much less sexy a name) is far more powerful with a lot more options for code than Lambda has.

AWS has a lot of options in terms of IaaS deployment, and you can customize a lot. But Azure meets most needs on the IaaS side (and even some moreso with things like resource manager which are far more elegant than CloudFormation) and blows them out of the water in the PaaS space. In terms of future development for my team, we are shifting from spending almost 100% AWS to migrating into Azure. I think operationally the costs will be lower and the barrier of entry is a lot faster and easier.

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[HerculesMO]

AWS has a lot more features than Azure? No, not really... if you want to talk about IaaS components, Azure matches them almost 1 for 1. There are things that AWS has like Kinesis, or OpsWorks that don't exist in Azure so I'll agree to a point, but there are things in Azure like Service Bus, Service Fabric, WebApps, etc that don't exist in AWS. It's a different set of features and if you are IaaS heavy, the nod is definitely in AWS' favor.

However when you think about operational overhead, the amount of time you have to spend 'managing' the platform, the cost is far higher on AWS. It's primarily IaaS and therefore while you have elasticity and scaling, you still have to manage a hell of a lot of stuff. And Microsoft hasn't given you the flexibility or customization on this stuff, but as an organization you have to ask yourself -- do you need it? I'm sure on Slashdot everybody wants 100% control of everything and for that reason I can't tell you Azure is better than AWS, when AWS offers more finely grained control. However where Azure's benefit is, is in the PaaS offerings that allow you to focus on code development and product development, and less time on operational overhead. I have had conversations with some Netflix engineers and they LOVE AWS, but the amount of operational stuff they do to maintain the platform is well... huge. But it's part of their business now so it's not a big deal, and they've automated a lot of that though their own code. For organizations who have no foot in either cloud, the easier one to maintain is Azure over the long term.

And finding articles that say "AWS is better than Azure" are a dime a dozen, but it takes some real work to find out whether it's right for your organization. If you can tell me what you can do with AWS (outside of Kinesis and a few other services) that you can't do in Azure, then it will make sense for you to say that. But I can give you a LOT more I can do with Azure that I cannot possibly do in AWS. Not to mention, all of what I do in Azure can be taken back in house and run on my own servers; with AWS it's a one way street and if they screw you on the service or price... you are basically fucked. Microsoft plays that strength very well.

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[microTodd]

To be honest...CloudFormation. Being able to define the entire environment in code(ish), and letting the environment self-manage and self-heal. We don't have sysads who sit at the console and manually configure things, launching servers and whatnot. In fact, in the prod VPC no on logs in to any servers. If there's a new redhat patch or something, the base image gets updated and the instances in the production environment automatically replace themselves.

Check out the Netflix Tech Blog for some ideas on how to manage an environment in a controlled, hands-off way like this. We know EXACTLY what prod looks like because its strictly defined, and we run an exact copy of the CloudFormation in dev (except for external DNS) so we can do system/integration testing.

But from a developer perspective, we're actually moving away from even having our own VMs. Now I can write all my code as Lambda or Elastic Beanstalk or Elastic MapReduce, use RDS or Dynamo as the backend. Use SMS or SQS services so I don't even need APN/GCN direct access anymore. Host all my APIs consolidated with API Gateway, shared the APIs amongst my web and mobile clients. Now I've got my entire product line and services in a scalable, easily-managed environment.

To be honest, you can probably do this in Azure with a different set of services and things, but it does seem really easy and powerful in AWS to get things going, instead of just deploying to a hosted IIS/SQLServer combo.

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[HerculesMO]

Cloudformation is piss poor compared to Resource Groups in Azure. The idea is similar but you can deploy 'stacks' of things with permissions for role based access as well, very easy administration.

As for the Lambda stuff -- that's WebJobs in Azure, and far more powerful (takes in .exe, .sh, .bat. cmd, etc) whereas Lambda does .zip and .js only. Beanstalk integration into .NET environments (which is what we are primarily) is very bad compared to WebApps, and MapReduce is pretty commonly usable on either cloud. If you use SQL the SQL Azure is a better offering than RDS, but if you're on PostGres/MySQL then definitely a point in the RDS favor. Dynamo is also available on Azure in another form, as well as API aggregation, mobile integration, etc.

Long story short is that I don't think that one is better than the other outright -- it's about choosing the tools that make sense for your environment and developers. For us that seems to be Azure given a heavy SQL/.NET platform and developer base. For others it may be AWS for other reasons. I just think that as Azure expands its capabilities, and some of the things they wind up doing a lot better than AWS, as well as the stuff they do that AWS can't do at all (ie micro services architecture support in Service Fabric, Machine Learning that is far beyond AWS' capabilities, etc), then AWS gets into a race to the bottom. Not to mention the segregated storage in AWS that they are working on consolidating (ie, the S3/Glacier/EBS/etc) whereas in Azure it's one storage platform that can be called by API for different purposes (like block store, drives, etc).

Right now Amazon's primary problem is the talent keeps leaving, and they don't pay enough, nor do they have the perks to keep people motivated to stay. They take existing open source projects and expand upon them and provide you a managed service primarily on the IaaS side, but nothing is really developed net new; it's all a rehash of things already made. And that's where MS is making strides... all of their software is a reimagining of what cloud should be, rather than taking their existing products and making them "cloud ready". In time I think MS will do very well, but the poor marketing as well as MS' poor image from years and years doesn't help them. That said... AWS can only stay in people's good graces so long until they just can't keep up the level of innovation that not only MS, but Google are doing in the Cloud space. And truth be told... if MS has to worry about anybody in Cloud, it's not Amazon -- it's Google.

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[microTodd]

Interesting thoughts. Some pointers to things I'll have to go read about. Thanks for the discussion!

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[HerculesMO]

Glad to share, I always enjoy learning things myself so happy I could pay it forward :)

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just a personal anecdote, but a close friends sister worked at Amazon in their corporate offices in WA. She quit after she realized that it had sucked the life out of her for a decade and basically done nothing for her. She relayed horror story after horror story. they seem to have a strong culture fear based management and are quite manipulative of their staff.

-Tdone

Re:Amazon I think may fall down a bit...

[painandgreed]

I have friends who work and who have worked there.... the job climate is basically ridiculous. Lots of hours, the pay not as great as their neighbor in Seattle (Microsoft), the advancement not very good either.

I have friend who have worked there too, dating all the way back to being hired by Bezos himself. It's always been like that. Most people going into it now know about it. Some departments are better than others, but typical employment is understood to be 18 months on the average before laid off or moving on to a different job. Amazon is the resume builder and that's what most people are using it for. Put in your time with Amazon, put it on your resume, then go to Microsoft or some other business.

Everything that can be invented HAS been invented!

[aaron4801]

Nothing will ever change; the world is static; progress is over. So says the New York Times.

one word

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM

Of the five

[QuietLagoon]

I'd say Microsoft is most likely to be displaced. They've shown a distinct inability to innovate, e.g., they are now trying to hold on to market share via fear-mongering to their customers.

