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Ask Slashdot: Which Businesses Will Go Away In the Next 10 Years? (nbcnews.com)

AmiMoJo writes: Ten years ago NBC published a list of business types that it predicted would disappear in the following decade. Ten years later and we can see how good their fortune telling was. What businesses do you think will go away by 2027? Who is destined to become the next buggy whip manufacturer, whose demand dried up due to changing technology and a changing world?

For reference, NBC's list was: Record stores; Camera film manufacturing; Crop dusters; Gay bars; Newspapers; Pay phones; Used bookstores; Piggy banks; Telemarketing; Coin-operated arcades.

27 of 495 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    just kidding, lighten up

    1. Re:Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why not? The quality of the community and articles is not what it was. It keeps getting passed around from company to company. It is just one corp org away form shutting down. What is left is a very loyal community. But not one that probably earns whoever owns it right now much money.

    2. Re:Slashdot by RhettLivingston · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Sadly, when was the last time the "slashdot effect" was actually observed to cause a virtual DOS attack due to a link from slashdot as opposed to some other site?

    3. Re:Slashdot by Megane · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They can't even get the comment thresholds to work anymore. They've been broken for months, I can't save any changes I make to them and have to drag the sliders every time I open a new article.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    4. Re: Slashdot by Megane · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Or you could, you know, create an account and log in? The posting thresholds are effectively gone when you post with a username. Only when I use the "Post Anonymously" checkbox do I have to deal with the posting limits.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    5. Re:Slashdot by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Slashdot much like your own body continually dies. You know your are dying as we post, countless dead cells haunting your carcass to be replaced by new cells, you have continually died and reborn since you were first conceived. So as for slashdot, people will move on, newcomers will join, some will hung around till the day they die. The open exchange of ideas around the geek/nerd news of that day. Tearing it apart, putting it back together in new ways just because and injecting new ideas back into the human gestalt in affect programming the AI that is the internet. Slashdot certainly continually changes over time.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    6. Re: Slashdot by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 4, Informative

      Logged in you can only post once per minute, and if you are above a certain amount per day, every 5 minutes.
      And there is a maximum of posts per day, 25 or 50, don't remember.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    7. Re:Slashdot by admin7087 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'd say the exact opposite is true. The majority of reasonable people interested in tech news stopped posting or left years ago - e.g. to various subreddits and hacker news, or no forum at all to save time - and the many newcomers from the past five years or so are messing up moderation and the submitters have turned Slashdot in some kind of political opinion and household gadget slashvertisement site. And a large army of AC trolls appeared. I used to come here to learn about things like kernel development, satellite communication, or grey hat hacking, and noways people on /. seriously discuss whether "Alexa" is an operating system.

      What you are experiencing seems to be due to changes to the mod point algorithm after the last ownership change. I believe it was designed to keep the trolls at bay and it works to some extent.

      (Disclaimer: I've lurked on Slashdot since its beginnings and posted very actively about ten years ago, under various accounts and user names that are long gone.)

  2. Mozilla will likely disappear before Google. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think it'd be far more likely for Mozilla to disappear long before Google does.

    Firefox is the only product of Mozilla's that really sees much use, and even it's losing market share. The latest browser stats show it has only about 5% of the market now, and essentially no presence in the mobile market (0.04%!).

    If I'm not mistaken, their search deal with Yahoo expires in 2019. Given Yahoo's state, and Firefox's almost non-existent market share, I wouldn't be optimistic about it being extended.

    After that, the rest of Mozilla's products could, in my opinion, be seen as failures, including Persona, Firefox OS, Rust, Servo, Thunderbird, and Pocket. I can't really see how any of them help bring in revenue.

    What's their greatest accomplishment as of late? Obfuscating their logo into "moz://a"!

    I think the future looks very bleak for Mozilla.

    1. Re:Mozilla will likely disappear before Google. by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 5, Informative

      I doubt it. Remember that Google Chrome literately stole Safari and rebranded it Chrome

      Were you born retarded, or were you just kicked in the head by a horse later in life?

      The only thing Chrome shares in common with Safari is that older versions of Chrome used the same rendering engine as Safari called Webkit. Webkit itself was a fork of KHTML (of the Konquerer web browser,) which was written by KDE. Google, at one time, made the majority of the contributions to Webkit to support a lot more HTML5/CSS features. Google then forked only the WebCore component of Webkit because they wanted to support sandboxing, deprecate vendor tags, and use a multi-process model. This fork became the Blink rendering engine that other browsers besides Chrome use, such as Opera and Vivaldi.

