Amazon, Facebook and Google can all be beaten(medium.com)

202 pointsby monsieurpng9년 전194 comments

Amazon, Facebook and Google can all be beaten

https://medium.com/lightspeed-venture-partners/why-amazon-facebook-and-google-can-all-be-beaten-f2b3ee48feaf

201 comments

I think the most surprising vulnerability for Google is web search. Google has been pushing away from web search for years now, with moves like AMP, vertical searches and quick answers that keep you on their domain.

If you look at the mission statement for their search team it is now something like "answer your questions" - which is great 90% of the time, but what no longer exists (with most people not realizing) is a good general search engine for the WEB, meaning the collection of websites out there.

There is no longer a sense of serendipity or of finding a cool new website, and maybe finding web pages on the web is just a nostagic thing with no real benefit, but there's no doubt that Google has moved away from that as real objective. The reality is that the web has become overwhelmed by listicles and minimum pages that go one inch past Google's definition of spam, but otherwise muck up the web. It would be amazing for a search engine to sift past all that cruft and low-effort material to find actually interesting and unique content.

In a way, simply by not being Google is already an advantage because everyone is catering to Google. If you use a different standard you can easily get different results - it's just a matter if those would be useful for anyone? Everyone mostly wants to see the "right" answer and Google has conditioned us to expect it.

tspike9년 전

If someone nailed discussion search, I'd have no use for Google for 90% of my searching. As it is, most of my searches are a series of:

site:<reddit/ycombinator/stackoverflow/tripadvisor/random niche forum.com> "something someone interested in the same question/topic would say"

.. all in an attempt to filter over-commercialized bullshit. There's an opportunity here for a startup to capture an audience hungry for real information and leverage them into becoming the next hub for over-commercialized bullshit.

ehnto9년 전

That's been the most annoying part of search for a while now. Most searches result in hyper commercialised results, with SEO heavy sites winning out, and of course SEO heavy sites are going to be sites selling you stuff.

If you're searching for a real human's thoughts on a particular mountain bike for one example, it will be nothing but product pages. Add in the word Reviews and you get the productized review sites. Even searching for "Best trails in {my area}" gives me an ecommerce site's blog laden with product links and not-so-subtle sells.

Want to read a discussion about a book? Google will only show you product pages with review sections on the first page, on the next page the search results have already devolved into unrelated nonsense or spin sites.

It's hard to find the humans on the internet through all the commercial pages. I can't blame Google entirely of course, they are helped by the SEO industry's incessant bombardment in the 2010ish era that filled the web with so much pointless crap, and the ongoing efforts of e-commerce stores with deep pockets to be the only heard voice for particular subjects.

aero-0029년 전

I always go to reddit for that kind of stuff. Either site:reddit.com or !reddit on DuckDuckGo does the trick

QML9년 전

+1

Reddit is a pretty good source of quality reviews for products ranging from niche (mechanical keyboards) to mainstream (MacBooks).

wslh9년 전

Some communities on Reddit are incredible, I receive answers on critical stuff that is never answered in *stackexchange.com or where you suppose are more in topic places (AWS communities).

mark_l_watson9년 전

+1 reddit, DuckDuckGo and HN make up the bulk of my web time. Otherwise I read books.

amelius9년 전

This raises the question why commercial interests haven't eroded the quality of Reddit already, like they have in the rest of the net?

rorykoehler9년 전

The issue here is that the same companies who can afford good SEO can afford Google Adwords. While a search engine that can find you non-commercial information would be very useful it is, un-ironically, very hard to find a commercially viable business model for such a service. The profit incentive that needs to be attached to everything in a our current commercialist world really narrows the scope of feasibility for potentially cool services.

Buge9년 전

Why can't you provide search results of reddit and HN threads while also serving commercial ads in an ad section?

elorant9년 전

Because then no one will click on the ads. If what you need is in the organic results why bother with ads?

Buge9년 전

Why do people click on ads anyways? How would ads on those search results be any worse performing that ads in google search results?

putonyourshoes9년 전

Hey, I work on Google search. For any of the search queries you mentioned, would you be able to share examples of webpages you would have rather seen in the results?

speedplane9년 전

Search just about any health related query, the vast majority are pure snake-oil salesmen. Product reviews basically either point to CNet or some relatively trusted source, or if they don't, they point to complete garbage. Try looking for any public records, most bring you to "people search" websites that trick users into thinking they do more than they do. Searching for anything historical brings up wikipedia, and if your lucky, some google books results, which is good, except that Google stopped scanning books. I could go on. It seems like Google is fine at picking the major trusted sources that everyone knows about, but is really bad at differentiating smaller quality sources from spammers. I mostly use Google as my Wikipedia/StackOverflow search machine. I usually find better material searching the references of a wikipedia article.

WalterBright9년 전

> except that Google stopped scanning books

That's really a shame (and an opportunity for someone else).

speedplane9년 전

If you want a specific example, here's one that came up in the news recently. Try searching for "rasberry ketones", a nutritional supplement. It's filled with hyper tuned SEO pages with very little content. Many suggest they are informational, but are really article/adverts tuned for search engines. Even those that appear on ostensibly legit websites have ridiculously click-baity titles like "What They Don’t Want You to Know About Raspberry Ketones", which in my mind raises red flags that BS is ahead.

If you read a newspaper, you clearly know when someone is trying to sell you something, but on Google search, you don't. I don't mind being marketed to, but I would like to know when I'm marketed to, and the vast majority of google results are organic search marketing.

smsm429년 전

Interestingly, I just searched for it and the results are:

DDG: 1. WebMD 2. Walmart 3. examine.com 4. Wikipedia 5. Amazon 6. some site apparently dedicated to r.k. 7. livescience.com 8. some webshop 9. HuffPo with the clickbait title you mentioned 10. Some kind of webmd clone

Google: 1. WebMD 2. healthline.com 3. examine.com 4. Dr. Axe (no idea what this is but doesn't seem to be purely spam) 5. livescience.com 6. Wikipedia 7. HuffPo clickbait 8. Some kind of webshop 9-10. Amazon

I wouldn't say it all spam, though there are questionable sites in top 10, but there are also a number of legit ones.

I note though "rasberry ketones" is not a correct spelling, it should be "raspberry". Maybe that's the reason you've got bad results?

putonyourshoes9년 전

Interesting, thanks. Did you ever manage to find better-quality material on raspberry ketones that you think should have been in the search results instead?

speedplane9년 전

Yes, I did, although it took quite some time.

putonyourshoes9년 전

Would you mind sharing a link or two?

golemotron9년 전

> Hey, I work on Google search. For any of the search queries you mentioned, would you be able to share examples of webpages you would have rather seen in the results?

No, because you don't show them to us.