.
If Microsoft were as entrenched as the article implies, then they would not need to employ such despicably deceitful tactics in order to get Windows 7 customers to upgrade to Windows 10.

Microsoft is showing their desperation as they try to remain relevant.

Re:Of the five

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally wrong. Microsoft might fall in relevance some, but there is NOTHING to replace it in a corporate world.

Facebook has to be the most likely to fall the fastest, and Amazon the most likely to become something other than it is.

Re:Of the five

[bazorg]

Possibly. The way I see it, MS used to have 90%+ of share of a much smaller market than what exists today. If they end up with, say, 20% of paying customers for Mobile/PC+Gaming, it will be more than enough for them to be bigger and more profitable than they've been so far.

Amazon seems to be comfortably building vertical integration in their role as the biggest retail (and logistics) operation in the world, so I'd expect them to stick around in the top 5 for a long time until China comes up with the biggest retail operation ever.

Apple might take over a nice upmarket slice of the auto market and remain on the list.

Google is so weird they might split into 4 companies and take more than one place in the top 5.

I have this feeling that Facebook might be the least difficult to displace, as Netflix and other games&media companies develop the "social" side to what they offer today. then again, FB should at some point add a consumer electronics component to what they do and become a BIG player in an expanding VR+gaming market.

I'll set a calendar reminder to review this post in 5 years so I can laugh at myself.

Re:Of the five

[Locke2005]

Microsoft and Apple will have to put up with shrinking revenues as their business is increasingly commoditized, just like IBM and HP have already had to do. Intel is probably seeing shrinking margins and shrinking revenues as well. The Amazon business model is here to stay and can only grow. I don't understand the Facebook and Google business models, it seems like they are here to stay but it also seems like they could be very volatile.

Re:Of the five

[Locke2005]

Under Bill Gates, M$ was able to very quickly turn itself around and correct it's mistakes. I assume it still has that ability. Granted, it seems to be scrambling for a viable business model now, but will probably succeed is transitioning from the shrinkwrapped software to the software-as-a-service model. I still think Microsoft would have greater total value if split up into separate companies (like AT&T), but that probably isn't going to happen. (Even if it did happen for HP.)

Re:Of the five

[iampiti]

Microsoft are still at the top by a wide margin in the PC market. The problem is that PC sales keep shrinking and they have a very small market share on mobile, where the growth and future seems to be.
That's why they're so desperate to get everyone on Win 10 because they think it'll help them gain marketshare on mobile, not because they're any smaller than they've been on the desktop.

Re:Of the five

[Anonymous Coward]

MS and Apple are most at risk due to changes in computing. At some point, their special sauce won't matter, tablets/phones connected to the web could make them unneeded.

Personally, I'll have a MacBook until the day I die, with local storage, and if the cloud/appliance future becomes real, I'll stock up on pens and paper.

Re:Of the five

[Hognoxious]

I was reading Joel on Software in the netty, and one of the chapters was about how 19 of the top 20 tech companies had been replaced x years later.

The only one that hadn't was Microsoft, and his reason was they hadn't made a colossal fuckup like all the others. He made a joke about clippy.

Windows 10 is 27 legions of clippy.

Re:Of the five

[Anonymous Coward]

If everything is in the browser, the OS definitely does matter anymore. Microsoft had better make sure Office is always better than the alternatives. I'd buy everyone who ever makes a commit to LibreOffice or Google Docs.

If the interest rates move higher at all, Apple will burn. Their clients are all young people buying on credit.

Re:Of the five

[Anonymous Coward]

so I'd expect them to stick around in the top 5 for a long time until China comes up with the biggest retail operation ever.

Ever heard of Alibaba?

Re:Of the five

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Microsoft is a lot more than just Windows. Both MS and Google seem well diversified. I think MS has at least five different divisions that bring in over a billion dollars. They've done a good job of spreading out their investments so all their eggs aren't in one basket the way Apple has done with iPhone. PC sales are slowing but the notion that they would be replaced by tablets and phones just isn't coming true. People still need to get things done so the PC is here to stay and Windows10 is the most successful OS release in history so it's hard to imagine MS going the way of Palm any time soon.

Re:Of the five

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing desperate about it. Provide a "free" upgrade to Windows 10 for people who would have bought a new computer instead for at least 2x the cost of an upgrade license to another company, then sell out all of their personal info via built in telemetry to recoup costs? Sounds like a good business strategy to me.

As a bonus any new computer they do buy still has the telemetry built in, so Microsoft still gets money from selling the user's personal info WHILE getting a payment on the Windows tax from the manufacturer.

Also, Microsoft has long used end of support to scare consumers and companies into upgrading. That's nothing new. See also KB2934207 and KB2949787 (Microsoft doesn't have a support page for this one anymore.) which provided scare tactics for the end of XP.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that if anything will displace Microsoft, it's the lack of trust that it's hell bent on pursuing. But to say that they need to do this to stay competitive is wrong. The only reason they can get away with it currently is the level of entrenchment that they have. It's very costly for both consumers and companies to switch to other products. As many people have been trained to use only Microsoft's products.

Go look at any class on "How to use a computer" and you'll find two Microsoft products proudly on display: Windows and Office. Most classes don't teach generic GUI concepts to people. They teach how to use Microsoft Windows. Most classes don't teach how to use generic office suite programs. They teach how to use the special features of Microsoft Office(365. "Now FREE to use ONLINE INTEGRATED WITH THE AZURE CLOUD!") Microsoft has spent a lot of time and money making their products the ONLY recognizable (via muscle memory) way to use a computer. They have leveraged that with their proprietary addons to various standards, and their own proprietary formats that don't inter-operate well with other solutions. (Like any other company would to ensure future profits.) That lock-in is the only reason they are getting away with their current business model for Windows 10. That and the fact it's being given away for free, and guess what? As long as people don't know about Microsoft's business plan, or don't feel any consequences from it (no pressure to switch to something else), Microsoft will stay on top of the pack just fine.

Re:Of the five

[toddestan]

Microsoft is definitely worried about their consumer business. But on the corporate side, they are pretty well entrenched. And while I'm sure they'd like to get their corporate customers on Windows 10, they still get paid for all those Windows 7 licenses. Microsoft will be a player for years to come.

Amazon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Amazon. Sure, Jeff likes to play and had a lot of money, but it isn't even in the same league as the other four.

Re:Amazon?

[darkain]

All the while, Google and Microsoft are STILL trying to play catch up to AWS innovations.

Re:Amazon?

[Barlo_Mung_42]

True but Azure is catching up while still making money for them hand over fist. Being second place in a very large sector is not a sign of doom.

Facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook is circling the drain of irrelevance, Apple is failing at online services, Google is in a rut, Amazon has yet to be profitable, only Microsoft continues to dominate and will remain #1 for the foreseeable future.

Modern Companies are Private Clubs

[monkeyxpress]

Modern corporations are really just clubs now. It used to be that an industrial mega-corp owned a huge quantity of capital equipment or physical resources, and this was what allowed them to keep out other competitors. If technology or tastes shifted, this capital equipment could quickly become a liability which would lead to their downfall.

