
Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook will all go away within 50 years, says author - aaronkchsu
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-apple-google-and-facebook-will-all-go-away-within-50-years-says-author-2017-10-17
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jpalomaki
Especially Google and Facebook area extremely well positioned to know what is
happening. They have a market research machinery never seen in history. If
there's a new trendy thing catching up, they can see it coming and they know
exactly who is interested. As long as governments don't intervene, they are in
quite strong position to just acquire threats (or develop something similar).

Apple has piles of cash, but I think their business is kind of fragile. The
valuation is based on being able to create products which sell for very high
premium. I don't see them going away, but they might dropped from their top
position.

For the Facebook and Google I believe the major risk is some backslash from
legislation/privacy. Something like this would not wipe them out, but it might
seriously damage the business. For example with Google there could be pressure
to separate the search and advertising or to allow other companies to also
offer ads on the search platform.

~~~
scarface74
Google hasn't in it's entire history shown an ability to make money on
anything besides advertising. What happens when everyone has ad blockers, they
do most of their searches through mobile and Facebook eats up more advertising
revenue because they can do better targeting than Google since they know more
about their users?

Facebook -- Facebook is already seen as a place for old people. Once your
grandmother is on FB, teens don't want to use it. A whole generation of people
are growing up using everything but FB.

Apple -I don't see it dying but I do see it shrinking.

Amazon- because of network affects, the cost of building warehouses, etc. It's
will be hard for someone to kill Amazon.

~~~
akeck
I asked a tween relative whether they or anyone they know uses FB. They
answered, "No one." They said they all use Instagram, though. So the current
tween generation is still on an FB platform, just not FB itself.

~~~
rockostrich
I don't see Facebook going away. It's such a good tool for organizing groups
of friends and getting back in touch with someone you haven't seen in awhile.
Tweens aren't using it because they don't need those features, they just want
to share things. Once they start to grow up and move away from their
hometowns, I think they would start using Facebook unless another platform
exists in the same space (which as far as I know doesn't).

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jl6
Begone, foul clickbait headline that thinks it can excuse itself by putting a
question mark at the end.

~~~
cirgue
Betteridge's Law of Headlines: Any headline that ends in a question mark can
be answered by the word "no".

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bhauer
Aside from a few exceptions, I don't wish death on any big companies. I would
nevertheless like to see each of the named company's dominance reduced
substantially if only to see what the alternatives look like once afforded
some breathing room. As much as network effects are an inevitable part of the
human condition, I rail against the behavior as the very small market actor I
am. In my day-to-day market activities, I regularly seek out less-dominant
vendors and service providers.

Of the named companies, I am most comfortable with Amazon. Most interactions I
have with Amazon yield a tangible service predicated on me being the customer.
While some alternatives provide better browsing and discovery, there are few
online shopping sites that provide the convenience and immediacy of Amazon.

Apple would presumably also treat me as the customer, but I don't like the
design of their devices or software and there are good alternatives. As a non-
customer, Apple's existence doesn't offend me, but I do find them tedious and
the amount of media attention they capture can be exhausting.

Facebook and Google don't have business models that permit them to
consistently treat me as the customer, so I do what I can to avoid their
services. What services they do provide (for "free") are of low value to me. I
can interact with friends on a wide array of communication media. I can search
the Internet via other engines. I can send and receive email from my personal
mail server.

Assuming their futures mimic their present—which is probably a bad
assumption—of these four, the disappearance of Facebook, Google, and Apple
would be of little or no consequence to my life.

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samsonradu
Disagree with the author’s point of view on Netflix. I think it is quite a
fragile business, with no monopoly whatsoever. I’m not much of a movie/series
consumer though so might be biased about it.

~~~
larrik
I don't know, they have their own high quality content, and their TV back
catalog is good. I would think they have a brighter future than many
television companies, especially ones like HBO/Showtime and other special
subscription companies.

That said, they have less of a safety net than the others, with no cable deals
to fall back on (which are steadily eroding from underneath the others
anyway). However, they seem to be very good at knowing how to run their
business, so I wouldn't count them out unless some outside forces take effect.

Their name has been synonymous with streaming for a decade, which will keep
them entrenched at least a while longer than they would otherwise deserve.

I think if they had a serious stumble, Amazon would just buy them anyway.

~~~
AJ007
I’m not sure how long they get to keep their back catalog. Has anything been
licensed indefinitely?

Their business is certainly going to only continue to increase in
competitiveness for the foreseeable future. My primary concern, from Netflix’s
view, would be Amazon being comfortable buying video content at a loss
forever.

~~~
zck
> I’m not sure how long they get to keep their back catalog. Has anything been
> licensed indefinitely?

At a minimum, they have their original series^1. I would assume that, as part
of paying for the various shows to be created, Netflix has rights forever.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix)

~~~
jsgo
That's a fair point, but what happens if the various big studios decide to
pull their content like Disney has stated they will and create their own
Netflix? They just launched Movies Anywhere, so it seems like they're willing
to partner up if they need to protect their businesses.

And at that point, Netflix would be indie content and a few real good Netflix
shows. Don't know if people would shell out $10 per month essentially for the
Netflix shows unless they can churn out high quality ones quicker.

