

Software is eating the world (2011) - kadinsayani
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460

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chetanahuja
_" Meanwhile, the two biggest telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon, have
survived by transforming themselves into software companies, partnering with
Apple and other smartphone makers."_

It's quite a stretch to call AT&T and Verizon's dominance based on "software".
It's actually more than a stretch, it's simply wrong. Those two companies are
dominant (to this day, 4 years later) not _because_ of software but despite
their desperate and failing attempts to be relevant in the software world. The
dominance is quite simply the result of a monopoly on physical resources, in
this case, frequencies and large-scale cell tower infrastructure that's hard
to copy without huge new investments in ... ahem... hardware.

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greenyoda
Note: This is Andreessen's article From 2011.

Original HN discussion from 2011:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2905410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2905410)

And an interesting follow-up discussion from a few days later:

"If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2919708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2919708)

~~~
dataker
[http://news-cdn.efinancialcareers.com/wp-content/uploads/201...](http://news-
cdn.efinancialcareers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Total-compensation-by-
age.jpg)

That explains the bulk of the discussion

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nicoEE
Subscribe or Login to read?

"ain't nobody got time for that!"

~~~
downandout
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+Software+Is+Eating+The+W...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+Software+Is+Eating+The+World)

click on the top result and enjoy.

~~~
lfender6445
i wonder if they do this so their content can still get indexed by google

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downandout
Yes, you must show a Google user the same page that the Googlebot sees or you
risk being de-indexed altogether (they've done it, with some pretty major
sites, to send a message). That's why if the click doesn't come from Google
it's paywalled, but if it is from Google it isn't paywalled. The practice of
showing a different page to users than to the Googlebot is called _cloaking_
and Google hates it.

~~~
gaius
Google's business strategy you see is to put _their_ ads on other people's
content.

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antris
Anyone have a link without the paywall?

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mrdassani
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240531119034809045765122...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460)