However a tech company is really just a logo that attracts smart people and money from capital markets. Apple's products are not produced because they own the iPhone plantation. They are produced by talented people working continuously to design them. Most of these people are free to go work making phones for other people (or themselves) but while Apple has access to more money than other companies, they can retain the best workers, make the best products, and hence continue to be Apple.

If you want to take down one of the 'big five' the key now is to create a cult of personality that smart people will gravitate towards - like Elon Musk is doing. Then you can get talent from companies with deeper pockets, and eventually build a self-perpetuating club of your own.

Facebook, pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook can fade just as fast as Myspace did. Hardly been around to make an impact like the other companies listed. I think HP or Cisco should have made the list.

Too Big To Fail

[geekmux]

Seems everyone has forgotten about the legal defense we call "Too Big To Fail".

Cash reserves or popularity no longer matter as long as someone is still around to convince the government that the corporation qualifies for a taxpayer bailout.

A new and rather disgusting concept to continue perpetuating, but that's the problem with establishing precedent, and every one of the "Top 5" would attempt to use that defense if it ever came to that. And likely succeed.

Failure is no longer an option for monopolies as long as taxpayers exist.

Re:Too Big To Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

None of those companies are "too big to fail".

Re:Too Big To Fail

[thegarbz]

Cash reserves or popularity no longer matter as long as someone is still around to convince the government that the corporation qualifies for a taxpayer bailout.

To do that you need to have a massive case for it. Apple can't exactly claim 100000 manufacturing losses + 1000000 through knockon effects like the car companies. Google or Facebook can't exactly claim that our system of money will implode if they suddenly ceased existing.

Re:Too Big To Fail

[geekmux]

Cash reserves or popularity no longer matter as long as someone is still around to convince the government that the corporation qualifies for a taxpayer bailout.

To do that you need to have a massive case for it. Apple can't exactly claim 100000 manufacturing losses + 1000000 through knockon effects like the car companies. Google or Facebook can't exactly claim that our system of money will implode if they suddenly ceased existing.

Yeah, you're right. It's probably a little too early to make those kinds of arguments.

I guess the best thing to do right now is to ignore any checks and balances (anti-monopoly laws) to ensure these companies become Too Big To Fail.

And since they have enough cash reserves to buy entire car companies, it's only a matter of ti...wait what? Google has self-driving cars now? Apple has their own car? Oh, nevermind, it's already started.

Re:Too Big To Fail

[geekmux]

None of those companies are "too big to fail".

Opinions on their status are irrelevant when no government will stop them from achieving that status.

!facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook: not a chance, but it will be a sight to behold when they inevitably start selling chunks of the database
Amazon: spin off AWS, Chinese buys "book" business
Apple: needed, if only so google can claim they have a competitor
Microsoft: already peaked. server market gone. desktop moving to cloud
Google: in our cars, in our homes, in our phones, and on almost every fucking website

Re: !facebook

[cyber-vandal]

Server market gone where? They're making huge sums in their server and database division. Just because it's not what the cool kids are doing doesn't mean it's not doing well.

Unless there's an Advertising Crash...

[rockmuelle]

Google and Facebook make almost all of their money from advertising/consumer tracking related activities. Both would be very different companies of they had to rely on direct revenue sources.

Facebook could shift to a subscription model and probably do fine - I'm guessing at least 100M or so people will pay $5-10 a month to keep sharing photos with friends and family - FB works well to keep people connected. If they can't run their infrastructure and development on $500M-$1B a month, they already have bigger issues that will bring them down.

Google will have a harder time. They have nothing of value that could fund their operations beyond the ad/tracking services. A crash in the ad market would probably be the end for Google.

Amazon is probably fine for a long time. The web needs a storefront, Amazon provides it.

Apple can crash by ignoring user's needs. As a hardware company with a ton of money in the bank, it will take a while. But, Apple could lose market share quickly if another consumer computing trend emerges that cuts into their hardware business. See Blackberry for a recent example.

MS is too entrenched in the business/consumer world to go anywhere. Just like Oracle won't go anywhere for a long time.

Just my quick thoughts on the topic...

-Chris

Re:Unless there's an Advertising Crash...

[cfalcon]

I completely agree here. There are so many things that can go wrong with the advertising model.

First and foremost, people are slowly developing a resistance to advertisements. Ads have gotten vastly more intrusive and hostile, on all dimensions (meaning you're likely to see an advertisement that wiggles [hostile by exploiting the neurons that detect movement, instead of offering a compelling sell], you're likely to see an advertisement that tries to make you feel bad [a mainstay of advertising is pretending you have a defect and convincing you they have a fix, we are seeing more extreme stuff on the psychological axis], you're likely to see an advertisement where there didn't used to be one [novelty from climbing on the "ubiquitous hostile noise" axis] ), but this can only really ramp so far. The attitude of "I'm not affected by ads" is false, but the AMOUNT that you are affected by ads is absolutely shrinking. There's a concern that advertising clients will in some cases realize this and, if enough do at the same time, crash the industry.

Remember, it is MUCH MORE LIKELY for advertising to crash suddenly than decrease in ANY OTHER WAY. Regardless of your view on whether ads will be profitable in the future or not, in the CASE where they are less profitable, the industry itself will be able to mask this for much longer than any other industry (because their job is literally making you believe shit). So if it DOES go down, traditional predictors may not apply until it is way too late.

Second, people are becoming hostile to advertisements in unusual numbers, and making efforts to avoid them. Every Netflix user is explicitly dodging ads with his wallet and time. If Netflix were to put ads in shit, they'd be in serious trouble, and they know it. Every Netflix tells content providers that they have other ways to make money, and reminds people that they don't have to spend their whole life being attacked by jackanapes. Adblocking will win the technical fight, and while users of adblock software (I recommend ublock origin, and I think we know what apk host engine guy recommends!) are small in number, it is becoming MUCH easier to help non-technical people use these products, and they are becoming more popular. Every person who watches ad-free shows and views the ad-free web is someone who is much less likely to want to see ads in the future.

It all sums to advertisers having to jump through higher and higher hoops for lower and lower returns. If you throw ANYTHING to jostle the house of cards- an economic downturn, a religion recruiting heavily, any of the many political orientations that are ad-hostile gaining adherents, a series of studies that show a shitty ROI on ads- you could see a massive crash.

And here's all these tech giants that are really just about ads ads ads ads ads. It's not a very diverse position at all.

Re:Unless there's an Advertising Crash...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good post. I will add that there is also a ton of fraud in the ad industry.

My own experiences as both a publisher and an ad-buyer have shown that a significant number of ad clicks are generated by bots.

Re:Unless there's an Advertising Crash...

[shawn2772]

Google will have a harder time. They have nothing of value that could fund their operations beyond the ad/tracking services. A crash in the ad market would probably be the end for Google.

The Google Apps SaaS business could fund itself, including its supporting systems -- Gmail, Drive and Docs, primarily. It's already a multi-billion dollar business. Google Apps could also begin charging individual users. If advertising disappeared, so would all of the free e-mail services, so I think Gmail could begin charging and would keep most of its active users (though the large number of mostly-idle accounts would be shut down).