MrQuincle9년 전

Search for example on "deep learning". Results:

+ nice: open books (deeplearningbook.org)

+ not nice: online seminars (udemy, udacity, edx)

+ not nice: wikipedia copycats (investopedia)

+ not nice: SEO optimized business analytics sites recognizable by their top 10 this, top 20 that (kdnuggets)

+ not nice: commercial software (mathworks)

+ not nice: big companies hitchhiking on buzzwords (sas)

What would be nice are websites and people that are often linked from HN. For example http://www.inference.vc rather than sas. Or https://distill.pub/ rather than investopedia. Or https://www.tensorflow.org rather than mathworks. If good sites are showing up in the top results more often, there will also be more incentive to keep up the good work as well.

smn12349년 전

why doesn't google search implement downvoting / upvoting search results? I never understood this...

what if human judgement was better than the AI powering the results indexing, for particular keywords that don't seem to be machine learned well enough

mooreds9년 전

From waht I've read, they do implement voting of a kind, by measuring clicks (and considering that a 'vote') and time on the result page (if you immediately hit 'back' and click on another link, you obviously weren't satisfied).

indiv09년 전

If you think human judgement is going to deliver truly good content, then you either haven't been introduced to the concepts of "clickbait" and "the reddit frontpage".

smn12349년 전

Hacker News works just fine ?

falcolas9년 전

For incredibly specific topics. The number of topics which don't make it to the front page, or which are flagged off the front page, is pretty large.

wolco9년 전

If I am searching from a country google endpoint please show more results from that countries' domain.

tspike9년 전

Signal to noise on the defunct Google Discussions search was much, much higher.

beagle39년 전

Better delineation between commercial results vs. noncommercial results; Where by "commercial", I mean a web page whose primary purpose is to sell me something. (Yes, HN is there to sell me on ycombinator, but as long as there's no credit card involved within 5 pages of following the description, it's probably on the "informative" side)

It's an easy distinction to make for a human, I'm sure Google's omniscient AI can easily be trained to make that distinction. And it would also work in Google's favor, at least with respect to users who do not have ad blockers - if (as a general rule or thanks to explicit user choice) "commercial pages" are demoted, the google ads become more valuable.

propogandist9년 전

what results were before Google got rid of the discussion filter -- namely blogs, forums, and communities

these are all hidden from most search results and consumers are now forced to settle for SEO optimized trash results, rather than discussions

inopinatus9년 전

This is why I abandoned Google search too. The results are just so spammy. But like any dinosaur, it'll be a long time until the head notices you kicked it in the tail.

I have abandoned other Google services as well now. Firefox is now my preferred browser for development. Apple Maps is good for navigation. Gmail I still use, as one notch above mailinator: it's my dumping ground for unwelcome mandatory site signup. All the mail I want to receive is on Fastmail. Microsoft's office software is vastly better than G Suite. And so on.

I trust Google as much as I trust Facebook or any other advertising network: not at all, and I welcome and adopt alternatives.

doomlaser9년 전

I do a lot of Twitter searches for that kind of thing when I want raw feedback about a particular topic.

I've had a 't' custom search engine address bar hotkey for Twitter for years.

md2249년 전

Kind of interesting how searching social network content can often be more useful than searching the entire Internet.

Edit: makes me wonder if the web is evolving in the direction of more social/curated search, less global search

Trav59년 전

Yeah, social media is just too easy to use (and free). When people take the time to make a website, they often commercialize it, then it's not really a personal website anymore.

agumonkey9년 전

it's a bit sad how business replaces human activities... for lesser value in the end (except to the eyes of "jobmakers~")

how to avoid that ?

madisfun9년 전

> site:<reddit/ycombinator/stackoverflow/tripadvisor/random niche forum.com> "something someone interested in the same question/topic would say"

That's why I keep ddg.gg as my default search engine. Ctrl-K, and type:

!r "something"

!hn "something"

!so "something"

!ta "something"

And for some niche sites I submitted "bang" suggestions which were accepted.

Works great for technical search, e.g. !cppr for C++ reference.

In a rare case I need Google, I just add !g to my search.

dvddgld9년 전

I use the same kind of search for most of my searching. Does anyone have any tips to add to this?

e.g specific sites for any particular demands, or any other tricks

fosco9년 전

Filetype: is also a favorite of mine.

One thing to note when using filetype in bing by specifying xls it also catches other file extensions (xlsx) while google in my experience only would find xls.

Yes I use bing sometimes and especially when troubleshooting Linux error logs I find it parses a copy paste better. Just my experience. Important to note I do not use profiles.

dvddgld9년 전

Thanks for the tips! I need to try bing more often

tomashertus9년 전

I highly recommend to look for real examples on Google Hacking Database[1] for more tips & hacks. The audience of this site are mostly people looking to use google to find exploitable websites, but it shows techniques used to narrow your Google Search.

1. https://www.exploit-db.com/google-hacking-database/

dvddgld9년 전

Oh wow, thanks for the tip!

[deleted]9년 전

astonex9년 전

If you look at Naver Search in Korea, most of their search results focus on results from community discussion sites (called cafes), blogs, etc. instead of commercial websites.

elsewhen9년 전

https://hn.algolia.com/

nine_k9년 전

I wonder what payment model so you envision for such a search. I mean, even if you're a nonprofit only caring about the benefit of humankind, you'll need to cover operations expenses.

tspike9년 전

I'd pay $20/month if it was actually good.

sharemywin9년 전

and how much would you pay for that search? Nothing because google has devalued it to zero because it subsidizes it with product and service search.

tspike9년 전

If it were a top notch product, I'd probably pay $20/month for it.

oliv__9년 전

>There is no longer a sense of serendipity or of finding a cool new website, and maybe finding web pages on the web is just a nostagic thing with no real benefit, but there's no doubt that Google has moved away from that as real objective

I've been working on a sort of "social network for links" for that exact purpose: I personally love finding cool new websites and links, and I just don't see that happening with modern search engines.

So I made Float[1]. I like to think of it this way: if Google is for search, then Float is for exploring.

Still pretty early but core features are here...let me know what you think!

[1] https://float.am

notduncansmith9년 전

That’s still there, but it’s not waning because of the search engines, it’s because more and more content is getting created within silos and walled gardens. Ain’t nothin’ the search engines can do about it either, except build decentralized search so that users can search from their own vantage point within the closed ecosystem, erasing the functional distinction between that and the open web for most users; but that may not provide sufficient short-term incentive for any corporation to make that play. If I had to bet on one it would be Apple.

m-i-l9년 전

> I think the most surprising vulnerability for Google is web search

Is web search still the main problem, now so much content has moved off the web and into apps and walled gardens? Could the big challenge for Google be a startup that somehow solves the problem of searching all of that content (assuming that is a problem which can be solved)?

agumonkey9년 전

3rd time this month some say this here (me included). The web shifted, it's not people putting out webpages, it's a market, Google was necessary to find its way in the jungle, but now it's a structured space, and google moved to other things.

Also, technology has spread all around, so you can have your own indexing/search ..

jglukasik9년 전

ICYMI, there was some discussion on HN two weeks ago[0] around https://wiby.me/

As opposed to a search engine that helps you find exactly what you're looking for, I see as wiby as more of a "serendipity engine" that helps you find what you weren't looking for.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15633361

vit059년 전

I think we will see a battle for DISCOVERY option. The search will be for things that you need an answer. But discovery is something bigger. Like when you click the Magnifying GlassIcon on Instagram, or you open Pinterest. They give you things that are randomly generated but is not exactly from people that you are following.

The best tool to suggest things that interest, that you need or want without collect too much personal information could kill all 3 with just one shot.

jpalomaki9년 전

From the article "A startup has no chance against the A team from an internet giant. But they should have a very strong chance against a C team"

I think this is the challenge for anybody trying to take on Google with internet search. Google makes most of its money from the search. They are probably smart enough to keep the "A team" assigned to this problem.

Hackers dislike the direction Google Search is taking, but I think they are trying to defend themselves against the competition. No startup can challenge Google on the hardcore internet search. Where they might be able to do that is providing direct answers to most of the questions. This is because for large part of the questions you don't need to index the whole web (just my gut feeling). Get data from Wikipedia, social media sites, price comparison engines etc. The problem becomes more of building partnerships than pure technical stuff.

[deleted]9년 전

sillysaurus39년 전

The reality is that the web has become overwhelmed by listicles and minimum pages that go one inch past Google's definition of spam, but otherwise muck up the web. It would be amazing for a search engine to sift past all that cruft and low-effort material to find actually interesting and unique content.

HN.

junkscience20179년 전

Google has 80% marketshare in search. This despite Microsoft pouring billions into Bing and hardwiring it into Windows.

Websearch has passed over the great divide and is now a utility. "Beating" Google in search is only half of it...without the advertising business, you can't survive long enough to show off your tech. Without the 80% mobile platform, you don't have a way of putting it in front of people when they need answers right away.

