RSSThe roots of all evil: Apple, Google, Intel, and Microsoft
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published October 9, 2009, 1:53 PM
Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser.
Throughout the information technology industry, there has been a certain pathology that somehow precludes any segment of it from evolving in any pattern other than consolidation, centralization, and the investment of authority and leadership in a dominant power. With every new market segment that's ever come into fruition -- "PC clones," laptops, smartphones, applications, operating systems -- the initial players can be scattered across the field like seeds strewn randomly in a flower bed. Once they coalesce, the pattern tends to look the same: a few dominant players, but usually just one, with the rest searching for new ways for their marketing or legal teams to plea for fairness and relief.
The argument against any government regulation of technology markets is that, left to their own devices, businesses will seek their own level of competition, manufacturers will develop their own unique strengths, and customers will decide for themselves which one provides the best product or service. Yet historically that has always been half-true: Left to its own devices, a technology market will always wind up with a dominant player, whether it's by accidental circumstance, fair competition, or fiendish design.
Markets make dominant players in order to have a center of activity -- almost every strategy among vendors leverages the dominant player's position either toward mutual goals or opposite goals. You'd think it would be nice if governments seeking to regulate the activity of dominant players could find them wholly guilty of the circumstances that led to their unfair success, and present to public scrutiny the evil motives and terrible plans that led to their rise to power. And yet it's never happened that way:
- Intel. As documents emerging from antitrust proceedings against it in Europe, Asia, and from AMD in the US indicate, Intel probably did make deals with its customers for exclusivity or near-exclusivity. Yet those documents also very clearly indicate that it was Intel's customers themselves who specified those terms, like a would-be victim who gives the bank robber the gun to hold to his head, asking him to make him open the vault so he too can get a share of the loot. Customers such as Dell and HP were willing to buy CPUs in quantity, and appear to have been auctioning their virtues to the highest bidder. Intel's customers constructed its platform of dominance during the 1990s and early 2000s; they paved the way for it to become an exclusive supplier, to tip the scales against AMD. They fostered Intel's desire to win and they used it to their advantage. Any government seeking to assess Intel's liability for creating an unfair market must take into account the conduct of its customers for their mutual role in its creation.
- Apple. There is absolutely no question about the fact that Apple won the digital music market, and is leveraging that stake to gain a big share of the smartphone market, through its brilliant marketing strategy and fabulous designs. But Apple knowingly, intentionally, and probably without malice rushed into a void left by its competitors. Apple did not create the MP3 player, but it was capable of building a digital music empire that continues to undermine the existing business model for media, mostly because it accurately assessed the short-sightedness of competitors in not reconstructing that business model for themselves. With Macintosh, every tenth-of-a-point of market share gained for Apple has been a hard-fought, bloody slog. But with iPod, Apple walked into a market that no one else was willing to build, and was immediately welcomed as the dominant player. Instantly Steve Jobs became the icon of the revolution, whereas with about 20 minutes more foresight, it could just as easily have been Michael Dell.
- Google. In the history of cakewalks, however, Apple's will not be the most astounding. The Internet has really never had a viable, long-term business model. Almost every company whose revenue is dependent upon the Internet, rather than just invested in it as a side venture, perceives what it's doing now as a stopgap or an interim business, in lieu of what it can or should be doing once the "Second Bubble" bursts or the recession ends or someone else comes up with a better idea...or when Google invents it. Google has been everyone's savior. It's the lovable giant, the big daddy, the central source from which all fairness springs forth. It has cleaned up everybody's mess. When no one was successful at building "portals," Google created a big one for everyone. When no one could sell ads for themselves because it meant having to differentiate and strategize and all those...thinking things that require brainpower, Google stepped in and sold ads for everyone. When publishers couldn't find a way to build libraries, Google said, we'll make a digital Alexandria just for you (whether you're dead or alive). If only publishers and manufacturers and vendors and advertisers and governments could just let go and let Google, it would be just so happy to take care of everything for us while we have our nappy-time.
- Microsoft. The road to power for Microsoft has always been paved by the blunders, errors, and completely foolish ideas of its adversaries. Everyone knows now that Microsoft came into being through the short-sightedness of IBM. And along the way to software market dominance, it made severe errors in judgment and committed illegal acts. But the facts that Windows is the dominant operating system, that x86 is the dominant CPU architecture (because it runs Windows), that Office is the dominant applications suite, and that Exchange and SQL Server are becoming the sources for digital communications and digital storage, respectively, are due to the most obvious reasons of all: This is what Microsoft's customers want, and no one else ever stays in a position of competitiveness long enough to offer a reasonable, affordable, working alternative. WordPerfect and 1-2-3 and, as time goes on, Oracle didn't lose their dominance entirely because Microsoft drove them into the ground; it's because they had their own shovels and, for whatever reason, dug their own graves. Microsoft leads, in markets where it does lead, because it lets its competitors fail on their own account. And in markets where it doesn't lead, it almost doesn't matter all that much.