Android could self-fund from the Play store now, and could probably get OEMs to start paying it for ongoing development.

Google search, Analytics, Compute Engine and AppEngine are a question mark. It would depend on how much of the web died. If the web stayed healthy, then people would be willing to pay for search services, and webmasters would be willing to pay for analytics and compute services. But the loss of advertising revenue would likely destroy so much of the web that maybe there wouldn't be enough left to support these services. On the gripping hand, in that sort of webpocalypse, Google would be extraordinarily well-positioned to sweep up what business of that sort is available, so odds are that Google's would survive (much reduced), while smaller players would be driven out.

The self-driving car work will be profitable. It's not ready yet, but not too far off and Google has the cash reserves to get it there.

Other GoogleX work would probably die.

So... Google would take a serious hit, have to scale back its operations in lots of ways and would have to start charging for many services which are currently free. I think all in all, though, it would have a much easier time surviving than Facebook, because Google's underlying services are more valuable.

(Disclosure: I work for Google.)

Re:Unless there's an Advertising Crash...

[shawn2772]

people are slowly developing a resistance to advertisements

Cite? I've seen no evidence of that.

people are becoming hostile to advertisements in unusual numbers, and making efforts to avoid them

I see some slight evidence of increase in people making efforts to avoid advertisements, but it's small.

Every Netflix user is explicitly dodging ads with his wallet and time.

Nonsense. People pay for Netflix for the convenience. Not having ads is a nice additional benefit, but not the primary goal.

If Netflix were to put ads in shit, they'd be in serious trouble, and they know it.

Yeah, I remember exactly the same claims during the rise of cable television, that cable providers who showed ads would die in short order. Notice what happened.

If you throw ANYTHING to jostle the house of cards- an economic downturn, a religion recruiting heavily, any of the many political orientations that are ad-hostile gaining adherents, a series of studies that show a shitty ROI on ads- you could see a massive crash.

And yet we've seen all of those things... and no crash. In fact, studies show -- as they always have -- that some advertising has terrible ROI and other advertising has awesome ROI, and that overall advertising is essential to successful product sales.

I think you have a strong case of confirmation bias going here. Or it's possible that I do... I don't particularly like ads but they do pay a big chunk of my salary. I also think they're a better way to fund mass media services than the alternatives, which is why ads have always been the funding source of mass media ever since it came into existence, in print, radio, TV and now online.

Re:Unless there's an Advertising Crash...

[k6mfw]

Google and Facebook make almost all of their money from advertising/consumer tracking related activities.

It seems Google has almost absolute control of information on the internet. Regarding cfalcon's remarks about advertisement, I'm getting pissed of whenever I search for specific information i.e. automotive OBD-II databus (alrighty folks, your car analogy), Google typically returns websites of places that sell OBD-II readers geared to the consumers (lowcost for displaying car speed, etc on a phone). There are some techie sites but almost are aggregates from a handful of websites (that is, not much difference from one and another).

There is the wall gardened FB, yes I registered though I didn't give them my real birthdate and address. There are many businesses that do all their stuff on FB, and yes I have to dig through a lot of posts from stay-at-home moms.

Amazon is probably fine for a long time.

it's been said these guys have driven many smaller businesses out of the market, like Uber they get many employees to bring more value of skill and desire to please than they are getting back in pay and benefits. One thing certain Amazon provides a mechanism to purchase items that can be purchased directly from original companies but the latter has a crappy order/purchase webpage.

Apple can crash by ignoring user's needs.

I read 2/3 of Apple business is outside the US, all their stuff is made outside the US. They are building the big campus (a flying saucer shaped building bigger than The Pentagon) but they probably can depart this country altogether.

Re:Unless there's an Advertising Crash...

[Anonymous Coward]

MS is too entrenched in the business/consumer world to go anywhere.

Don't underestimate the stupidity of Terry Myerson, head of the Windows division. Much of the really moronic decisions and bad news related to Windows can be laid at his feet.

Re:Unless there's an Advertising Crash...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that I would have _much_ _more_ than a foot-hold in two (THREE) of these companies if ... ... ... so no, I am not so sure and still it is my interest these companies do not go outmoded and washed away as suddenly as they JUMPED, particularly when they are no longer directed by the creative mind but only following the track... on sorts. See how Twitter, latecomer, stayed behind? - Imagine if PayPal had gone the catalog way as it was intended in it s _inception_? I completely stopped buying from Amazon last year since they would NOT respect LOCKER availability and actually made a mess of my purchase by forcing me to go through USPS. I could not get XP til fortunately W8 did work for games, despite... programming becoming much less reliable than in Win3.1. Google seldom shows the same results again and DOES fail with very specific name searches and counting posts, while its groups simple faded back into a bad interface. Facebook even has me OWING them money and I SIMPLY CANNOT reach American people, only Arabs, Indians and Asians, being in NYC! Apple I do not do. These are not details, a few more errors and I would stop using their services! May even be easier to restart programming a windowing GUI in Linux if Windows becomes more impossible to get right at first code, so there is _nothing_ guaranteed in the future for these companies. - Diversification is not always a good thing, some people argued in my career. Any of these companies may simply be broken anytime soon and the names gone into *some* history and that s it.

Re:Unless there's an Advertising Crash...

[RyoShin]

I'm guessing at least 100M or so people will pay $5-10 a month to keep sharing photos with friends and family - FB works well to keep people connected

I would bet the move would be akin to the "free-to-play" model that is the rage in gaming these days: Everyone will keep their Facebook account, but you become extremely limited in what you can do with it. Essentially throwing them back to the very early days of Facebook, you can make a basic post and make basic comments. Wall feed? Large photo/video albums? Public groups? Those will be what requires a paid account.

They can't go fully closed because, as you noted, it works well to keep people connected. If accounts are closed en masse because people can't/won't pay, it becomes far less useful for those who can/will.

Cash hoards don't lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon spends all it takes in on being the most vertically integrated business of all time. Google's already in the middle of turning into a conglomerate of unrelated companies. Microsoft is rather famous for splashing out into new industries -- right now it makes tablets and video game consoles. Apple has resisted the impulse, but if it starts actually building cars it will be well on its way. Facebook is the lone holdout -- when will they make a play beyond social networking?

Re:Cash hoards don't lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Oculus?

Facebook? WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't debate the general premise but how the fuck does Facebook get on this list? Where are Facebook's R&D facilities for robots, drones, operating systems for IoT devices, massive Cloud services operations, their business operations in 'health care & finance' etc.? O right, I think I read an article on here that Facebook had purchased a company or otherwise invested in virtual reality...wow, really? Don't get me wrong, the idea seems cool but hardly a 'game changer' to the extent that Facebook is 'entrenched & helping to control their industry'.