Of course this all assumes you can ACTUALLY build a better search...doubtful, Google may be evil but the search is still giving people what they want

Accept that 1998 is gone and that window has closed

adventured9년 전

> Accept that 1998 is gone and that window has closed

Inflection points are when giants get mauled. New houses with new windows get built, old windows don't get re-opened.

Amazon's echo and or whatever is coming next in AI is the biggest threat Google has ever faced. They've moved past the stage of being nimble, it'll take everything they've got to not get buried (at worst) or stagnated (most likely) in the shift. AI will fracture (is fracturing) and distribute search as a concept all over the place, constantly stealing microshare from the traditional search bar / page with every thing that has AI in it that people interact with. Google knows this, it makes them very desperate, they're still young enough to be very paranoid (the same reason they knew to go get Android, the iPhone caused a new inflection).

bambax9년 전

Agreed! Also, I don't quite understand this discussion. I'm very satisfied with Google search. True, sometimes you need to ask for "verbatim" results to prevent it from interpreting the terms of the query too much, and sometimes it's more efficient to restrict the search to some sites if you already know which ones are more likely to have an answer (which is, not often).

But Google works very well. Competitors like Bing, Duckduckgo, Qwant, etc. are really bad by comparison -- and I don't know what I would do better even if I had infinite ressources.

Search on a specific site is likewise much better on Google than on said site; if you want to find a family of products on Amazon it's much more efficient to search for it via Google images with site:amazon.com; same for Alibaba, etc. And those are companies that one imagines has the ressources to build good in-house search. Yet they don't, or can't.

jacksmith210069년 전

Same. I search I bet far more than the average person and find Google results just amazing in most cases. It is pretty rare I have to go even to the second page of links.

njarboe9년 전

I would pay at least $10 a month for a good search engine, like google when it first started. Maybe that web is gone, so it could not work, but in the old days one could copy almost any error message and get a great explanation of the problem. I bet at least a million other people would too. Maybe $10 million a month in revenue could support a user focused search engine?

Noos9년 전

Whenever anyone talks about business ideas, there's always some person that says "Oh, well I will pay so much for it!" and when you implement...they don't pay. That's probably been the downfall of many a web service when they realize its cheap for a person to say that they might pay so much for something, but hard for them to open their purse when it's time.

njarboe9년 전

I agree that the vast majority won't pay. 99% of people won't pay for news. 1% will pay for the WSJ or New York times. 0.001% pay $24,000 per year for a Bloomberg terminal. I think search engines could differentiate similarly. Maybe they have and I just don't know about the good paid options.

flamedoge9년 전

What's key to selling? Is it to pander to customer's wants? or make something so good to make it practically a need that money means little and customers will gamble?

perfmode9년 전

Google search earns over $138,000,000 per day. Best of luck outgunning them.

kelnos9년 전

You don't need to beat Google on revenue. You just need to make enough to cover costs and retain enough talent to keep improving your search engine.

justboxing9년 전

Source?

infogulch9년 전

Google made $79B from ad revenue in 2016[1]. $79B in a year / 365 days per year = 218M per day. So GP underestimated by quite a bit.

Or put another way: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=google+ad+revenue

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven...

(Brought to you by Google Search: so ubiquitous it has become it's own meme.)

lasc4r9년 전

is "making per day" profit or revenue?

gcatalfamo9년 전

Revenue

lasc4r9년 전

If I had a hot dog cart and sold $500 worth of hot dogs, but the hot dogs cost me $100, to me, that's not making $500.

junkscience20179년 전

that's hardly "beating" Google, or even DDG for that matter

WalterBright9년 전

People said the same thing about Microsoft Windows in the 1990s, and the same thing about IBM computers in the 1980s, etc., etc.

junkscience20179년 전

Microsoft has 80% desktop market share, a growing stock price, and a growing mountain of cash. If this is what being beaten looks like, sign me up for a beating.

IBM survived two world wars.

Products come and go, and no single company will own all profit streams.

jacksmith210069년 전

The context is search. Think by any measure Google has "beaten" MS in search. Would say the same in Mobile, browser, AI and a couple of other things. Can not think of anything Google had that MS took away.

WalterBright9년 전

The desktop has declined substantially in importance.

JustSomeNobody9년 전

> Accept that 1998 is gone and that window has closed

No.

[deleted]9년 전

csallen9년 전

> "…maybe finding web pages on the web is just a nostalgic thing with no real benefit, but there's no doubt that Google has moved away from that as real objective."

I can't think of an example where people en masse have stopped using something useful to replace it with something that provides "no real benefit".

lern_too_spel9년 전

You fundamentally don't understand AMP. I proactively choose AMP results over others. I prefer using Google to search for news because I know that (like the Bing app) it will show me fast-loading AMP results. DDG could serve news articles from its own AMP cache and remove that differentiator, but DDG seems to have simply ceded the "fast search" market to Google and Bing.

dingo_bat9년 전

Ironically the bing news page is several times faster to load than the google news page. The difference is more pronounced on mobile. I don't know why, but it's funny.

jacksmith210069년 전

Not my experience. But also Google gets news just up faster. Next time something big happens in the world try Bing and Google and you will see a big difference.

dingo_bat9년 전

> Not my experience.

It's not hard, click here: https://news.google.com/news/

Then click here: https://www.bing.com/news

Try it on your phone for an exaggerated experience.

Also, except breaking news, there is no difference I could find. Except that google news takes me to some annoying amp pages for some links.

lern_too_spel9년 전

Why is that ironic?

dingo_bat9년 전

Because Google news is notorious for using and promoting amp links, and the entire point of that is to load fast. But they lose to a simple non-amp webpage.

lern_too_spel9년 전

Google News itself is not an AMP page, nor does it promote AMP pages, as you claim.

As I pointed out in my original comment, Bing also uses an AMP cache and sends users to AMP pages from the Bing app, which is why saying that anything different about them is ironic makes little sense.

dingo_bat9년 전

> Google News itself is not an AMP page

OK, but it hacks the scrolling in the same way amp pages do. So I assumed it was amp.

> promote AMP pages, as you claim.

100% it promotes amp pages.

> Bing also uses an AMP cache and sends users to AMP pages from the Bing app

I am not talking about bing "app". I don't know if such a thing exists. I am talking about www.bing.com/news. Click that link and bask in the glory of blazing fast performance.

lern_too_spel9년 전

> I assumed it was amp.

That's the first of your problems.

> 100% it promotes amp pages.

When I go to Google News, there are no pages marked as AMP. In my original comment, I talked about AMP results in news searches on Google search, which do exist, just like in the Bing app. Those provide a better experience for me, and I suspect 99% of all users, than the AMP-less DDG results, which is why Google and Bing show them.

> I am not talking about bing "app". I don't know if such a thing exists.

https://blogs.bing.com/search/September-2016/bing-app-joins-...

You've demonstrated an even poorer understanding of AMP than the person I originally responded to.

whyagaindavid9년 전

AMP is both a data saver and avoids nagging'install our app' modal or redirect to play store.

toast09년 전

It is definitely possible to be better at web search than Google, but it's going to be hard to make a significant dent.

A) doing websearch well is expensive

B) doing websearch well consistently over time is very hard -- if you remember when Google started, about every 6 to 9 months a cool new websearch would come out, and 5 months later would be garbage. Google managed to buck that trend, mostly (it still goes through cycles of crap results)

C) even if you have the money to do it right, and consistently do it right, you have an uphill battle of market perception. Users will perceive Google results as better than yours, as long as they're marked as coming from google: even if the Google results are perceived as worse when compared to yours without branding.

I think filtering out crap, without filtering out the long tail of esoteric content sites would be key to getting better results. But you have to be prepared to play a long game on marketing and user acquisition.

speedplane9년 전

Bing has spent untold amounts of money on in-house development and buying up companies and they've barely made a dent. I'm sure there are various reasons for that, but it at least suggests that having smart people and lots of money is not sufficient to crack Google's monopoly.

