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How the Internet is Changing Economics

40 点作者 techdog超过 13 年前

9 条评论

TomOfTTB超过 13 年前
The problem with this article is he lacks any historical perspective. The offline companies he quotes have all been around for a long time (relatively speaking) and that contributes to their position.<p>For example, Coca-Cola existed for 17 years before Pepsi even came on the scene. That's longer than all but two of the online "monopolies" he referenced (see the "great new monopolies" link). Beyond that Pepsi has been around fighting Coke for dominance for the past 100+ years.<p>Same with McDonalds (1955) and Anheuser-Busch (1852).<p>In all these stories the initial company had as much dominance as online companies do now. Pepsi was founded by a guy who wasn't willing to pay Coca-Cola's prices and realized he could produce Pepsi and sell it for half the price of Coke while still making a profit (See "Twice as much for a Nickle")<p>On the tech companies you're already starting to see erosion in the older monopolies. Windows is starting to see serious losses from increasing Mac sales, Intel has been beating AMD back with a stick and even Google is having to make improvements to keep Bing at bay.<p>So it will literally be decades before we can know if the author's thesis is even remotely valid
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jericsinger超过 13 年前
Network-based business models have always tended toward monopoly (AT&#38;T, ConEd, and Western Union, to name a few early US examples). The internet doesn't change this dynamic at all; rather, by providing the first (more or less) open network in history, it simply removed what used to be the greatest impediment to a networked business: the construction of the transmission network.<p>The internet hasn't "changed" economics, it's just enabled a specific type of business model.
akg超过 13 年前
To a certain degree this is true. I think the major reason for why we see a "winner-take-all" effect on the internet is because of data persistence. Usually the usage pattern for brick-and-motor stores is that you visit it, get what you need, get out. With online services, however, the more data a site has, the more useful it becomes (e.g., social networks or Amazon's recommendation system). I think people subconsciously realize this and start to focus on one attractable service over another.<p>On the other hand, the ease of dissemination of products/services to users via the internet makes it so that niche markets are more efficiently served. This is usually harder to do with brick-and-mortar stores due to locality constraints. So even though, there might be "one big winner" there seems to be a growing market for niche products.
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mathattack超过 13 年前
What I think the author misses is how short lived these monopolies can be. AOL was a near monopoly. So was Netscape. And Internet Explorer. So was Altavista. Or was it Excite? Or Yahoo? Was it Nintendo that had the gaming console monopoly or Sega? Wasn't there a great Scandanavian monopoly on phones? Until there wasn't.<p>Companies can lock down their market for a generation, or perhaps half a generation, but few hold onto it forever.
jv22222超过 13 年前
There are many examples of mature online businesess that dont have one winner. For example, think of online project management systems like campfire - hundreds of competitors with a very long tail.
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rrrazdan超过 13 年前
The author asserts a weak correlation, yet does not explain the reason. Very very flimsy argument, I would say.
methodin超过 13 年前
I wonder how being bought out, which is surely a far greater occurence in the online world than the offline world, plays into this idea? If you consider that perhaps the major players have bought between 10 and 30 other companies then the opportunities are still abound, just different. I would tend to think that to most people being bought out or absorbed is a suitable alternative to the more difficult task of rising through building a sound business which could take a half-decade or more. Thus I would agree that yes, the model is different, but one is not necessarily more nurturing to opportunities than the other.
wisty超过 13 年前
In the early days of automotive manufacturing, Ford was a monopoly. That's just tech - it takes a long time to reach technological parity with someone who has a 10 year head start. Microsoft and Yahoo have now almost caught Google, and will claw back some customers. Apple and GNU/Linux and the BSD crowd have more or less caught up with Microsoft (thanks to everything important now being on the web). In another 10 years time, perhaps people will buy a computer (slash TV) based on fashion and price, not OS features.
krallja超过 13 年前
Minor correction:<p>&#62; In beer, you have 90% of the market controlled by just three companies: Anheuser-Busch, Coors Molson, and SABMiller.<p>Not since 2007. Now it's just 2 ventures: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MillerCoors" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MillerCoors</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anheuser-Busch_InBev" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anheuser-Busch_InBev</a>