Does that mean I think FB will go away any time soon? No, not really I just don't think FB has much of an influence on direction of technology or industry in general as opposed to helping people stay in touch...and in the latter case its a tenuous hold based only on the premise that there doesn't seem to be a major need or drive for a competitive offering in this area though in fact there are many different technologies that all can or do work together to provide what FB does. Seriously, what exactly would the world lose if FB didn't exist or had never existed? A 'better MySpace'...woopdie-do...

DEC, Compaq, Sun, Wang, Delphi, CompuServe

[mveloso]

The tech world is littered with companies that dominated then died.

Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry.

Re:DEC, Compaq, Sun, Wang, Delphi, CompuServe

[Anonymous Coward]

The tech world is littered with companies that dominated then died.

Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry.

See also: Commodore International.

Facebook? GTFO.

[crow_t_robot]

Facebook shouldn't be in the list and Amazon/AWS should be in its place.

And yet all 5 are almost irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Three of those five (Apple, Microsoft and Facebook) could completely disappear overnight, and I wouldn't even notice. They aren't really contributing anything even slightly useful. They are technological drag from past eras.

And then the other two, while obviously relying on a lot of technology for their back ends, I primarily know as a service from them. I would notice if Google and Amazon went away, because I use Google for search and I happen to occasionally buy things from Amazon. (i.e. I don't use AWS; I merely shop at Amazon which happens to sort of be AWS's best customer.)

Obviously, all five are having effects, but from a customer perspective, none would really be missed a whole lot. Google Search is really the only one that is somewhat paintful to replace, as every time I try out a competitor's search, it' a rather severe downgrade (those blind side-by-sides are damn cool; go try it). And yet even so, all the modern competitors only lose out in comparison to Google: from an absolute perspective they're still reasonable competent. (They're all better than AltaVista was.)

Re:And yet all 5 are almost irrelevant

[Locke2005]

Despite the fact that thousands of Apple fanbois would probably commit suicide if they went away, they certainly aren't a hardware leader anymore; they are falling farther being Samsung and the Chinese companies. We may be underestimating the impact of their integration of software and web services, however; I believe iTunes is a major player in music sales these days.

Re: And yet all 5 are almost irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fairly sure YOU could disappear overnight and I wouldn't even notice...

Re:And yet all 5 are almost irrelevant

[cfalcon]

I am absolutely certain that Chinese companies will not be able to pierce the top-end design area for probably at least two decades. The Chinese are famous for imitation and cheap knock offs, but are obviously capable of top end anything- the problem seems to be that almost no Chinese products has NEW DESIGN. It's like their engineers can't their pointy haired bosses to invest in design as a concept. They copy an existing design, or they have some flat brutalist approach.

Samsung? Yea, Samsung could compete over overcome Apple. I don't think that they necessarily will, but it's definitely conceivable.

Re:And yet all 5 are almost irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

iTunes is falling behind in the music industry because the idea of buying music is being replaced by a Netflix-style subscription model, which iTunes was late to.

Re:And yet all 5 are almost irrelevant

[Rising Ape]

You can't really ignore MS's dominance in the business world. MS's disappearance would certainly be felt there.

Facebook do what they do pretty well, and the network effect is huge. Look at Google's miserable failure in trying to compete in their space.

Apple though? Is there any area in which they don't have strong competitors, or even any area they're dominant in? If Apple disappeared, people could switch to alternatives easily.

Re:And yet all 5 are almost irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hate to be Alexandre Julliard if Microsoft failed. He'd drown in the money people would throw at him.

Not necessarily

[Chrisq]

At one time a list would have included IBM and DEC . IBM totally dominated the computer market, and DEC had a solid share of the minicomputer and technical market. The fact that they are not in the list now illustrates that any of the above 5 could become an "also ran", or even be bought out.

Re:Not necessarily

[luis_a_espinal]

At one time a list would have included IBM and DEC . IBM totally dominated the computer market, and DEC had a solid share of the minicomputer and technical market. The fact that they are not in the list now illustrates that any of the above 5 could become an "also ran", or even be bought out.

Correct. And more to the point, IBM and DEC ran their shows for decades. There is nothing to prevent the currently existing big 5 to do the same. Anything can happen, but with all seriousness, I can give these companies (specifically Amazon) at least another decade. And in the software industry, a decade is an eternity.

Re:Not necessarily

[Locke2005]

IBM is still in business as an Enterprise solution provider, Consistently losing market every quarter, but definitely not going away.DEC bet wrong on the viability of personal computing and got swallowed up by HP, where the remaining carcass of DEC quickly became worth much less than the purchase price, so DEC is a valid example.

Re:Not necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

> At one time a list would have included IBM and DEC .

They declined because they were too tied to big iron. They tried to move to smaller stuff - IBM PCs or such, but their infrastructure was built around large and expensive. When PCs became more powerful, cheaper and gained more features they were sidelined and left to support old big iron technology.

Now, Microsoft and Intel is the 'big iron' and smaller stuff will be taking over: ARM, Android, Raspberry Pi and similar have the place where the IBM PC was in the 1980s.

"Frightful Five"

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to psyops n00b: That is such a stupid fearmongering nickname!

If you want people to dislike these organizations nickname them the "Five Eyes" to conflate/associate them in the public's mind with mass warrant-less surveillance thereby making the necessary connection that they are an extension of the surveillance state's technology apparatus/public-private partnership/fascist plutocracy.

Larry doesn't like being left out

[nightcats]

Last stats I saw showed that Oracle is the 2nd leading software vendor by volume behind MS. They're over $100B in AUM, but they don't make this list? Maybe the "frightful 5" should be the "sinful six".

Re:Larry doesn't like being left out

[Anonymous Coward]

Not much presence in the consumer world, which this article addresses.

Would definitely be in the top five for enterprise products and services.

Definition

[SuperKendall]

All it really says is they will remain major players in the industry for the foreseeable future

So a month then?

I might agree but even a month is pretty hazy in tech.

The Big Five

[PortHaven]

AOL
Prodigy
CompuServe
GEnie
Delphi

***

Which of these five is still alive? Okay, AOL as some weird f'd up zombie exoskeleton.

Re:The Big Five

[Locke2005]

Amazing, the companies built on providing networking via dial-up modems are no longer in business... who could have predicted that?

Re:Everything that can be invented HAS been invent

[Anonymous Coward]

But what if I come up with a very efficient algorithm for prime factorization, would that be a major game changer ? I am working on it......

LOL

[fluffernutter]

Bullshit. The more technology changes, the more the requirements of the user base change. Facebook is nothing more then entertainment, and it got a boost by it's correct calculation that people wouldn't mind being scanned and manipulated. There are many more services coming that will be real services changing the way we live and work, they just need the general public to come around to using technology first. I would even dare say that Facebook is an early gimmick that worked.

The thought that this is it.. that this is all that technology will ever do for us is such a bleak view. That would mean our very societies will not change which is totally incorrect.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

"than"
"its"

wut?

[Frederic54]

I'm 45 and never used an Apple product ; Amazon is zero competitive in Canada, never bought anything here ; Facebook is only to see relative pictures, I do not post there ; I use Linux for years. The only thing I use from google is search engine, chrome, gmail.