WalterBright9년 전

Bing went after Google's center. The way to go after a dominant player is go after a market niche they are ignoring, then expand from there. See "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Christensen.

marcosdumay9년 전

Yep, great book to read. Read it and you will see that:

- You can't just take incumbents out of the market at will, there are some external conditions that must be right;

- Not every niche is the same, you must get the correct one;

- That is a completely inverted way to think about the problem. You first innovate (or lay plans to do so), then you start looking for niches your innovation fits.

If somebody really wants to try to apply "The Innovator's Dilemma" disruption onto Google, it's not a bad idea to look at posts asking "and how do you expect to monetize this?" on this thread, and try to answer that question.

jacksmith210069년 전

Easier said then done. MS spent billions and has not been able to create a competitive search engine even with many advantages over Google. It is the same with browsers and mobile.

joshvm9년 전

Amazon is in a weird place right now. In the recent past, Amazon was the place to get stuff online - cheaper than most places and Prime shipping was a big win. I don't think they're going anywhere, but there's still an awful lot of stuff you can't buy on there, or is difficult to find.

Now some departments are getting more like Etsy - a Shenzhen marketplace. This is good, because there's a lot of random stuff you can get that you don't need to import. It's also bad because it's virtually impossible to know what you should buy if you don't know the brand reputation (and that matters to you).

Take 'usb cable' for example, have a look: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias...

Brands include Rephoenix, Luoriz, Ugreen, Syncwire, RAVPower, Rankie, Benestellar, Onson, Jecent, Emmabin, Brightsnow, Maxteck, choetech, Volutz, Kinps, the list goes on. I got to page 3 before I gave up.

What about headphones? Mpow, OneOdio, BienSound, Alihen, Sephia, ZIYE, Sadon, OMORC, etc.

I'm genuinely curious as to when sellers decided that they must have a brand name for every product, and to hell with the meaning. It's like they all read those "how to sell on Amazon by importing" tutorials.

Even though deep down I know that they're probably just as good as anything you can buy on the high street, the sheer volume of random brands is really off-putting to me for some reason. A bigger problem is that you can miss stuff in the noise - e.g. if you didn't know that Anker have a good reputation, could you tell the difference from any of the other names in that list? Seller churn is also high, so it's not like you can rely on reviews either - that product might be gone in a month.

On a brighter note it really highlights how much you're being ripped off when you buy from a 'name brand' company that's just rebadging stuff from China.

justboxing9년 전

> the sheer volume of random brands is really off-putting to me for some reason

Your example of 'usb cable' is a very good one for highlighting this problem. You are seeing so many brands because of an army of "Amazon Associates Sellers" / FBA - Fullfilled by Amazon Sellers ( I like to refer to them as scam artists) who identify various electronic gadgets, household items, and other things that are in demand, that are light (so cheap to ship) and that are available in bulk in Alibaba or Alibaba Express. They simply slap on their brand logo / name on packaging, pay a few select reviewers to do a 5-star review on amazon and make a whole bunch of sale.

So in essence, the chances are that these 10+ brands you are seeing for 'usb cable' are all sourcing the same exact 'Made in China' product from the same factory in China through Alibaba. Do a search for 'Strawberry corer' and you'll see what I mean :)

This is a very real problem that amazon has been very slow to resolve.

There are even Fiverr gigs that do the product research for cheap. Source: https://www.fiverr.com/gigs/amazon-fba

ikeboy9년 전

Where is the problem? Should selling imported generic goods on Amazon only be allowed for major brands? That would make the cost go up as there would be less competition.

QML9년 전

Two problems I see with Amazon is:

1. The search engine is pretty bad. Anecdotal example was when I search for a eye mask: there were two different categories — eyes masks and eyes masks / face pillows. Both gave me the same products, but in different order. Why is that?

2. Sometimes there is no guarantee of quality. When I look for an iPad case or screen protector, it seems that the item either has low ratings or the reviews don’t seem genuine.

Scratch that — third problem is that item description is not uniform or standardized. That makes it hard to compare products; only option is to compare reviews which leads back to problem 2.

And then I get off Amazon and use Reddit to find reviews.

1_2__49년 전

You don’t see a problem with users being completely unable to predict with any accuracy how good the quality of what they’re buying is?

ikeboy9년 전

If being able to predict quality without spending time reading the reviews is important, buy a name brand and pay twice the price.

joshvm9년 전

Careful with that - there's another saying: buy cheap, buy twice.

Amazon reviews are a pretty bad indicator of quality. You often need to make educated gueses about whether the reviewer knows what they're talking about, whether their standards are the same as yours, whether they're a shill (which is very common on off-brand items), whether the review actually reflects the product and isn't referring to the shipping or customer servie experience, etc.

jjeaff9년 전

That's what I was thinking. As if the name brands aren't just getting most of their products from the same factories in China.

flamedoge9년 전

You could always go for big brands... Sony or Sennheiser or Apple.. you get QA from buying from big brands because their name is on the line. Small unknown sellers.. not so much.

ATsch9년 전

It's become so bad that I personally don't use the amazon search to discover products at all anymore. It is simply too bad at discarding all this chaff. Any reasonably generic search will only include the cheapest no-name brands. I can no longer trust the search and product listings, which was for me at least the only reason to use Amazon at all. If I already have to leave the site to search, why not just buy somewhere else?

I found it especially shocking to search for "hoodie" lately... Pages and pages of ripped-off designs superimposed on generic hoodies. If they can't even be be bothered to make an actual picture of their product, how can I trust them to deliver a reasonable product?

jjoonathan9년 전

That explains a lot.

My first soldering station was a cheapo whitelabel that died spectacularly after a few months: glowing metal, wicked 60Hz buzz, smoke. Too late for a refund, but the seller offered to swap it out if I paid shipping. I declined, as I intended to move to a name brand. The seller then spent 4 messages trying to argue with me that they were in fact a "name brand". I didn't understand why they cared or bothered.

Now I get it: they were told that establishing a brand name was important, and they must have convinced themselves that it was somehow possible to establish a brand name by white-labeling the same product as a dozen other stores on Amazon.

dizzystar9년 전

Branding is a requirement to protect your product on Amazon, and any seller who isn't registered is highly vulnerable.

Regardless if that is a good or bad thing, I'm not sure, but most brands are manufactures, though I'm sure many are white label sellers. White labelling is a dangerous strategy on Amazon, and I'm not sure who is successful at it long term.

simonbarker879년 전

White labelling is hugely common on amazon and in the low end consumer technology business as a whole. The chance that any of those brands are a manufacturer is incredibly low, they will have close ties to a factory but their operation is must likely a marketing company with a logistics department.

cocktailpeanuts9년 전

"How did Snapchat beat Facebook to the youth market over the last few years? (Remember Poke?). How did Facebook beat Google in social media in the early 2000s? (Remember Orkut?) How did Google beat Yahoo and Microsoft in search?"

1. It wasn't Facebook who beat Google. It was Google who lost to Facebook.

2. It wasn't Google who beat Yahoo and Microsoft. It was Microsoft and Yahoo who lost to Google.

3. Lastly, Snapchat LOST to Facebook. I don't know where he even pulls this out of.

Unlike his takeaway which is nonsense and will probably make you waste years trying to make something stupid happen, here's my takeaway--which is actually opposite of what he'saying--that's much more helpful:

Don't try to fight against a giant in their own turf. As Snapchat, you will never beat Facebook in their own game, Social. As Google, you will never beat Facebook in their own game, Social (This goes both ways. There have been many rumors about Facebook entering search engine arena, but that will never work). Microsoft and Yahoo (A portal whose business model used to be opposite to Google's) can never beat Google in its own game.

