Techdirt Podcast Episode 59: Does The Internet Create More 'Winner Take All' Companies?

from the and-is-that-a-problem? dept

The digital world is increasingly giving rise to “winner take all” industries, where a market is all but dominated by one company and, sometimes, a single smaller competitor. Since innovation is so often driven by competition and hindered by monopolies, this is a worrying trend — but its true extent, and its implications, are hardly clear. This week, we discuss various winner take all situations and what they mean for the future of innovation.

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Comments on “Techdirt Podcast Episode 59: Does The Internet Create More 'Winner Take All' Companies?”

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5 Comments
terryc says:

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Guys, you(all of you) really need to put some prior thought into the topic under discussion. Your guests generally, but you three just do spew of consciousness rubbish.

I like to listen to good tech analysis and have no time for kids(comparatively) who really display no depth of thought.

Try to improve please.

@b says:

Pre-screen your examples :)

I found myself saying alloud “stop with amazon, say Facebook” and with cars “say the car manufacturers”…. but eventually we got there.

Mike’s point is made by saying nobody can take on Facebook. They won that game.

The point on timeline seems valid too: You lost that Social Networking game, do just wait until it goes the way of MySpace. There’s no market gap to fill. FB has it sewn up, legally so far, and with an undecided just on significantly-lessening-innovation in any case.

Yes, the niche sillicon valley startup needs to find their own market gap to exploit (like uber did) or copy well (like Lift) or fail trying (all the rest).

Yes, the niche start-up company of the year 2016 will “go viral”.

Yes, it will be ” information ” sector, and “on the internet”. The clue is the 2016 part, every business lives online! Online is not separate to bricks-and-morter because it isn’t 1986.

Next point: Without trending data we cannot say anything about the ViralGoliath product or service that occupies 70% of the 2016 marketplace.

Lastly, the Davids are always squeezed by their Goliaths. We have hardware store megastores killing mom n pop hw stores in every major city and suburb. Ditto bakeries. Ditto grocery stores (duopoly, binary star analogies notwithstanding).

Monopoly, duopoly, 70% Goliath, few runners-ups, and we cannot name 50 competitors in any single marketplace. Ok simply because we all have tiny brains. Nobody cares who came 58th in the tour de France. We only care about gold, silver, bronze, clowns, disasters, and cheats

Comments? Cheers.

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