The reason there are dominant players in IT markets is because we made them -- we the customers, we the OEMs, we the software developers, we the Internet users, we the readers. And the reason we made them is because we wanted to make them, and circumstances favored these candidates at the time and not others. If not for maybe a missed appointment here or a botched marketing campaign there, Motorola, Dell, Yahoo, and Digital Research could have been the subjects of this column.
We talk about "net neutrality," as if our goals for any one technology market have always been to level the playing field, favor no one, and let the best design concept succeed through the merits of pure and fair competition. But who are we kidding? In what other competitive field do we not seek a dominant player -- a majority party, a "most-watched network," a "nation's team," a "best seller," a "blockbuster," a "guaranteed hit?" We expect Darwin to select the survivor, but then we always rig the ballot box. In the absence of a dominant player, we will appoint one.
I was in the room for the unveiling of the world's first clamshell portable computer, the Data General One. It was a thing of beauty, or so it seemed, being able to boot up DOS from any place with an electric outlet. Too bad, an analyst told me at the time, because once IBM sees this it'll do it too, and Data General will be a remnant of history and IBM will own the market. Why? "Come on, seriously?" the analyst returned at me, like I just fell off a turnip truck. "Tell me you see the pizza-box computer market being owned by Data General!"
Nearly three decades later, the need persists for a dominant player, if only to generate Web site traffic. In market segments where a dominant player doesn't develop itself organically, publishers and bloggers often strive to invent it artificially. In data storage, for example -- a segment which editors have historically found dull, and have even used to banish writers they don't like, like stationing them in Siberia -- from time to time, the talk among editors will inevitably turn to, "What dirt can we get on EMC?" If only EMC could be framed as some kind of Microsoft or Apple or Intel, with an evil moustache and a pocket protector and electrical tape holding up its glasses, we could centralize our focus, get commenters to start bashing someone...and we'd really get traffic.
To some extent, a great deal of so-called "technology news" -- or at least the chunk of it that people actually read -- isn't even really about technology (tell me you read our series on high-k-plus-metal-gate fabrication). It's about the dominant player, or when dominant players collide as was the case with Google Voice on Apple's iPhone, or when dominant players flounder in unfamiliar territories. Just the word "Zune" excites exponentially more readers than will ever own a Zune or touch a Zune. In the IT news business, there has been one word for fair markets: boring. So even when companies make fair deals with purely benign, mutually advantageous goals -- for instance, between Microsoft and Novell, or Microsoft and Yahoo, or Google and Verizon -- even in the absence of any evidence of unfairness or collusion or anti-trust activity, people will inevitably invent it.
The biggest irony there is in this entire scheme is that every government investigation involving a dominant player using its dominance to obtain more dominance, has been conducted in the name of protecting something called "competition." In the real world -- in the world that has existed for millennia, since the distant ancestors of Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt swung from trees -- since when has competition not been about winning? And how can anyone win without, at some point, whether by accident or its own design or someone else's design or perhaps, just perhaps, by necessity...becoming dominant?
Imagine there's no dominant player. I wonder if you can.
The viewpoints expressed here are those of Scott M. Fulton, III, who is solely responsible for his content.
http://www.techtree.com/...ata/551-106840-580.html
Too bad we'll never see any comments from Beta News about this :)
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|Yeah...because it's "BugNews", not Betanews, right?
Can you imagine if they posted every bug in every OS they wrote about? No-one would come here. Ever.
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|Any person with eyes can see that the only real stable dominant position in here in Microsoft's. A search engine is very easy to switch... A music player is very easy to change, and start enjoying cheaper music (say) right away (likewise for a smartphone). A CPU is definitely something you can easily change on your next machine if you get a great deal and suffer no compatibility issues.
However..changing an OS, and the myriad of things associated with it -- all your critical business software -- all your fun software you already own -- all your peripherals -- all your data -- all your CONNECTIVITY software with computers around you... Well that, is a tough one.
Long live Microsoft! I really do love these guys.