The lesson is, play your own game. Don't play into these VCs telling you it's ok to make these stupid attempts. In their eyes, you the founder is just a number. And even if so, this is a terrible advice because there are so many other ways you can win "against" google, facebook, amazon--You simply don't play against them. Google "beat" Microsoft by dominating their own category. Facebook "beat" Google by dominating their own category.

And lastly, Snapchat couldn't "beat" Facebook because they decided to follow stupid advice like this guy gave and fight against Facebook instead of dominating its own category. It had potential at first to invent a differentiated category of its own but went off rails becoming just another social media app, which Facebook then swiftly copied.

davidiach9년 전

Snap is not a clear case of failing. Sure, they did not displace Facebook, but the founders and investors made a lot of money and while it isn't growing as fast as it should, it is still growing every day.

cocktailpeanuts9년 전

If you count how much the founders or investors made from the IPO as a measure of success of the company itself, I really can't help you there buddy.

chii9년 전

So what is a measure of success?

cocktailpeanuts9년 전

Simple. Either revenue/profit or growth. That's all there is.

If your business model is network based, you can go for "grow now, monetize later" model. Then you need growth even if it means revenue sacrifice.

If your business model is not network based, then revenue/profit.

In case of Snapchat, they made personal gains for the founders and the VCs, but from company point of view, they don't make no money, their growth has stalled. The industry #1 has exactly the same app with larger user base and faster growth.

I can't think of a single reason why this would fall into a success category. If anything, the founders and VCs cashing out so much when the company is dying indicates failure rather than success.

jacksmith210069년 전

Chrome came later and beat MS. The same with Google and mobile. Google just provided better solutions.

cocktailpeanuts9년 전

To be precise there were two phases.

Firefox came and beat MS IE first. Then a while later, Chrome came and beat Firefox.

This is a completely different story though.

First of all, Chrome. Chrome is not a startup. It's a product launched by Google, one of the richest tech companies in the world (and given away for free because they didn't care about directly making money from it). What REALLY happened was it nearly killed off Firefox which was way way poorly funded. So this is irrelevant to this discussion where the topic is about "startups".

Second, let's talk about Firefox. Firefox didn't really "beat" IE because they didn't really make much money out of it. Firefox was a very special case. It wasn't some startup which went against MS. It was a result of Netscape losing to MS, and then deciding to open source it while they're going out of business.

This is not exactly the best scenario when you're building a startup, and even if we're arguing based purely on product (and not whether the company actually managed to extract value out of it), again it's irrelevant to this current thread because Firefox is NOT a "startup".

Lastly, if you're looking at this type of rare occasion and hoping your startup will work out that way, then go ahead and do so, I don't care. I'm just saying there are way better ways to "beat" Google, Facebook, and Amazon. And that's by NOT trying to beat them.

notaboutdave9년 전

The problem never was that they can't be beaten. The problem is that they buy all the competition. Great if you're being bought, not so much if you're a part of society.

adventured9년 전

Not everyone can be bought. Walmart is booming massively online right now. They've got $15 billion per year in net income to play with (7x that of Amazon), nearly half a trillion in sales, hilariously more cash flow than Amazon, as well as having 3x the retail sales of Amazon. And with the current version of Amazon on the scene, Walmart is unleashed to behave competitively in a way they haven't been able to in two decades (while Amazon is in the exact opposite position due to emotion / fear of their potential; Amazon will increasingly be watched for anti-competitive abuses).

As it stands right now, Amazon has a very serious problem brewing with Walmart's online business. It's the only serious competitive threat Amazon has seen in the last 10-15 years. Instead of seeing contracting sales, Walmart's overall retail business is actually holding its ground; and at that scale, it's an extraordinary thing; their same store sales growth has been positive for 13 straight quarters, even as Amazon has grown vastly larger in the last 3-5 years. Amazon is taking share from other retailers and they're failing to strike a meaningful blow to their biggest retail threat.

snarf219년 전

Which is why them buying Jet.com just to get Marc Lore was a very reasonable bet. He hates Amazon as well and now has the resources to fight them. Look at all the acquisitions they have made into brands in the last year. It is always great to have three competitors in a space but two is better than one (like Comcast in most markets).

jasode9년 전

>The problem is that they buy all the competition.

But they don't buy all the competition. At least 3 forces prevent that:

1) they have to recognize that the target company _is_ competition. For example, Larry and Sergei tried to sell their young Google company to Excite for $1 million. Excite wasn't interested. They also tried to sell to Yahoo. Yahoo wasn't interested either. (Yahoo became interested much later when Terry Semel was the CEO but by then Google was already worth more than $5 billion.) If you can't see the small company as a threat, you ignore them even if they prostrate themselves before you begging you to buy them. Excite and Yahoo both couldn't see that the little upstart Google was going to make them irrelevant.

2) The competition has to willingly say "yes" to being acquired. Some say "no". A famous example of that is Facebook saying "no" to Yahoo's offer of $1 billion in 2006. Later in 2010, Microsoft and Steve Ballmer also wanted to buy Facebook for $24 billion and again, Mark Z refused. Bill Gates himself refused Ross Perot's early offer of $7 million to buy Microsoft.

3) the competition becomes too expensive to buy. Ebay toyed with the idea of buying Airbnb but the home-lodging company got way too expensive way too fast for Ebay to execute a deal

Acquiring _all_ the competition requires identification of threats (that don't look like threats on the surface) and cooperation from the targeted companies and available funds. You don't get always get that combination and that's why Google and Facebook are not subsidiaries of Yahoo.

jv222229년 전

It's a bit arbitrary to say that a company is only good at three things.

Also, the bad hiring A -> B -> C players only makes sense if the "three things" are all in the same business domain because then the A listers from the same domain are used up.

But, when Google is doing things like Android, Self Driving Cars, Youtube, Glucose Sensing Contact Lenses etc. Each domain is different and interesting enough to attract top talent. (When we say Google, we mean Alphabet, right?)

Amazon is such a wild thing and always iterating on new ideas (Alexa, AWS, Etc) I highly doubt they will be limited to "3" things. Also, Amazon have a great trick of commercializing all the services they create for themselves, which seems like it will just keep adding hedges and more surface area of revenue.

Microsoft, still huge. Sure they didn't win search but they have so many other strings to their bow (Xbox, Surface, Windows, etc)

Funny thing is, Microsoft didn't exactly own the search market and then "get beaten" by Google. Google just aced that from the get go and essentially created that market growth by making it possible to search the web so well.

Slack is a great example of how that works. There were lots of players making team chat and the market was not so huge. Then along comes Slack and makes something that is a delight and useful for many people, so much so, that it creates a new outsized market that didn't quite exist in that way before.

So, rather than "get beaten" I think the most likely scenario is that new players will continue to come along and create versions of "products that don't suck" and as a result markets that were once small will, all of a sudden, become huge.

I also think blockchain, right now, is like the internet was in say, 1998, and there will be some huge companies emerging from that tech.

krawut9년 전

> I also think blockchain, right now, is like the internet was in say, 1998, and there will be some huge companies emerging from that tech.

Why do so many people seem to think this? As someone with a background in crypto, I just don't see the resemblance. Blockchains are useful for proof-of-work and Merkle Trees give you a way to compress many individual signatures, but those things are inherently made for distributed decision making and this comes with a lot of overhead. The exact opposite of what a corporation needs.

jv222229년 전

In the same way that one couldn't have predicted Facebook or Airbnb by looking at TCP/IP and HTTP in 1998, I think it's difficult to predict where the blockchain and associated technologies and concepts will take us. The point is it's a substantial new layer and has a lot of potential.

ttoinou9년 전

I think it can be very helpful to create alternative solution that can't (or are less risky of being) be regulated and forbidden by governments. So the more governments reinforce current monopolies, the more red tape, the more blockchains will grow.

natural2199년 전

I got so excited from the title. I also want Amazon, Facebook, and Google to be beaten. I am however not excited about just another hypergrowth-driven, capture-the-whole-market-or-die, walled garden, more-of-the-same traditional startup. I want the forms of these companies to die, and a patchwork economy of more medium-sized firms each providing a piece of the puzzle without trying to capture the whole thing.

