Slashdot Mirror
Established Players in Tech Industry Are Displaced By New Technologies and Companies Often When They Are Operating At Their Peak (learningbyshipping.com)
In a column, Steven Sinofsky, former President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, cites various examples from the past to suggest that it is often when incumbents in technology space have established market dominance that new startups rise and displace them: While the tech incumbents are clearly generating massive revenue and profits, nearly all of this comes from products developed long ago. In fact, as we now know in hindsight, it is exactly when conventional wisdom conflates today's economic success with forward-looking product innovation that seeds are being planted for the next massive wave of innovation. Google was formed at time when the incumbents of AOL and even Yahoo were stronger than ever. Facebook came just after the dot com bubble burst. Even the reincarnation of Apple took place after the bubble burst with products being developed as the bubble peaked. And for what it is worth, the PC ecosystem, particularly Windows, was relatively "flat" mired in Windows Vista while Firefox dominated and Google Chrome was appeared (Windows 7 wouldn't come out for a year after Chrome). In the infrastructure space, the seeds were planted for both AWS and VMWare in the shadow of the dot com bubble. In an historical context it is highly likely that the next wave of innovation in new technologies and new companies will happen right under the noses of big companies operating at what the public markets think of as peak (earnings) potential.
Google didn't displace AOL, they produced a search engine that was better than anything around. That gradually blew past the competition over a period of years. Facebook is only cited as an example because (coincidentally) it was successful. There were thousands of failures during the same time period. Any of them could have been used as an "example" here, but they failed, so they didn't make it into the article.
If there is something in this, it is not one of cause and effect. It is down to timing and cherry-picking examples that support the author's thesis.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
unlike the working class. Once in a while things move faster than they can keep up, e.g. the dawn of the Internet. But for the most part they keep a lid on this kind of 'disruptive' tech. Right now the solution is to keep all the money for themselves (re:Apple and their $650 billion in cash) and then use it here and there to buy any and all potential start ups. The upcoming corporate tax cut in America is going to exacerbate this as companies have a ton of cash but not a lot worth spending it on. R&D, let us remember, is mostly done by the government.
We shouldn't be surprised. This is the essence of what it means to be "conservative". It means to push back against change. It's just nobody ever seems to question the actual motive of that particular ideology. It's always simple time this and when things were better that. Never a word about how it just so happens the ideology favors the establishment over new players.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Err, that'll be a bit obvious then wont it. Wonder headline!
All the lost things are found in the last place you look.
Lets say your company is doing well, but has a slight pullback, losing 10% of your market share and you are now the #2 player, then a startup comes out of nowhere to take over the entire industry.
People don't talk about how the startup beat the guy that USED to be #1 and is now #2. Instead they talk about the startup beating the guy that just made it to #1 spot after 10 years of hard work.
In fact it's almost physically impossible for someone to create a disruptive technology without taking out the #1 player - it's just not disruptive if your tech only makes you #2. And if you are #1, then OF COURSE you are at your peak. Unless the economy is in a downward spiral, the #1 guy has to be at his peak.
That's like saying the wow, the best scorer in the league is having a good year. He would not be the best scorer if he wasn't having a good year.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
medium is always contentless drivel, skip it
Don't tell me merry Christmas. I celebrate Kwanza. If you say merry Christmas, I'll bash your face in.
Sinofsky restates well-known book by Clayton Christensen written in 1997. News at 11:00?
What I would have always wanted is a viable alternative to Windows. But where is it? Why wasn't Windows replaced by a competitor at its peak? Truly ironic that this prophesying emanates from Microsoft.
I don't like Muslims, I don't like Jews. They both are disgusting because they eat poos
If only authors didn't overuse buzzwords and sound like marketing drivel.
More importantly, we need something other than trident/edge, gecko and blink (webkit) to emerge and become competitive. There is Goanna (Pale Moon/Basilisk, minuscule market share) and Servo (only experimental tech), but we need something really new, to counter HTML5's ad tracking, coin mining and encrypted media extensions. To make a geek friendly experience in a net neutral way.
That's the beauty of words. But it doesn't change the fact that a lot of very powerful people are using the sentiment behind your words to maintain and expand their wealth and power, more often than not at your expense and the expense of the entire working class.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"Established Players in Tech Industry Are Displaced By New Technologies and Companies Often When They Cooperate With Law Enforcement"
... Facebook, I'm OK with it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
that if you call yourself conservative but then support progressive policies, well, you're not conservative, are you? Similarly if you call yourself conservative but favor rolling back to the 1600s then, well, you're changes are so radical you're not really conservative anymore. One of the most conservative politicians in our time is, oddly, Hillary Clinton. She'd have left everything as it; at most tweaking things just a hair and only really doing that to maintain status quo elsewhere. It was one of the reasons folks hated her with a passion. There are very, very few 'real' conservatives. e.g. folks who don't want change. What I see mostly are people who want to make a better world (the Bernie Sanders crowd) and people who want to profit as much as they can from that world (the Donald Trump crowd). In the middle you've got Hillary Clinton and Mitt Rhomney.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Motorola and Nokia - milked their cash cows to long. Iridium helped sink Mot. Nokia still has infrastructure.
to leave to the free market. It's not a twinkie. You can't shop around for a heart transplant. Also, if you need it you _need_ it. Meaning the person selling it to you has a ton of leverage. And no, it's not doctors selling it to you, it's the for profit insurance industry. Speaking of which, in what kind of healthy industry do you have a situation where the person selling you a product does everything it can to avoid delivering it? None, the answer is none.
We don't need a gov't take over of healthcare, but we do need a gov't take over to _pay_ for healthcare. Single payer is the only rational system that isn't just dog eat dog, winner take all.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Court-declared monopolist declares that monopolies, in effect, do not exist, or are at least irrelevant. Stay tuned in the next half hour to hear prognostications about the color of the sky.
Breakfast served all day!
For big tech companies, acqui-hires and copying of start up tech something big conventional companies can't do. Changing a product lineup or adding features for physical products or other established services is difficult. For a tech company, introducing new features is second nature, see Snapchat and Facebook for example.
Big tech companies leverage their market dominance such that new startups need an increasingly high bar to vault to complete.
I don't read AC
I know there will be VB flames, but multi-year 10s of thousands of production code becomes #2 when idiots like Sinofsky delete the most popular programming language of its day to force you to rewrite/architect it in V0.0 of a new environment called .NET. The made sure I will never depend on Microsoft technology going forward. This is why they got overtaken.
By definition, from a "peak" there is nowhere to go but down.
And for what it is worth, the PC ecosystem, particularly Windows, was relatively "flat" mired in Windows Vista while Firefox dominated and Google Chrome was appeared (Windows 7 wouldn't come out for a year after Chrome). - Steven Sinofsky, former President of the Windows Division at Microsoft
Former Microsoft Executive Does Not Know the Difference Between a Browser and an Operating System
Are you upset that MS moved away from VB? Very brave to say that here, prepare for massive flaming
I sit next to two team members who loathe VB, and are using it by choice to solve problems and increase productivity in meaningful ways, rather than use tools that are too expensive to justify.
Complain all you want, VB does work. Still. Right tool for the job, my friend. Whatever it is.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
existing companies lose business when challenged by newer ones. uh, yeah, that's when their business slides. and that is when the peak ends. you've got to get up pretty early in the afternoon to fool me with that other reading of the data.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Google started when Yahoo was strong. Facebook started post-bubble when everyone was weak. The PC/Windows started something when everything was flat. What trend?