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|Just one nit to pick, Jobs is a developer of original works, Michael Dell is the lithographer in the bunch. So the best he'll ever do is make cheap knock-offs.
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|Greed is the root of all evil......
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|*laughing*
Watch it, sjc... Jealousy (Envy) is one of the Seven Deadly Sins...right next to Greed. Best be careful when throwing those stones...
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|Yea, let's see if I remember, there's Jealousy, Sleepy, Dopey, Doc...
-SF "...Sleazy, Cheesy, and Putz!" 3
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|capitalism runs on greed
which is why capitalism is s***
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|You're the one living in a glass house that is already filled with cracks, tool. Plus, what do you have that would be worth being jealous of? We have more real rights and freedom than you do, we have proper health care, a better quality of life (Which is more important than standard of living), the world doesn't hate us, our banks didn't need to be bailed out like yours were by the republicans (Without any strings as well.), etc, etc, etc..... No, you should be the one who is jealous and it shows.
Score: -1
|sjc1963 - No matter where you live in this world, at some point in time you, your mommy, daddy, grandma or grandpa have been bailed out by the USA. It is a mistake to accuse Republicans of bailing out banks. The US Congress has been controlled by Democrats for almost 3 years. The housing debacle in America was caused by people making loans on homes they could not afford ever. Do you seriously think a conservative congress would have let the banks make all those unsecured loans and get that out of control? Bush tried to pass legislation to block the outrageous behavior by individuals and banks but was blocked by a liberal congress. Barney Frank, a very liberal congressman, heads up the House Committee on Financial Services. He was asked shortly before the financial meltdown about the health of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and responded they were in good shape. People with the idea they were entitled took out loans with no down payment or jobs. They trashed the houses and walked out when the banks asked for some money. Obama sued banks in Chicago to force them to make unsecured loans when he was a neighborhood agitator there. Those loans defaulted. Entitlement is a feeling that the person is owed anything they want without working for it. That is not a conservative thought. There are bad politicians in both parties but it was the people who thought the government would bail them out somehow who signed those mortgage loans when they didn't have enough money. I'm talking about big expensive homes along with more modest ones too.
As far as your health care goes you have to be kidding. We have British living in my town who say don't go to socialized medicine. There was a preacher from England on local TV warning people about the travesty of being owned by a government. Any healthcare plan that trespasses on people's liberty in America will eventually be gutted. The Northern states like Minnesota have a deal with Canada to bring sick people in when there is an emergency. Who would be jealous of a society that shackles a human being with socialism. The health care plan in the US being discussed will be tested in court as it is possibly unconstitutional forcing individuals to buy a health care plan or get fined.
If the world hates the USA then it is about time we stop showing up at every catastrophe in the world. You go check history before you run your mouth about the USA. You know nothing about history. What have you done to help humanity? There are many families in America that have lost loved ones due to fighting in Europe and all over the world. So if the world wants to hate us go ahead, the feeling is becoming mutual around here.
If you want to whine about wars go aheadand do that too. Just take the time and check out Saddam Hussein and his use of torture and chemical weapons on the Kurds and Iranians. Take a look at all the countries who were taken over by the Russians where the individuals lost their freedoms. Check out the slaughter of people in China and Russia during their revolutions. We will never in America bow down to an oppressor or communism.
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|The United States, is like Microsoft -- the greatest thing that could happen. If any other company would have been on top -- say Apple/Google, we would have all been in deep crap, paying astronomical fees for every little thing we do with our computer with many attached strings. And if Europe/China/Russia were the "world leader" we would all be dead, hushed, or living a very fearful life in one form or another (afraid of our government, or afraid of our terrorist neighbor). GOD BLESS AMERICA. GOD BLESS MICROSOFT.
One thing's for sure -- you better sit very quietly and pick your allies very well on the next world war, cuz you don't wanna piss us off and "enjoy" our wrath. We . will . annihilate . your . puny . country . if . you . support . the . terrorists...
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|You are retarded. Allow me to prove this to you:
99.9% of inventors of the big things we use every day today became extremely rich.
100% of those inventors did not move to communist countries, or donated all their fortune to communist-like groups.
Further, there's probably 20% communist in the world today (China, etc). Other than paper and toxic toddler toys, I don't see the Chinese inventing 20% of things in the world. Not even 1%. So it's either communism breeds retardness, or it breeds lack of ambition. Either way apparently it's not bettering the world for you and me.
Q.E.D.