That's just me, though.

spunker5409년 전

While I appreciate the optimism of the post, I think it doesn't matter so much if Google gets beaten when it comes to "C team priorities". Google search is still unbeatable and still gives Google a giant advantage over startups in many areas besides search. To steal an example from the EU: flight price aggregation.

Eridrus9년 전

I don't think Google is unbeatable at Search. I think Amazon's Alexa is a real threat. They don't need to be better than Google as long as they're can be good enough and convenient. Though it's also worth noting that what make Google money is commercial search, which is a niche you could theoretically win in one vertical at a time.

jacksmith210069년 전

Alexa is awful for search as in answering questions and when you include mobile it has a tiny share compared to Siri and the Google Assistant.

But Google keeps adding at a rate it will be very difficult to compete. It is a moving target. The latest is Google Lens. Basically adding a new type of image search that will be tough to compete with as the resources and algorithms necessary will be tough to match.

Eridrus9년 전

I think Siri is a good example of how vulnerable Google is. As of this year it's powered by Google, but until then it was powered by Bing and Google is paying billions of dollars a year for the privilege of being Siri's backend.

ctdonath9년 전

Over 4 decades I've watched many unbeatable high-tech juggernauts disappear practically overnight. These will be no different, including the relentless claims of "but it's different this time!" for each one.

swyx9년 전

can you elaborate a little about which unbeatable juggernauts you have in mind?

i think where in the past juggernauts have fallen its usually due to not being wise to megatrends/platform shifts. I'm not saying amzn/fb/googl are immune to these, but they have each in their own way shown a fair amount of nimbleness in the 10+years they have been around, navigating huge shifts in consumer behavior. If they can learn from the past and prevent themselves from ossifying, they will put off their eventual decline for that much longer. I think bezos and zuck have among the best attitudes to change/learning we have ever had in corporate america.

ctdonath9년 전

CompuServe. AOL. Kodak. Nortel. Etc.

Practically everything on nabla9's list above had to make severe pivots to survive, and many are shadows of their former selves; for many that aren't, I see their demise coming (they've just got so much money from the heyday that the momentum will take time to stop).

ardit339년 전

I don’t know. MSFT and Apple have been around for 35+ years and still going strong.

If well managed, large companies stick around for a long time. Can’t see why FB and GOOG won’t be around for at least another 30 years.

Sure, there is SUN, and Sillicon Graphics as an example, but they were badly managed and put all their eggs into one expensive basket and got disrupted.

The only way large companies become truly irrevelant is through:

1) Bad management

2) Ground shifting / seismic shift on the ecosystem or tech. (Think Kodak).

FB has been very proactive in acquiring new trendy companies and in retrospect Instagram’s acquisition was a genius move. (I remember how much talk was at the time at the 1b price for a company with no revenue). Google has been proactive by doing active research, and amazon by doing all kinds of things.

Yahoo and Twitter are classically badly managed companies and while yahoo got sold to irrevelance, I think Twitter is the next one to be truly disrupted.

zdw9년 전

> I don’t know. MSFT and Apple have been around for 35+ years and still going strong.

Lots of survivorship bias in this - Most of their contemporaries such as Atari, Tandy, Commodore are all defunct, and the Unix hardware vendors that all became M&A targets.

tehlike9년 전

Google has recently diversified into many other sub-bets.

How about FB? What are they diversifying in?

elsewhen9년 전

VR, Video, Messaging

tehlike9년 전

Video is part of its social focus, so is messaging.

VR... i don't know about that.

rtpg9년 전

Companies like General Electric have been able to survive many decades.

I would say that given the scale of companies like Amazon in particular, the null hypothesis is more that these companies will exist forever.

notaboutdave9년 전

I mostly agree, but now they're building cities. How will we compete with companies that encompass our entire lives, digital and physical?

Today we are stuck with Google search, tomorrow we will be trapped in off-white Google apartments in Google city, and DuckDuckGo will still only be a search engine.

sumeno9년 전

How are you "stuck" with Google search? Just use something else, you even mention DDG in your post.

tanilama9년 전

Sort of agreeing with u. FAAG companies are hard to compete, only under the assumption that consumers' habit won't change. In that sense, yes. Even now, no one beats Microsoft for desktop operating system. But the real interesting underlying pattern is, once the revolution comes, it is not that the then giants would lose their game they had been so good at and optimized to teeth for years to come, it is more like, the game they were playing become, suddenly not that important anymore. Look at MSFT and Intel, how formidable they were 10 years ago, and even though they are still insanely profitable, it is no doubt they are no longer wearing the crowns of tech economy. They didn't lose their own game, they are beaten in someone's game.

So it is hard to say where those tech giants can be beaten or not unless someone can predict the future. What if there is revolution happens, where PC can be as powerful as the super computer today, that the cloud companies business model and advantage has been invalidated overnight? Don't lose your imagination.

nabla99년 전

Worlds largest ICT companies by revenue, category and year founded:

  1.  [2] Apple (1976) 
  2.  [2] Samsung (1969)  
  3.  [4] Amazon.com (1994) 
  4.  [2] Foxconn (1974) 
  5.  [4] Alphabet Inc. (1998) 
  6.  [2] Microsoft (1975) 
  7.  [1] Hitachi (1910) 
  8.  [1] IBM (1911) 
  9.  [3] Huawei (1987) 
  10. [1] Sony (1946) 
  11. [1] Panasonic (1918) 
  12. [3] Dell (1984) 
  13. [2] Intel (1968) 
  14. [1] Hewlett Packard (1939)

Apple revenue $229.2B, Hewlett Packard $50B. (FYI: Facebook revenue is just $30B)

categories:

[1] old electronics, 70-100 years old companies.

[2] founded few years before or after the invention of microprocessor (1971)

[3] founded at the dawn of the PC era (80s)

[4] founded at the dawn of the internet era (90s)

From each revolution few companies may eventually join the list, but the old rule.

tnova9년 전

> Worlds largest ICT companies by revenue, category and year founded:

> [...]

> 2. [2] Samsung (1969)

I know, I'm nitpicking here, but I guess you are thinking of Samsung Electronics here, which is just a part of the Samsung Group. Samsung was founded in 1938.

Cyph0n9년 전

I'm honestly surprised that Hitachi is even on that list!

nabla99년 전

Only 30% of Hitachi revenue comes from ICT and electronics.

Their consulting and services business sell mostly to Japan. Electronics division is very specialized. Semiconductor processing equipment, test and measurement and so on.

adamnemecek9년 전

I can actually imagine a new search engine. The thing about google is that it’s not power user friendly. Give me some query language. And let me somehow search for things related to the swift language without getting results about the singer.

jdp239년 전

It's not power user friendly, AND it isn't very good for non-power users. There certainly are opportunities for significant improvement!

homarp9년 전

Power users don't watch ads, as they have ad blockers.

adamnemecek9년 전

Make me pay then. Like by giving me more power, I'm reducing the expectations on the product. I dont want magic, I want power.

jabretti9년 전

If I'm going to pay for search it's better be a lot better than google. And google has a twenty year head start and a gazillion dollars and can rapidly implement any clever feature you might think of.

adamnemecek9년 전

Can they? They won’t touch the interface whatsoever. Also a lot of times I care only about a subset of the internet. Google won’t let me specify what subset.

jjeaff9년 전

1. Ban eHow (and the few other sites like it.

2. Ban any site that shows different content to the Google bot vs the user. (looking at you Quora, with your login required to read, Pinterest...)

3. Ban all the myriad of sites that do nothing but list out every possible phone number or random words. AI should have no trouble detecting those.

4. Ban all the sites that do nothing but copy content wholesale from other sites. I thought they had a duplicate content penalty, but it doesn't seem to work.