      Ever since Google stopped contributing to Webkit, Apple has been developing it at a snail's pace, just like IE6 back in the day, making Safari the lowest common denominator, which is pissing off a lot of developers. Perhaps because Apple wants users on their app store (read: $$$) rather than on the web? Pretty much the same motivation Microsoft had (Microsoft literally circulated an internal memo describing the web as a threat to its cash cow, Windows.)

    2. Re:Mozilla will likely disappear before Google. by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Informative

      You got most of that right, but one important correction: Chrome had a multiprocess model years before they ever forked Blink from WebKit, and WebKit already had a multiprocess model by the time Blink was forked.

      Backing up a bit, years and years prior to the split, Google baked a multiprocess model into Chromium, rather than WebKit. This gave Chrome a major competitive advantage over Safari and other browsers that relied on WebKit. Apple, of course, wanted to have a multiprocess model as well, so they later baked it directly into WebKit, but it was a significant enough departure that they forked it as WebKit 2. As you’d expect, Google didn’t contribute much (anything?) towards WebKit 2 since it wasn’t compatible with their existing multiprocess model, and, as you’d expect, Apple’s contributions towards WebKit dried up as they focused on WebKit 2. Making things even more interesting, WebKit 2 was a buggy mess for quite awhile, so Apple itself didn’t even adopt it in Safari for Mac or iOS immediately, and Google would have had even less reason to adopt it.

      Google’s eventual forking of Blink from WebKit was really the natural conclusion to the choice Apple had made years earlier when they forked WebKit 2, which was itself the natural next step after Google decided to keep its multiprocess model to itself, which was itself the natural next step after Apple left such a glaring hole in WebKit’s architecture, and so on and so in.

    3. Re: Mozilla will likely disappear before Google. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Of course.

      Or how would you deal with several email addresses?

      Opening each of them in a browser window, each of them with a different GUI?

      Oh, shudder ...

      And yes, I even use POP, as I want all my mails and mailboxes on my local machine and not somewhere on a server.

      How would I search for some mail stuff in an air plane if my mails would be on a server?

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    4. Re:Mozilla will likely disappear before Google. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Google then forked only the WebCore component of Webkit because they wanted to support sandboxing

      Except that Google supported sandboxing in a crappy way. Apple implemented sandboxing in WebKit, so every application that uses WebKit gets the benefit. For example, when you view an HTML email in Apple Mail, it's rendered in a separate process that has no network or filesystem access, and the changes to enable this amount to about 4 lines of code (basically, opt into this behaviour and promise that you won't use any of the deprecated APIs that it breaks). In contrast, Chrome puts the sandboxing in the browser, so anyone using Blink has to implement their own sandboxing layer.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  3. Re:gas stations by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I suspect that's more on the 30 year timeframe, as I still see cars built in the 1980s and 1990s on the road, and only the rich can afford electric so far.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  4. buggy whips are in an uptick (10 things) by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now, admittedly, they may not be used for the same thing as they originally were, but the market is increasing.

    I'd tend to say the following:

    1. Repair stations (not tire shops) - electric cars and trucks need about half as much maintenance and a lot of it is instrument driven. A good way to diversify is add bike repairs to one of your bays, or a chai/bubble tea store.

    2. Single gender bathrooms in retail. Most places can't really afford having separate facilities, so you'll probably see most places just have a room with both fixtures. Exception: bars, restaurants.

    3. Fear based local TV news. Unhappy, scared people don't buy stuff. And TV is mostly dead.

    4. Food delivery and prepackaged meal delivery services. Those that survive will transition to restaurant delivery. Uber will vaporize as drones replace on demand delivery.

    5. Furniture places. 2025-2035 will see most people getting smaller places and getting rid of large furniture. Exception: couches, chairs. Best to diversify into Tiny Home style furniture that incorporates storage into the furniture (dual use furniture).

    6. Expensive spicy food places. As Americans age into retirees they will start wanting to go to diner type places. This won't kill ethnic foods, but a lot of current restaurants will suddenly lose foot traffic, as retirees don't eat out that much. Nobody will miss them.

    7. Parking garages. The combination of on demand self driving vehicles, more retirees, more cyclists, more pedestrians, and quiet electric transit will kill off a lot of parking garages and the attached malls. Nobody will miss them, except us skateboarders.

    8. Single family home lawn supplies. Lawns will be replaced by gardens and more people will live in multi-family towers next to green parks. But plants will be in high demand for the apartments and decks. Tiny greenhouses too.

    9. Cell phone stores. The 2025-2035 period will see ubiquitous self-powered wifi devices (like ST comms badges) that run off incidental radiation, and attach to clothes (either as sleeves, belts, broaches, or necklaces. This will save jewelry stores, of course.

