I was intrigued by the question: Is Apple a victim of its own success? To whom should I turn for an authoritative answer on the topic, if not my old friend Google.
The direct approach, "apple is a victim of its own success" returns only 35 hits. But plugging in the more general search term, Apple * "victim of its own success", yields 4,700 hits, and includes pages with the fragments "Apple is apparently the victim of its own success," "Apple could become the victim of its own success," "Apple may be becoming a victim of its own success," and "Let's see if 1996 is the year that Apple finally becomes a victim of its own success".
Obviously, the X * "victim of its own success" format is going to tap more deeply into folk wisdom on this sort of topic -- so I was inspired to investigate web punditry's views of other
values for X. The obvious first choice was Windows, and the result was 8,580 hits. Microsoft only brought in 2,780 hits, Intel 2,670 hits, AOL 2,160 hits, Firefox 1,740 hits. Plugging in Cisco resulted in 1,630 hits, but for AMD it was a mere 943 hits. It's unclear whether that means that AMD is not a success or not a victim.
Other entities alleged to be, or in danger of becoming, victims of their own success include email (10,900 hits), the Internet (7,370 hits), the Euro (1,990 hits) and Walmart (1,430 hits). Interestingly, Hamas yielded only 160 hits, while America rated 24,300.
But among the 196,000 hits for a Google of the bare "victim of its own success" are a few surprises: Singapore, Crime Stoppers, Penthouse, Asperin, the Mediterranean, Australia, Google, the US Army, Netflix, RateMyKitten, Quebec's child care system, World of Warcraft, Japan, Net retailing, Pap smears, Half-Life 2, Monsanto's Roundup, Sun's mobile Java and many more.
Probably the only conclusion I could rightfully draw from this exercise is that the phrase "victim of its own success" is a badly overworked cliche.
Slashdot Mirror
I was intrigued by the question: Is Apple a victim of its own success? To whom should I turn for an authoritative answer on the topic, if not my old friend Google.
The direct approach, "apple is a victim of its own success" returns only 35 hits. But plugging in the more general search term, Apple * "victim of its own success", yields 4,700 hits, and includes pages with the fragments "Apple is apparently the victim of its own success," "Apple could become the victim of its own success," "Apple may be becoming a victim of its own success," and "Let's see if 1996 is the year that Apple finally becomes a victim of its own success".
Obviously, the X * "victim of its own success" format is going to tap more deeply into folk wisdom on this sort of topic -- so I was inspired to investigate web punditry's views of other values for X. The obvious first choice was Windows, and the result was 8,580 hits. Microsoft only brought in 2,780 hits, Intel 2,670 hits, AOL 2,160 hits, Firefox 1,740 hits. Plugging in Cisco resulted in 1,630 hits, but for AMD it was a mere 943 hits. It's unclear whether that means that AMD is not a success or not a victim.
Other entities alleged to be, or in danger of becoming, victims of their own success include email (10,900 hits), the Internet (7,370 hits), the Euro (1,990 hits) and Walmart (1,430 hits). Interestingly, Hamas yielded only 160 hits, while America rated 24,300.
But among the 196,000 hits for a Google of the bare "victim of its own success" are a few surprises: Singapore, Crime Stoppers, Penthouse, Asperin, the Mediterranean, Australia, Google, the US Army, Netflix, RateMyKitten, Quebec's child care system, World of Warcraft, Japan, Net retailing, Pap smears, Half-Life 2, Monsanto's Roundup, Sun's mobile Java and many more.
Probably the only conclusion I could rightfully draw from this exercise is that the phrase "victim of its own success" is a badly overworked cliche.