I must say if Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft were all to dissapear, it will change nothing. But Google as a search engine is still top notch and have no real competition so for the moment, they stay.

Re:wut?

[UnknowingFool]

I must say if Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft were all to dissapear, it will change nothing. But Google as a search engine is still top notch and have no real competition so for the moment, they stay.

From your world. The rest of the world uses Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft products. Could they be replaced? Yes but because they are not important to your world does not mean they are not important to everyone.

Re:wut?

[Locke2005]

Facebook is the de facto login mechanism to many web sites now, so like Adobe, they are fairly well entrenched into the system and hard to get rid of. Many websites are still providing videos that are Flash-only, despite Adobe's refusal to port flash to any new devices... go figure. I kept expecting Facebook to go the same way as MySpace, but it looks like i was wrong. Apple and Microsoft will lose market share, but they are not going away anytime soon. Amazon is probably the best run company in the world right now; any new tech business opportunities out there they are almost sure to have a finger in. They quickly evaluate new businesses and discard the ones that don't work for them.

Re:wut?

[Anonymous Coward]

Start watching your internet connections and tell me you don't have any to amazonws before saying you don't use amazon. They are as much an infrastructure company as they are a shopping portal.

Re:wut?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well your personal experience settles that then. Clearly the authors did zero research.

Re:wut?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I went to install fitbit software (a gift) and my firewall immediately wanted to know why the fitbit app needed to talk to FaceBook.

I don't have a FB account, and they don't need to know the few pounds I need to lose.

FB is like herpes, you may not see it, but it's always there, and you can't get rid of it.

And yes, my fitbit is now a very expensive pedometer. I did not install the sw.

Re:wut?

[Anonymous Coward]

>The rest of the world uses Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft products.

No. America uses those. I'm Canadian and I find Amazon is great for reviews, and so-so on pricing. Their prime offering is a hilarious joke that needs to die ($80 and all I get is 'free' shipping on a very few items? LOL!)

Microsoft could cease to exist and I wouldn't care.

Apple could cease to exist and nobody here would care. I know one person with an iPhone. They've dumped it for Android.

Facebook, well, yeah, that one is used a little more, but it's just a place for pics, shitty games, and the occasional post. The internet can easily offer that elsewhere.

>Yes but because they are not important to your world does not mean they are not important to everyone.

The trouble is the USA thinks they are the world. It's really odd. I hear news from the USA about this Craigslist thing selling access to hookers for roses. Never heard of it otherwise. The site looks quite shitty.. Canadians use Kijiji. Your household brands are simply more replaceable than you think.

Re:wut?

[fluffernutter]

I don't really get that.. if I'm developing a website, how hard is it to encrypt a password and store it in a database, or use a framework that does that? More effort to figure out how to link securely with facebook. It's a real lazy developer that can't code an email registration.

Re:wut?

[UnknowingFool]

No. America uses those. I'm Canadian and I find Amazon is great for reviews, and so-so on pricing. Their prime offering is a hilarious joke that needs to die ($80 and all I get is 'free' shipping on a very few items? LOL!)

Really so when I travel to Asia and see people using iPhones, that is all my imagination? When I am in Europe and see people using Windows, I must have had hallucinations? You seem to have a very binary way of thinking about who uses what. In Asia, they do use iPhones. They also use Galaxy phones too. It's not binary.

Microsoft could cease to exist and I wouldn't care.

Yes, you don't care. Companies that use Microsoft products do care.

Apple could cease to exist and nobody here would care. I know one person with an iPhone. They've dumped it for Android.

You, you, you, and your world. That does not reflect the actual world.

For 2015 alone, Apple sold more than 231 million iPhones worldwide. Now according to you that must just the US. Considering that the US has about 323 million people, that would be the most marketshare I've seen in any country by a product. That would mean most men, women, and children bought an iPhone in 2015 alone.
OR
You simply have no idea who owns an iPhone and live in your own reality.

The trouble is the USA thinks they are the world. It's really odd. I hear news from the USA about this Craigslist thing selling access to hookers for roses. Never heard of it otherwise. The site looks quite shitty.. Canadians use Kijiji. Your household brands are simply more replaceable than you think.

The companies listed are known worldwide. They are used worldwide. These are simple facts to look up. But you won't, will you? For example, Facebook usage by country definitely shows that more than Americans use it. A survey in 2013 shows that that Google is used worldwide. While they are places like China and Japan that use prefer other engines, calling Google only an American company is just denying facts.

Re:wut?

[Yunzil]

I must say if Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft were all to dissapear, it will change nothing.

From another 45-year-old, you might want to get out of your bubble occasionally.

Re:wut?

[Frederic54]

You can replace iPhone with Android phones, there is competition there, there is way more android phones than iphones. You can replace Amazon by the hundreds of others online retailers. Facebook, well, is more or less useless, it's not a product you are using. Microsoft has competition too like Linux.
But Goole, has no real competition.

Re:wut?

[Frederic54]

Apple can be replaced (Android phones), Amazon can be replaced (hundreds of online retailers), Facebook is more or less useless, you do not need it. Microsoft can be replaced (Linux). But Google?!? can you replace its search engine?

Re:wut?

[UnknowingFool]

Apple can be replaced (Android phones), Amazon can be replaced (hundreds of online retailers), Facebook is more or less useless, you do not need it. Microsoft can be replaced (Linux). But Google?!? can you replace its search engine?

Anything can be replaced if you think about it. The results may not be to your liking or convenience. For example, if you are very social, how do you keep up with your friends without Facebook? You can with emails, phone-calls, talk in real life, etc. That works great if you don't have more than a dozen friends. If you want to keep your social circle small, that's your choice. Then you don't you need something like Facebook, Twitter, etc. I can't keep up with more than a dozen myself but all the women I know are able to do this.

Most people I know use the above brands not out of some entrenched loyalty but that brand works best for them. People who have iPhones like them but when something changed in the phone or iOS that they would change phones.

Ranking and/or speculating on downfall

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft

Of these 5, I see Amazon as most likely to remain on top. They're the Sears of the Internet. People interact with it the way people used to interact with the Sears catalog. Nothing lasts forever, and the actual Sears is a shadow of past glory; but we're talking several generations here. Web services and retail might suffer in future recessions; but it won't kill them.

Choosing from the rest is harder. I'd put Microsoft and Apple neck-and neck for 2nd place. They've been around for about the same time and even partnered at one point. They both made bank on the PC era (where PC means Personal Computer, not just Wintel) and branched out from there. Apple was way better at branching out from its original core businesses; but MS has some wins too and doesn't live off style like Apple does. Fashion is fickle. Enterprise lock-in less so.

By itself in 3rd place, Google. They're lucky search isn't their only business, and all those PhDs are probably going to surprise us with something. They'd better get a move-on though. A lot of what they do seems replaceable.

Finally FaceBook is most likely to hit the skids. When young people find something new, it'll be like AOL, which is still around but just not terribly relevant or that valuable a property.

Re:Ranking and/or speculating on downfall

[Locke2005]

Good analysis, but I'd put Google above Microsoft and Apple. Personally, I think both are overvalued right now in terms of market cap, but they'll still be around for a long time.

