Respectfully, there’s a 1,000 word section in the middle about the fundamentally zero-sum nature of media and the competition for consumer eyeballs that I wrote to explain why the stunning success and growth of the mobile internet and walled garden apps is in fact a source of existential competition for Google and their open web.
Google’s share of consumer eyeballs, both direct on their own web properties & indirect via ads displayed on Web 2.0 sites, is smaller now than it was in 2012.
Of course, Google DID innovate. They spawned the modern AI industry. They just totally missed the boat on commercializing it, like many other ossifying monopolies before them.
That is exactly the thesis and the point of that whole section! I’m sorry you got downvoted for saying it, perhaps your tone was too blunt.
It’s not that Google was created as a monopoly with no competition — there’s a neat little graph about what happened to Yahoo in there! It’s that the experience of using Google and the Google suite was at its peak in their clear & unchallenged market leader phase.
One other axis of engagement is "topical relevance" -- and I think that does have some overlap with the axis of "effort put in". Meaning: putting a TON of effort into a long-form piece tends to relate to some original thought or framing you have. But a lot of people are explicitly looking for something, even if that something is an entertaining throwaway meme comment.
If you go too heavily down the "flesh out topic of deep personal interest", you can end up too far away from the "topic everyone wants to talk about on the internet today" stuff.
Sadly (or not!), I take great enjoyment fleshing out topics of deep personal interest, even when they have limited relevance to the topic du jour. If it were different, perhaps we'd be journalists or more mainstream authors.
OP didn't include any context here, but I frequently link this resource to friends! So allow me to pitch it to folks who come here first: reading a transcript is a bit odd at first, but there are so many unfiltered gems in here analyzing how to not just how to compete and win, but also how to improve and coordinate across teams and different work styles.
To the extent that your team is operating in a competitive environment & you like seeing how other domains beyond just Tech & basic self-help business books really build & maintain advantages, you'll get a lot out of reading this.
I've also found it applies wonderfully to competitive videogames, but I'm not sure that's as relevant to this forum.
If winning is not your primary objective, this may not be as interesting to you.
i toss and turn all night and this thing stays on most of the time, is incredibly comfortable, and i am so grateful i received it as a gift (would never have bought for self)
Agreed. Don't forget the massive implosion of the real estate market 30 years ago that turned a whole generation off of buying property and bankrupted vast swathes of the population.
Said "breathless articles" usually just grab some "rate of price increase" chart benchmarked to the most severe recession in recent decades and start celebrating just because Tokyo also has good housing policy. But in trying to advocate for good policy elsewhere, they just end up championing national recession, international stagnation, depressed wage growth, and more.
quoting the penultimate paragraph (why are the relevant bits always buried?)
> Analyzing a 2008 survey conducted by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, he noted that one-third of respondents described a jump from 750 to 770 on the math portion of the SAT as having a significant effect on a student’s chances of admissions, and this was true among counselors at more and less selective schools alike. Even a minor score improvement for a high-achieving student, then—and one that falls within the standard measurement error for the test—can make a real difference.
Your link literally says:
- test prep improves scores
- most conservative possible study suggests ~25 point bump in score
- college admission stats show this matters for many applicants
???
the fact that the piece ALSO says, later on:
> students who have a mean score on the math portion of the SAT around 450. According to the same admissions counselor survey, a 20-point improvement to a score in this range would have no practical meaning for students who are trying to get into more selective schools
and no kidding. 450 on either section is clearly not suitable for a college experience at a "selective school." You're expected to do multivariable calc during MIT's freshman year, regardless of major. 450 on math SAT means you can't do algebra.
Google’s share of consumer eyeballs, both direct on their own web properties & indirect via ads displayed on Web 2.0 sites, is smaller now than it was in 2012.
Of course, Google DID innovate. They spawned the modern AI industry. They just totally missed the boat on commercializing it, like many other ossifying monopolies before them.