
Silicon Valley tech bubble is larger than it was in 2000, and the end is coming - spking
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/tech-bubble-is-larger-than-in-2000-and-the-end-is-coming.html
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nimos
I'm happy as the next person to eye roll a lot of the stuff that gets funded
but the world is just fundamentally different compared to 2000. The average
time an internet user spent online at home was ~3 hours in 2000 and is about
18 now.[0] People are just so much more willing, and able, to spend time and
money online now days I would be surprised if there was 2000 style crash.

[0][http://www.digitalcenter.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/10/2017...](http://www.digitalcenter.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/10/2017-Digital-Future-Report.pdf)

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jdmoreira
Crashes are a phenomenon of investor mass hysteria I don’t think they are
correlated with metrics of the companies they have invested in. When enough
people belive they have been throwing money at a hype, panic will ensue and a
crash will happen.

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slededit
I don't think it will effect the industry nearly as much as it did in the
past. Tech is simply more integrated into society now, the fundamental thesis
is proven in a way that it wasn't in the 2000s. Its akin to the early days of
TV when it was a luxury to the 70s-00s where it was where the average american
spent most of their free time (and note that its dominance has been supplanted
by the internet).

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jacksmith21006
Depends on the company. Google has a forward P/E of 24 and last quarter grew
26% yoy.

That is anything but expensive.

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tandr
And they are producing what exactly? "Better ads"?

Google's contribution to society (if I may be bold) are products that they are
not selling directly - search, maps, and gmail. Maps and gmail are
replaceable, search is not yet. Their influence on how we are consuming
information is nothing short of amazing and incredible, and it has long-
lasting effect on all levels of current (western?) life.

But... is it something "sellable" to a consumer? Not as third eye to a big
organizations/governments, or tensor-something-analytics to a research tank,
but something to an everyday Joe and Marta?

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tested23
Are you trying to argue that google products are not profitable?

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tandr
No, that's not what I am saying.

Profitable today != profitable tomorrow. They have "the power" now, I am not
sure they will have the same endless income tomorrow. I am of the opinion that
unless you sell something to a wider public, you will exhaust that niche
supply chain eventually [1]. This will first limit, and then end an expansion
sooner or later, and since niches tend to collapse more often than wast
"general public", and you run out of income. How soon that will happen, and in
what form will it ends is a totally different question. BTW, becoming evil is
one sad, but valid outcome.

[1] Of course unless you make this "niche" bigger through different means, be
that by making product more accessible for wider audience, or making changes
that your product becomes a "must have" in societal terms, thus growing the
audience instead of your specialization niche.

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jacksmith21006
Just Waymo will likely be more valuable down the road than all of Google
today. Just all their AI stuff even more so. SDC is just one application. A
big one but just one.

Self driving vehicles is over a trillion a year opportunity.

But the benefits to people is so much bigger. Less traffic deaths. Make it
possible for people to get to places that could not before.

A big one is drunk driving could become a think of the pass.

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hughc
"Dropbox also went public. It had a first-day pop of 36 percent; however, with
only 200,000 paying customers compared to its 500 million users, I would be
hesitant to rush in to buy, even as it comes off that year-to-date high
considerably."

Um, really? I think the number is closer to 11M.

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vinceguidry
Don't immanentize the eschaton, bro.

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mr_spothawk
> eschaton

> n. last thing; used in theology to refer to the climax of history,
> culminating in the Last Judgement.

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theoh
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanentize_the_eschaton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanentize_the_eschaton)

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umeshunni
It's amusing that the image attached to the article is of a company neither in
Silicon Valley, nor in tech.

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icedchai
All companies are tech companies now. Didn't you know?