Re:Ranking and/or speculating on downfall

[fluffernutter]

Young people already consider facebook boring.. They use instagram. I realize that facebook owns this, but how long can they keep purchasing the next thing?

Re:Ranking and/or speculating on downfall

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'd put it below simply because AdBlock is such a danger to their core business. It's not enough that Google makes unobtrusive ads; everybody has to use unobtrusive ads or else over time everybody will start blocking ads by default and the whole system will collapse (affecting not just Google, but certainly body-slamming Google hard).

This said, I don't think that's likely. It's just I can imagine a neat scenario there. Any business can suffer a slow decline, and Apple (and to some degree Microsoft) has shown you can even survive a slow decline and bounce back. Facebook has an imminent threat and Google has a conceivable threat.

I'd put Amazon below Microsoft and Apple simply because there's a small but nonzero chance that the traditional retailers will pull their heads out of their asses and see the Amazon juggernaut coming, and react. That wouldn't kill Amazon immediately but it would slow their growth, and Amazon has been living on the edge with massive reinvestment rather than accumulating profits and a war chest like Microsoft and Apple. Amazon *could* be as secure as those two, but they've chosen not to be and therefore I have to reflect that risk.

I think they're right

[Locke2005]

If I was to name some of the best managed companies around today, all 5 of those would be on the list, with Amazon ranked highest and Microsoft lowest. Microsoft makes a lot of mistakes, but they have an amazing ability to turn themselves around overnight. Amazon is constantly starting business "experiments", then quickly discarding the ones that don't work. Regardless of how you personally feel about these companies, if they continue to be run as they currently are, they'll be around for a while. All of them have embarrassing amounts of cash in the bank!

Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook and Amazon have no profits in the past.
Amazon may survive for a while longer, but profitability has to come eventually or investment will start to wane.
Facebook will never make a profit and will die eventually as it should.

When did people get so retarded that they think internet sites and apps represent solid companies with a good business plan?
That has never played out well in the past.

Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is not Intel on this list? It was around longer than the 2 companies you mention, and is even more likely to be around than either MS or Apple in the future.

Yahoo sucks, long live Altavista

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

And get off my lawn.

Re:Everything that can be invented HAS been invent

[Locke2005]

For those of you that missed the reference, this refers to a statement made by Bill Gates in The Road Ahead: "The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." By definition, all prime numbers have 2 factors: 1 and the prime itself. This gaff was fixed in later editions of the book.

The answer is no, of course

[phantomfive]

The answer is no, of course. In the next 30 years, two or three of those will be gone or mostly forgotten (especially in the consumer space, who are so fickle). That is just obvious. The more interesting question, which of those are most likely to die?

Which of these companies are the most likely to disappear:
Amazon
Apple
Facebook
Google
Microsoft

Re:The answer is no, of course

[ibpooks]

Which of these companies are the most likely to disappear:

Facebook, Apple and Google; in that order. These companies are the ones who depend most on the preferences and tastes of fickle consumers. They (especially Facebook) have little to no value in the delivery of business services where longevity and stability reigns.

Facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook seems to me to be the "one of these things is not like the others." It is a relative newcomer, and the future utility and embrace of social media is very much in question as to whether it is a fad or a lasting institution.

Key words "stick around for the foreseeable future

[Attila Dimedici]

The key words from the summary "stick around for the foreseeable future". Yes, these companies will stick around for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, the foreseeable future is only 1-2 years.

Lotus? AOL? Compuserve? MySpace? Yahoo!?

[abelenky17]

Lotus
AOL
MySpace
Yahoo!

These are just some of the companies that were once considered "dominant" in their various spaces, and then got utterly decimated by the passage of time.
While there may eventually be companies with the endurance and dominance of IBM or General Electric in the Internet space, it is hubris to say it is any of today's current companies. Their future is unwritten, and the mighty have fallen over and over again throughout history.

Re:Everything that can be invented HAS been invent

[doom]

Nothing will ever change in the world of journalism, at any rate: predict the status quo to keep the advertisers happy, when anything changes report it in bold face as an amazing surprise ("no one could ever have forseen...").

Don't say we didn't tell you

[bretts]

http://www.amerika.org/politic... They're also heading toward collapse as investors realize these firms are advertising "Male Tears" mugs to lost basement-dwelling 20-somethings.

POOPERS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Poopers know that pooping poops is the future, not luddite shitters.

Poops poops poops!!!eleven

Components of the DJIA

[TheSync]

It is interesting to consider the components of the Dow Jones Industrial Index over time.

Some have stayed around forever (General Electric, since DJIA started in 1896). Some you may have never heard of (International Nickel, 1927-1959).

The majority of current DJIA components have only been in the index since 1991.

Predicting the failure of Facebook

[pastafazou]

Facebook is going to die just like MySpace did. http://motherboard.vice.com/re... As the article states, teens don't use facebook all that much. I have 4 teenagers in my house, and they've all quit using it for Instagram, Tumbler, and Twitter. I think 2017 might be a bit premature, but I could certainly see it in steady decline by 2020. Their growth rate is getting close to zero, so I'd say they're about to hit their peak this year.

Re:Predicting the failure of Facebook

[unencode200x]

Ditto at my house. Instagram for all the girls and their friends. Facebook must have figured this out and bought Instagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The younger kids don't want to be on what their parents are on.

Sears? Gateway? AT+T? Yellow Pages? IBM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sears used to be a retail giant. They still exist, but they aren't top 5 anymore.
Gateway used to sell more PCs than Apple, back when desktops mattered
AT+T connected the world to the world, you to your friends
Yellow Pages were the one true way to find something
IBM was unstoppable force, once upon a time. All of the "Evil Empire" FUD that now is attributed to Microsoft, was once attributed to IBM.

Change may be slower than the article wants to deal with. But change is eternal; Heraclitus knew it long before any of us were born ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus )

The answer is always no

[Anonymous Coward]

Any time the headline ends in a question mark, the obvious answer is no.

This is why "journalism" is dead. It's been reduced to shameless flattery of the worthless robber baron horde. Both the false prophet and their anti-Christ can burn in Hell.

yes they are here to stay...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for now. Why do people keep on forgetting history and not remember that nothing is permanent? Every tower falls eventually.

Re:yes they are here to stay...

[invictusvoyd]

Not the tower of IBM . They have outlived virtually every other tech company

At a fraction of their current values.

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook worth $266B with a P/E of 95? Amazon worth $268B with a P/E over 800? Alphabet and Microsoft each worth more than $400B? Apple worth $536B? They'll probably stick around for at least the next 5 years, but some of these valuations are insane.

Facebook
Apple
Netflix
Tesla
Alphabet
s
y

Re:At a fraction of their current values.

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook worth $266B with a P/E of 95? Amazon worth $268B with a P/E over 800? Alphabet and Microsoft each worth more than $400B? Apple worth $536B? They'll probably stick around for at least the next 5 years, but some of these valuations are insane.