    10. Wallets. See 9 above. The new devices will mostly replace wallets and purses. People will wear nifty gem sacks at their belts, in which they store their coins (see how Canada does dollars, or Euro coins).

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    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  5. Re:Not prophetic, but very accurate by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article's headline said that these were businesses "facing extinction in ten years." In reality, very few (if any) of the businesses they identified actually are extinct.

    Within the article, they did include weasel language under almost every single item to the effect that "it will be around, but their business will decline." Of course, if they had headlined their article "10 businesses that will decline in the next 10 years," nobody would have given it a second glance.

    --

    How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
  6. Lobbyists by Pseudonym · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just kidding. Lobbying will be a growth industry for the next decade at least.

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    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  7. Uber! by manu0601 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What company will disapear? Uber! You cannot loose money on every trip forever.

  8. Youtubers by gosand · · Score: 3, Funny

    Please, for the love of the gods, please let this stop being a profession.

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    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  9. Re:Immigration Lawyer by bruce_the_moose · · Score: 3, Insightful

    All the people trying to get the fuck out

    --
    To reduce crime, make fewer things against the law.
  10. Hookers by jwhyche · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If the facebook has its way with virtual reality then the worlds oldest business will vanish. Cross physical feed back with AI then things get ... creepy.

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    I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  11. Re:Not prophetic, but very accurate by darkain · · Score: 4, Informative

    In fact, some of those are actually on a massive rise due to recent retro trends. Arcades and more specifically Barcades are popping up all over the place now. Film cameras are as of 2017 just starting to make a retro comeback as well. Used book stores seem to be doing just fine, too. Amazon only killed off retailers, not the second hand market. In fact, vinyl records also has a surge going on right now. So like almost half their list is currently being fueled by nostalgia into new market territory.

  12. Re:Easy one by lord_mike · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm sure this is meant half jokingly, but American football as a whole is in trouble. Schools are starting to shut down their programs due to lack of interest. Parents, worried about their kids' brain health, are pushing them to play other sports. In time, the talent dropoff will be dramatic enough to significantly affect big college and pro football.

    The decline for the NFL has accelerated much faster than expected. The league's necessary adjustments for safety has made the game less interesting to watch and the recent anthem "controversies" are not helping. Attendance and viewership is down. The decline has already started and doesn't look like it will abate soon. Think that football is too big to fail? 80 years ago Boxing was the #1 sport in America. Look at the state of boxing today.

  13. No. by quantaman · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dammit, that didn't make any sense.

    I guess it's time to close up shop on my Betteridge's law of headlines auto-responder consultancy.

    At least business is booming at my Poe's Law-firm.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  14. Re:Google by Z00L00K · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope more for Facebook to go away.
    Microsoft has had its peak, but will probably not go away.
    Oracle is at larger risk. it's big and bulky with an unclear business strategy.
    Several cloud service providers are at risk.
    Some ISPs with bad customer treatments.
    Analog land lines are already dying in bulk.
    Trumps real estate business is probably at risk.
    Apple - past Jobs the vision is gone.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  15. Re:Not prophetic, but very accurate by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Don't over-estimate how big those revivals are though. Vinyl only looks like it is selling in significant volume because no-one buys music on physical media any more. CD sales are way, way down in the last decade, as are music sales in general thanks to streaming.

    I was surprised to see camera shops trying to make a comeback. There is a chain in the UK called Jessops, which had a pretty terrible reputation for being an over-priced hard-sell rip-off even back in the day. They all closed and a low grade celebrity businessman bought the name, and is trying to bring them back. But everything in there is still twice the price you can get it on online, and with online sales you have more consumer rights.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  16. Re:Not prophetic, but very accurate by urdak · · Score: 3, Informative

    Record stores have bounced back

    No they haven't! I have in my collection 1000 (!) CDs which I bought over the years. I used to go into record stores a lot and continuously buy more of them. But *all* the record stores I frequented have closed. When I go to shopping malls all over the world, I no longer see record stores, and don't have any opportunity to buy new CDs. The last CD I bought was a year ago, when I visited some old shopping mall and was thrilled to see a CD store, and was so thrilled that I immediately bought 3. But apparently, I'm the only one. People don't even know what to do with physical CDs any more: you can't physically stick it into your music-play phone, and the music and movie industry succeeded too well in demonizing people who "rip" their CDs and DVDs to files.

    photographic film has bounced back

    Maybe in your alternate universe :-) Nobody I know used photographic film in more than a decade. Maybe some art fans are still using it, but that's 0.01% of the market share it used to have.

    telemarketing is (I'm sad to say) still going strong.

    That I agree.