------
polskibus
I find it interesting that many similar analyses very often omit Microsoft.
Yet it also has astonishing breadth of offering along with very deep vertical
integration that is a characteristic of modern monopolies 2.0.

~~~
Retric
Microsoft can clearly become another IBM and survive long term. But, it's less
clear if they can stay a major 'tech' company as they have a very poor record
outside of OS/Office /Enterprise applications.

AKA web/phone/tables/console gaming/peripherals/etc are effectively break even
in terms of revenue.

------
cobookman
Apple has enough cash on hand that they'll be able to make 0 profit for the
next 50 years and still be around.

~~~
tristanj
Only if they stop giving it back to their shareholders. Since they started
their buyback program in 2012 Apple has 'returned' over $222 billion to
shareholders [0]. Presently they are issuing debt to finance the buybacks &
dividends. If they are not careful they may end up like IBM.

[0] [https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/05/apple-5b-bond-sale-
fund...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/05/apple-5b-bond-sale-funding-
buybacks-dividends/)

~~~
heartbreak
That debt is borrowed against offshore holdings that they plan to repatriate
when the tax conditions are more favorable.

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breitling
Why isn't Microsoft mentioned in the same sentence as these four? Have people
already written them off?

~~~
jkw
Microsoft was mentioned in the article as the Fifth Horsemen. Not part of the
original because it's more of a B2B company now.

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Jdam
Calling it "Apple Pods" gave me enough information to judge the
trustworthiness of that guy.

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LorenzoLlamas
Rats. I was hoping they would all go away within 5 years. Thought maybe the
extra 0 was a typo. Disappointed. How can serious people still be on Facebook
more than five years from now? This is demoralizing enough for me to subscribe
to USA Today, the paper version, because it's an improvement. Pie charts and
all.

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chinathrow
Marketwatch is a SEO optimized site, the text is a pain to read with all the
distractions to generate more page views.

Back to the topic, I do hope the large companies will be split up by
regulation sooner than later.

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659087
Not if we keep letting them acquire every potential competitor.

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darkhorn
Facebook is just social networking web site. People can get bored and use some
other web site.

Amazon is only a shopping web site and a hosting company. There are popular
companis like Amazon, such as AliBaba and DigitalOcean. There is nothing
special about Amazon.

Google is a search engine, smart phone OS, mail, maps, video service, web
browser. Looks like Google has way more chanse than Facebook and Amazon.

~~~
luckydude
I think you underestimate the value of all the product reviews on Amazon.
While I doubt that I've been influenced by ads on Google, I'm influenced all
the time by the reviews on Amazon. Yeah, Amazon needs to do better about the
fake reviews (and they are working on it, it's gotten better).

But there is a huge amount of value tied up in those reviews. I'd argue that
it creates such a network effect that starting up a competitor would be really
hard. Possible but Amazon would have to stumble.

~~~
darkhorn
What about reviews in Turkish language and what about shipping to Turkey?
Amazon is mostly for English speaking world.

On the other hand Google, Apple, Microsoft has no language barrier. Amazon is
4th among them.

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bwl
They each function as public institutions in their respective spaces and each
is backed with substantial real world fibre and data centers.

~~~
yellow_postit
How is Apple a public institution?

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trts
I was thinking about how cumbersome it would be to change phone platforms if I
got tired of iPhone or Android, and then how much effort I wouldn't want to
spend if my Amazon device controlled all the lights, TV, audio, and
temperature in my house.

~~~
ksk
I think more than the individual effort of changing systems, its the network
effect that keeps people tied down. A new platform or service could disrupt
that easily. What if you didn't need to carry a phone (VR/AR/?), or what if
all homes came with those systems built in.

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CodeSheikh
The reason there never will be a "fifth" horseman is because these four giant
fishes keep devouring the little ones (startup acquisition/acqui-hire). Just
because things happened in past a certain way, that does not necessarily mean
those events can always be used as a predictability model for future. Stock
market is at all time time. Are we headed towards crash? Maybe not. Maybe this
is the time where we are setting new standards. Yes, all these four have
slowed down their momentum of innovation. But that innovation also goes hand-
in-hand with general intelligence and thirst for innovation from the general
public. I hope to see one them entering into consumer health monitoring and
diagnostics, beyond heart BPM or steps counting. I will give them another
decade before I give up on them. I hope the author made some good bucks
towards the end. He raised a good debate.

~~~
greedo
Who's to say the next horseman won't resist the advances from the big Four?
Zuckerberg retained control for a long time, and it's not inconceivable that
the Next Big Thing won't get acquihired.

~~~
mholmes680
everything has a price, no? especially a public company with shareholder
voting rights...

~~~
uiri
I think Snapchat is a good example. The founder(s) still have a controlling
interest in the company (or they did up until the IPO, at least). They want to
build a company rather than sell it off. That's _why_ they IPO'd, for
instance.

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jfoster
I would feel nervous about applying old company rules to these companies.
Nothing will be around forever, but if any companies ever (so far) might last,
I would pick these ones.

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GuB-42
I think everything can be summarized in these two lines from the article.

Do you think that will be in the next few decades or too hard to predict?
Galloway: Too hard to predict.