Facebook
Apple
Netflix
Tesla
Alphabet
s
y

Interesting if you look at the P/E ratio for each of them, also for those who don't know, you want a low P/E ratio.

Amazon 268.02B Market Cap 819.15 P/E ratio
Facebook 266.82B Market Cap 94.73 P/E ratio
Microsoft 405.71B Market Cap 33.77 P/E ratio
Google 480.34B Market Cap 29.44 P/E ratio
Apple 536.65B Market Cap 10.5 P/E ratio

For reference the P/E ratio for some other companies
Boeing 15.37
Samsung (electronics) 8.2
Starbucks 31.27
Disney 18.89
Netflix 286.54

Been Said Before

[Jason Levine]

It's been said before:

"With so much of the PDA market, Palm is here to stay."

"With so much of the dial-up market, AOL is here to stay."

"With so much of the phone market, Blackberry is here to stay."

All it takes is one slip-up or one unexpected shift in technology to turn a "here to stay" company into a has-been company. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. might be big and smart enough to survive longer than others, but they don't have a guarantee of sticking around merely because of their size.

Samsung, Intel, Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the NYT hasn't heard of them

Everything Dies

[Anonymous Coward]

The longevity of any business is, at it's core, a function of human nature over time. As such, eventually a set of circumstances will occur that put each and every company out of business. Given that, as to how long the so called big five will last, it's more of a "when" than an "if". google.com will, someday, return a 404. You can count on it.

Re:Everything Dies

[Anonymous Coward]

it's means it is. I suspect this will outlast humanity...

Re:Facebook? GTFO.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon is already on the list.

Not a fan.

[MrKrillls]

And this sort of silly and poorly thought out opinion piece is why I'm not a big NYT fan.

It takes effort to stay on top

[jddimarco]

The problem with the idea that these five are "here to stay" is that it takes intelligent effort, a lot of intelligent effort, to stay on top. All of these companies are putting in the effort now, but if their effort flags, or they end up doing something stupid, others (perhaps the other four, perhaps someone new) will eat their lunch. Yes, size makes a difference, and can make it easier in many ways for a big tech company to stay on top, but size alone won't do it: if one of these companies decides to relax and sit on its laurels, it will lose its top spot.

Jews

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the big five are run by jews. Coincidence?

Too big to fail

[crispin_bollocks]

I'm old enough to remember a pundit writing that Sorcim (WordStar), Ashton-Tate (dBase 2) and Lotus had the world tied up and were unassailable.

Advertising has pretty much never crashed

[Ixpath]

Here is advertising as a percentage of GDP for the last 90 years:

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-03/advertisings-century-of-flat-line-growth

Right: & the unimagined foe = adblocking

[Anonymous Coward]

"Adblocking will win the technical fight, and while users of adblock software (I recommend ublock origin, and I think we know what apk host engine guy recommends!)" - by cfalcon (779563) on Wednesday January 20, 2016 @12:29PM (#51337313)

See subject: They're advertisers & as far as UBlock variants? They're inefficient & inferior + using hosts but NOT fully as APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit http://www.start64.com/index.p... and my method using hosts is HANDS-DOWN the most technically proficient efficient "Kung-Fu" there is (judging by the inability of 100's of /. naysayers inability to prove me validly technically wrong for years now here, & yes, other sites too...)

Browser addons are not only inferior technically & massively inefficient vs. hosts files but they're ILLOGICALLY "bolting on 'MoAr'" as well increasing CPU, RAM, & other forms of I/O inefficiency (messagepassing overheads in an already SLOWER less efficient operations layer in usermode vs. hosts in kernelmode (more cpu serviced) as part of the IP stack itself with DECADES of refinement behind it...) AND THUS they're REDUNDANT stupidity!

APK

P.S.=> Between UBlock origins inefficiency shortcomings which I've outlined MANY TIMES in detail here (as is the case with ALL inefficient redundant addons of adblocking nature) it's also seen the sheer VALUE of hosts - but it's NO RESOLVER & thus you don't get the benefits of more anonymity vs. tracking @ DNS or CDN levels, or MORE SPEED via hardcoded host-domain names where you spend most time online @ the TOP of hosts cached in RAM operating in kernelmode speed, OR more reliability vs. DNS redirect poisoning (of which 99.999% of ISP DNS are NOT PATCHED against mind you) or downed dns too... apk

You again? Bah, "Mr. Google Engineer" (kid)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Cite? I've seen no evidence of that." -

Want citation proof? You've GOT it bullshitter -> CITATIONS (50++% of users are blocking ads & growing):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2..." ADD_DATE="1445001134

http://games.slashdot.org/stor...

(Want MORE? I've got them - "EAT YOUR WORDS" boy... rookie noob pr plant that you are obviously!)

AND

Then there's cfalcon (& tons of users here doing the same) telling you what he did + MY technical reponse to him as well http://apple.slashdot.org/comm... that YOU are MORE THAN WELCOME to *TRY* to "take me down" on... trust me:

I'LL EAT YOU ALIVE & SHIT YOU RIGHT OUT just as I have here above "Mr. Citation" bigshot (not) "Google Engineer"... bank on it AND here too also today http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

Lastly:

I strongly suspect you're INTENTIONALLY playing "ostrich with your head in the sand" BOY!

(You're full of bullshit - you're just being a "paid for" & commenting for your company trolling shill - "that doesn't happen"? Listen BOY - I worked for companies that are HUGE in the telecom industry in my time @ NOC levels - lower level folks in them are TOLD TO NOT COMMENT ON THE COMPANIES' article on news sites under penalty - they send in "special people" like YOU I suspect to do so, with PUREST BULLSHIT - I stomp on FOOLS like you constantly (even taking down the likes of Dr. Mark Russinovich in my time on memory use + bugs in his wares (for attacking ME first)) - who are YOU by comparison? NOBODY - I was doing this stuff when you were in diapers I'd strongly wager & EXCELLING @ it!)

APK

P.S.=> Fact: You're GOING DOWN boy, just like Google your "master" pulling YOUR STRINGS (due to your bs pr 'spinwork' boy) -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

Pagefair shows quite otherwise... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertising online is getting the SHIT knocked out of it https://blog.pagefair.com/2015... and rightfully so for infesting us with malware due to the STUPIDITY & NEGLIGENCE of advertisers!

* Me? I decided to do something about it that's far more effective than ANY OTHER MEASURE OUT THERE -> http://apple.slashdot.org/comm... that IS NOT CLARITYRay BLOCKABLE like browser addons either & does FAR MORE for FAR LESS in resources consumed vs. threats online of most all kinds also besides adblocking to get users more speed, security, reliability & even anonymity online (vs. tracking).

APK

P.S.=> Beat THAT with a stick (while it helps beat the shit out of negligent GREEDY useless advertisers online) - ok? Good Luck - nobody here ever has... or elsewhere either! apk

Pagefair also infected 500 sites... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Over 500 sites were infected by them delivering malware http://digiday.com/publishers/... even major sites like the Economist http://www.economist.com/help/...

APK

P.S.=> It's why I created my hosts file program... apk