Convopage
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1/ Are tech companies too big, powerful? Need to be “controlled”? Where’s Gov? Some thoughts on maturing companies…
Are Facebook, Google and Amazon too big? Why that question keeps coming up
We love our Facebook friends, Google searches and Amazon sprees, but a growing group - from consumers to politicians on the left and right - worry.
usatoday.com
25 replies and sub-replies as of Sep 27 2017
2/ Maturing Cos “run up against” many issues: market power, consumer protection, regulatory oversight, taxes, employees (salary, promos)…
3/ What is interesting to me is tech companies born of the network era, benefitting enormously from structural benefits of networks also…
4/ They see networks greatly accelerate the level of visibility, scrutiny on the maturing process. Each generation sees this half the time!
5/ Big IBM history buff. As MSFT matured began to notice issues IBM faced internally and externally “hit” MS too, but in half the time.
6/ Anti-trust, question about innovation, Europe expansion Employee satisfaction/oppty and more. What took IBM 20 years too Microsoft 10.
7/ Then I started to see this with google. Anti-trust started in half the time it took MS (half IBM). Employee issues, peak innovation, etc.
8/ This is the case for internal issues as well. MS was 15 years into company before internal questions from employee base about key topics.
9/ Today we see FB a few short years as a company, most networked company ever, facing maturing issues. Half the time: govt, biz model, etc.
10/ My view,—an exponential effect because of network effects AND just part of maturing Co. Any view of history shows how normal this is.
11/ Very networks and transparency created by modern companies also creates climate of “mature more quickly” that all can see/transparency.
12/ Historically extraction/manufacturing companies all went through this but w/o networks, visibility was limited to experts.
13/ Maturing management, awareness in achieving some success, empathy of impact, and more come with a maturing management team.
14/ Every great Co goes through this. Isn’t some new thing because of tech or exclusive to it. Transition from “keep the wheels on” is real…
15/ It is new/critical to many people right now and the scope of networked companies is larger, but IBM > USS, MS > IBM, etc. // END
PS/ Have we have reached peak “exponential maturing” because most of the world is now networked? Interesting to think about.
Whenever we (humankind) reach a peak we discover numerous more peaks to be climbed. Can't see them till then. True in every field.
Hope so. Can’t be answering questions about antitrust when you’re still in a WeWork.
Speaking of network effects, if you got Twitter’s bump to 280 you could have communicated your thoughts in half the time 👀
I was so going to make that joke!
The irony is that IBM was more of a monopoly than either for a long time (until Google in its core area)
Toffler's Law?
Laws and regulations always trail the innovations. While sensible regulations e.g. re: privacy etc. is useful, "controlling" them is not
There are varying degrees of “influence”. See Eric Schmidt and changes in Goog lobbying $ spend.