Do those simple things and you've just made Google search 10x better.

noncoml9년 전

And then what? There was a time that we thought MS could not be beaten. It did. And now we have Google and FB. Are they any better? Why do you think the ones who will beat FB and Google will be better?

If anything, I expect them to be worst, as SV tech geeks are being replaced by power and money seeking individuals.

tehlike9년 전

MS is still kicking.

esturk9년 전

The parent post didn't say MS is dead just that it was beaten and indeed it was. MS was thought to be unbeatable as the "consumer facing OS". But mobile OSes came about from an entirely new market (this being mobile) that supplanted the desktop in consumer's daily lives.

junkscience20179년 전

Who beat Microsoft in what? Microsoft's primary business is Windows. Who has beaten Windows? Obviously new businesses have been born that Microsoft would love to own...but so far, there has still been no successful assault on the main business

esturk9년 전

Who: Apple and Google What: Enter a new Market that 'was' supplanting an existing market

I'm not sure what you meant by business here. Windows is a product from MS which is segmented by different markets. There's a business need and a consumer facing need. It got beat in the latter. It also didn't move fast enough to reach the mobile market so it got beat in speed as well.

The consumer facing product has been assaulted. Consumers are buying PCs, and by extension Windows, less. MS was impacted and Ballmer resigned. That was the whole pivot to the Cloud by Satya. All this is common knowledge.

jacksmith210069년 전

Google in AI, browsers, streaming video, search, mobile and a number of other things.

guylepage39년 전

They definitely can be beaten but not for the reasons stated in this article. Network effects cannot be undone without a fundamental shift in their business models. Right now Facebook and Google make their money off advertising and tracking their users. Break the business model and incentivize a Network and a new Network can grow.

DmitryOlshansky9년 전

The biggest issue with a project under big tech giant is that they could afford to trash it at the moment notice.

There is super low commitment on new projects (say <1% of work force), compared to a startup that is betting all money and talent it could get on a chance that there is an overlooked market for product X. 100% focus, staying far from a comfort zone and taking the risk is what (in a very few cases though) makes it work.

Basically tech gaint doesn’t have to “burn the ships” and therefore has lower commitment, poor focus, has no sense of (get big or go home) urgency and eventually drops the idea before it bears fruit.

It can offord to say “pass”, but doesn’t need to “bluf” and it doesn’t have the same risk.

virgilp9년 전

On the contrary, my experience on the enterprise is the exact opposite: the new projects where the commitment is a high % of workforce are the biggest failures: the pressure to "deliver value" so overwhelming, that you can't "fail your way to success". You've got one shot to succeed. Do you know any startup who succeeded from the first shot? (and it gets worse - since you have a lot of "resources", you also can't move fast, because there's a lot of synchronization overhead: you can only employ a significant workforce once you know _very well_ what needs to be done; on new projects, that's never the case.)

Someone9년 전

Rome could be beaten, too, but before that happened, a lot of incumbents failed, and Rome bought quite a few others before they became too powerful.

And yes, there are multiple winners. Some nibbled at Rome’s borders, carving out a sizable chunk for themselves, some conquered Rome (often not with much long lasted gains for themselves).

The big question is what made those who beat it winners. I would guess lucky timing is a huge factor there. That’s what anybody trying to take (parts of) those giants head on should be worried about.

raspasov9년 전

What about Apple? Does anyone think that they can be beaten?

What makes Apple different from Google, Amazon & Facebook? Curious to hear what people think.

chrisvalleybay9년 전

Paraphrasing from the book The Four by Scott Galloway: Apple is a company that has positioned itself as a luxury brand. Apple is about sex and signalling. Carrying an Apple phone signals more status than if you were to carry an Android phone, since it is more expensive, just like with other luxury items. But in addition to attaining this status, it has done something that many other luxury brands have not: low production costs in addition to premium pricing. Now, no other techbrand is a luxury brand, which puts Apple in its own league. Either it's going to take a very long time to unseat Apple, or they need to miss a big new market, that they didn't see coming. Now, most of us believe AR/VR and AI to be the next market, if they aren't able to get to market fast enough with products that we have come to expect from Apple, this can be an issue.

I recommend reading the book by Scott Galloway, it is insightful.

ghostcluster9년 전

He has some insights, but also injects a lot of naive and grating political signaling into analysis, which makes him sometimes hard to take seriously.

[deleted]9년 전

jbreckmckye9년 전

I have never read _The Four_, but stopped by to make a quick complaint: can we please retire the verb "signalling" in political discourse?

As far as I can tell all "political signalling" means is "I cannot believe what you profess to believe, therefore I assume that you profess it merely to be trendy".

ghostcluster9년 전

When talking about Facebook earlier this month, he posed this question: "If a firm wittingly or unwittingly becomes weaponized by Russian intelligence, isn't the responsible thing to do to shut the firm down?"

That is the kind of eye-rollingly partisan political "signalling" I'm talking about. If he thinks $100,000 of Russia linked ad-spend on Facebook flipped the votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Florida, and thus we should consider shutting Facebook down for this reason, I really can't take his analysis that seriously.

jbreckmckye9년 전

That is not signalling. Signalling is making a political statement for a social benefit. There is no particular indication of that here.

fwn9년 전

It is a well known, meaningful concept. If you spot someone using it the wrong way, just correct this specific person.

If we trash every concept someone does not understand, we are cavemen by afternoon.

[deleted]9년 전

Eridrus9년 전

Apple has already lost the international market. They're hugely popular and have huge margins due to.branding & iOS familiarity, but they don't have a lock on the smartphone market.

junkscience20179년 전

I used to believe this too. Apple is playing a longer game. They are maintaining their brand premium as an aspirational plateau...and over time they are quietly finding ways to let their product be attained while still maintain the premium. The most obvious way they do this now is to continue to sell older phones, but at a reduced cost.

Any time someone in the world can claim the status of affording an iPhone, they seize the opportunity. Why? Because owning an iPhone is strongly associated with wealth and success. Ask Android users in international markets if they would switch to an iPhone if they could...90% will say yes. Apple gets this, and it will happen.

Indeed the real danger is Google's inability to establish a high-end Android market...they're trying, but it is a pitiful imitation of what Apple is doing

Eridrus9년 전

Would be good to see data showing people actually switching to iPhones as they get wealthier.

My gut says that Android dominance means that companies in emerging markets build Android first apps, everyone around you has Android phones and you already know how to use the platform, which all leads to the same inertia Apple benefits from in the US.

You're right that they've managed to hang on to their premium branding, I just don't know if this matters in comparison to devices and apps that are actually tailored to local market.

raspasov9년 전

Do you have examples of useful, widely used Android apps that and are tailored to local markets (and do not have iOS equivalents)?

Eridrus9년 전

As apps get more popular and get more traction they get built out for both platforms, it's the long tail that tends to target one or the other. If you're building a teen social network in the US, you build for iPhones, if you're building one in India, you build for Android. Apps that get only mild traction stay on a single platform.

beautifulfreak9년 전

Could someone design a new kind of product and seize first mover advantage, eclipsing Apple? That would be a cool product. Maybe the manufacturing capacity exists, and the money to back it, so the producer could avoid acquisition. Patents matter. But it's hard to imagine Apple falling behind, or even being caught off guard. It would have to emerge from super stealth. Maybe a general purpose, human level AI? It would have to be something that extraordinary to even make a dent in Apple.

_m8fo9년 전

Whether or not they can be beaten is one thing. The other thing is whether or not they'll fail to buy their competitor.

lkrubner9년 전

Standard Oil, AT&T and Microsoft can all be beaten -- just as soon as the government steps in and takes action against them. Capital tends to concentrate over time. It takes government action to break up monopolies. There are very few examples of monopolies fading away on their own.

likelynew9년 전

I think with many small countries outside US/Europe becoming developed, one needs a shopping site with wide variety of international products and minimal shipping rate.