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|Congratulations, Looey, you just won the a****** of the year award. You are also in the running for The Ugly American Award as well. No wonder America is in such bad condition with idiots like you around. You're your country's worse enemy. You don't have a clue about the real world either. I feel sorry for you.
BTW, asswipe, who said anything about war? I was just stating facts. You are also a fool for believing in the myth of America, that is long over. Where all of your enemies couldn't do your kind has done in the name of greed.
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|P.S.
There are far worse dictators out there than Saddam, he wasn't a real threat anymore to anyone either, but they don't have vast amounts of oil and unlike Saddam they can fight back.
Democracy in Iraq is a failure as well, you can't impose it at the end of a gun. It has to come from within. Your soldiers died for nothing. They died to make Corporate America richer.
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|If the Chinese are so retarded, EW, than why are they propping up the USA??????? Their economy is doing much better as well.
The way you talk one would get the impression that Americans invented the wheel. Did you know that it was the Chinese who invented paper money, gunpowder (No firearms without this :-) ), ice cream, spaghetti, etc, etc.
You really should read a history book. I forgot, American k-12 education is ranked very low.
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|Me, earlier, to your friend: "You are retarded. Allow me to prove this to you:"
You: "Did you know that it was the Chinese who invented paper money"
Me, before that note: "Other than paper and toxic toddler toys, I don't see the Chinese inventing 20% of things in the world."
You: "You really should read a history book."
Me, now: "You should really read what you're replying to, retardo..."
Me, earlier, repeated now:
Q.E.D., STRENGTHENED.
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|Nice thing about the United States is, they never really lost any war, ever. They maybe didn't reach ALL THEIR GOALS (like in Vietnam), but they've certainly won the bigger war on communism. The US demonstated to Cuba and Russia not to ph*** around trying to convert countries to communist regimes or else we WILL sacrifice our best to stop you dead in your tracks. You can whine all you want but if your country (whatever it is) gets a little out of line, we WILL come there and kill all the bad people together with (unfortunately) a lot of innocent bystanders to make sure evil NEVER prevails and grows.
I couldn't give a crap if you hate us Americans. I hate you even more. Thank God we have the power to actually annihilate you if you ever just THINK about converting your feeling into action...
MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA. AMEN.
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|dude.. just... shut up.
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|Yeah, great, a country with no history whatsoever.
It's the historical equivalent of saying that you've won 100% of your boxing matches but you've actually only had two boxing matches and won both. Only both were against little girls.
And congratulations. I'm glad you're happy that your country has killed lots of people. That's a really great thing to achieve isn't it.
I can't imagine (if there were to be this mythical God fellow) that he'd be too happy about that one.
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|@sjc:
Yeah, "quality of life"...I see you're dragging out that tired little bit of BS again.
Care to let us all in on what that is based on?
Oh, right....not anything having to do with actual quality, but rather statistics pulled to only show things like "percentage of covered population" (completely ignoring the quality or quantity of that coverage). Ya know...BS like that.
Coverage has nothing to do with the quality of care.
Now...start singing "Oh Canada" and rocking back and forth in your corner...totally ignoring anything and everything that could possibly be taken in a negative way about your wonderful country.
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|"QUOTE: If the world hates the USA then it is about time we stop showing up at every catastrophe in the world. You go check history before you run your mouth about the USA. You know nothing about history. What have you done to help humanity? There are many families in America that have lost loved ones due to fighting in Europe and all over the world. So if the world wants to hate us go ahead, the feeling is becoming mutual around here."
Well let me see.. Pakistan the terrorist nation gets its military supply from china,(USA says china is a bad country) and also from USA. They find it misused funds to buy weapons against India. Almost all the countries have declared Pakistan a terrorist state. Middle east gets its arms supply from who?? Europe had weapons sold by whom?
we can get into mud slinging and say USA is so very much responsible for the weapons and wars, but that will be politics and I think Technology is always slaughtered by politics. I think that about slaughter, well the USA turned a blind eye to DARFUR, and said saddam was linked to AL-queeda which was never found.They took it for the OIL , we all know that. So I think next time please do not bring the ALMIGHTY POLITICAL USA or whichever country into this. Its a very humble request , lets keep it open as a technical discussion. It will help us become selfless than selfish.
Microsoft is a monopoly cos they make a lot of money? so macs can run on hardware that apple sells? that is not? y not have a browser ballot for konquerer and ask it to remove integration of konquerer. well most of us forget that its not pointing the finger but working out alretnatives that makes better computing.
Happy computing.
Sorry if i sound harsh.
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