[deleted]9년 전

badminton19년 전

And that's why companies get acquired all the time.

In fact, many startups are created with the purpose of being sold to larger companies.

myf01d9년 전

Personally I wish Facebook to be destroyed, it's kind of a psychological cancer. I also guess Amazon can't be destroyed unless with a series of defeats within a very long period, it may be transformed into another Microsoft or IBM at worst but it won't be destroyed.

throwaway6138349년 전

I wish someone could make Facebook get closer to becoming a strictly positive addition to people's lives. If it merely gets destroyed then something would just substitute it. It's already in a position to do anything it practically wants, and there's a lot of good that could come of it... all it needs is a clear mind and willpower.

scjody9년 전

What if the substitute was specifically created to be as positive an addition as possible, with built in tools designed to help boost users' willpower and help them grow?

I'm not sure how viable such a thing would be given that most of facebook's negative aspects are a direct result of them monetizing the platform as much as possible. But I think it's worth thinking about!

QML9년 전

What’s wrong with Facebook? I personally don’t think of social networks as malevolent — in the end they’re just tools. The real issue in my opinion is the type of content that is peddled to me.

elsewhen9년 전

Facebook's engagement-maximizing algorithm determines what content gets shown to you, and the peculiarities of that algorithm indirectly inform content creators. many content creators experience the following: when they publish something thin/clickbaity they get a bunch of views, whereas when they publish something nuanced/complex they only get a few. this effect effectively establishes a race to the bottom.

Viliam12349년 전

I am just a random Facebook user, and I already noticed the same effect on my wall: stupid things get liked and shared, anything of value is mostly ignored.

It happened a few months ago when as a result of reading some online stories, I decided to delete everything I posted on my Facebook wall; but then I changed my decision to "everything, except for the few best (highest quality? best ratings? maybe a bit of both) things". So I spent a few hours deleting stuff from my wall, while paying attention to the quality and number of likes. And I noticed the pattern that I didn't actually notice before.

I was already aware that I sometimes post smart content and sometimes stupid content, and that sometimes I get a lot of reactions and sometimes barely any. But only now I noticed how strongly are these things anticorrelated. It is almost always the stupid stuff that gets most reactions, and the smart stuff that remains ignored. Dozens and dozens of my old posts, always the same pattern.

After seeing this, I am no longer motivated to spend any energy on my Facebook interaction. Once in a while I share an interesting article, but I don't bother posting a summary anymore; I already expect no one will care, if even someone will see it. And once in a while I share a family photo. And that's all.

ImSkeptical9년 전

This article doesn't inspire much faith in me as a reader. The first example of a start up beating a tech giant is Snap competing with Facebook. Snap did well for a while, but things are looking grim last I heard. Likewise, the author, in the comments, suggests that the big three priorities of Amazon are AWS, Groceries, and Prime. Seems to be forgetting the two largest categories of Amazon's business - foreign and domestic retail markets. Omissions like that make question the rigor of the analysis over all.

Speaking of being able to focus on three things, why? Why that number? Isn't Amazon, for example, competing in Cloud computing, e Books, retail, tablets, content, groceries, home assistants, advertising, and probably a few other major categories? Likewise Microsoft has game consoles, office, cloud offerings, Windows, search, and again, other areas.

I think the thesis, that you can compete with tech giants, is true, but the analysis of the article is brief and poor. The reason you can compete with tech giants is because they are looking for a way to grow their gigantic companies and so they will forgo relatively small markets even if they are promising. I would not bet on your startup to beat Amazon in making budget tablets, or Apple in making premium ones, but if you can identify a niche with a customer that needs to be served you can outcompete major companies because they won't be willing to focus on that niche.

For example, you can't make a better budget or premium tablet, but maybe you make a tablet that floats to serve fishermen. It's a hit, so you work on connecting it to their fish finders, now you're building custom sonar sensors because your brand has a reputation and you want to add features to the tablet. Before you know it, you have a self-driving boat, and you're entering the shipping market automating the work formerly done by seamen. With a big presence in shipping you use your connections in China to start up your own retail website, and now you can compete with Amazon directly because you can arrange cheaper shipping of goods from China to US marketplaces.

I also do think there is some validity to the article's point that you'll be competing against the C team. I'd add on to it that as a startup you'll be more agile. If you're competing against a tech giant they'll be held up by a lot of bureaucracy that won't afflict you. You can match their dev team for competence, move faster, and compete in spaces where they won't want to follow. That's how you won against big companies, not because they are magically limited to paying attention to three areas.

dingaling9년 전

> forgetting the two largest categories of Amazon's business - foreign and domestic retail markets

I don't buy much on Amazon nowadays but on about 50% of times when I do go there to buy a non-book product it has been reclassified as "Prime-only"

Normally that passes after a week or so but it does show that Amazon is prepared to sacrifice spontaneous retail sales in order to promote Prime.

dageshi9년 전

Gonna be honest, Prime is incredible for me, I live in the UK and anything Prime comes literally next day, very few if any other stores can literally deliver next day. It's always a day for dispatch and a day for delivery. And Prime items are still considerably cheaper than what I can buy locally, if I can even find the item locally at all.

junkscience20179년 전

a frontal assault on any of these will prove futile...ask Snap, ask Jet.com (who wisely got acquired before Amazon could be bothered to vaporize then)

they're still rising...but even if they stopped rising, they have amassed the financial resources of nations, and they have the credit to borrow much more. Apple in particular is basically a G8 nation...their cash pile may literally span centuries and they may actually need to hedge against the expiration of the governments whose currency they hold. unlike oil, we will not "run out" of data...these companies will eventually dwarf anything from the industrial age

if you want to "beat" them, (what does that even mean?) do what Elon Musk is doing and create new markets and industries

manigandham9년 전

Jet.com was basically engineered to be sold, never was a serious contender.

njarboe9년 전

And off-earth colonies.

sillysaurus39년 전

Here's an example of how to beat Facebook:

Make a social network for children. Facebook has too much political inertia to be trusted with such a thing.

Then, as those children grow, continue to come out with services useful to them. They have to be new enough and cool enough that the kids will switch to the new service as they get older.

If you can manage to make your service useful throughout all stages of a person's life, starting with childhood, then you can eventually displace Facebook by refusing to sell.

It won't be easy, and it would take a decade. But it's doable.

You may question the ethics. That's valid. Unfortunately, ethical questions tend to go out the window: Every time a technology becomes possible, it seems to be inevitable. Bitcoin is a perfect example.

Either you build this, or someone else might. And if you care about the ethics, this is an opportunity to build something less draconian than Facebook from first principles.

kristianov9년 전

I see an interesting parallel in this side of the Great Fire Wall. You know Tencent has its WeChat which nowadays requires identification and cell phone number to use due to Gov. policies. This discourages WeChat's usage in teenagers and children. To cover that front, Tencent actually uses its other IM product, QQ, and caters more for the children's needs.

mcintyre19949년 전

I think Facebook already did this with Instagram, as evidenced by it being their only property who’s Snapchat clone worked out. I’m sure that can be displaced, and I’m not sure cloning Snapchat counts as coming out with new and cool services, but I think Facebook are already keenly aware of this threat.

mankash6669년 전

The more relevant question is "can your startup succeed?" Google's C product is another big incumbent's A product. For your startup to succeed, you often times need to beat most other competitors, many of whom consider the product their A listing.

AmIFirstToThink9년 전

junkscience20179년 전

forget about Schumpterian disruption, strap in for some real dystopia. Think about Apple with a standing army to protect it's assets. Think about Google governoring cities. Think about Amazon buying the interstate system. Think about Facebook having a seat on the UN Security Council.

At least one of the above will be true by 2040.

ttoinou9년 전

But then there will be competition in "army to protect company assets", "company governed cities" "company owned interstate system" and "company UN security council" ! Good news :D