20、 Obama
B1 Intermediate UK 188 Folder Collection
After playing the video, you can click or select the word to look it up in the dictionary.
Loading...
Report Subtitle Errors
Is that...
How did the biggest tech companies end up with virtually no competition?
Well, all of the big tech companies are in incredibly fierce competition with each other.
But I think what's made it difficult for smaller companies to keep up with them is they have such huge audiences that the scale advantages keep attracting to the same few companies.
They benefit from network effects, so that means if I'm on now with 10 friends, it's not great.
But if I have all my friends on that one platform, that's brilliant.
So it tends to be that people flood towards one particular platform.
One of the ways in which the tech companies ended up with virtually no competition is by literally buying out the competition.
So take Facebook, for instance.
They bought up Instagram and WhatsApp both very early on in their lifetime.
Because they were looking out for apps that were quickly gathering new users and whom they could see in the horizon as picking up the next big trend.
Now, WhatsApp still doesn't make any money.
It never had a business model, but yet it was worth $19 billion dollars to Facebook.
There are plenty of investors on the west coast of the US that think monopolies are great and they're something to aspire to, rather than something to knock down.
The main problem with antitrust law, as it stands at the moment, is that it tends to look in the US at prices as the main gauge of whether consumers are benefiting.
And so many of these internet services are given away for free, that it looks as though consumers are benefiting hugely.
But there are people that are now trying to redefine cost in terms of not just dollars, but data or how the actions of the biggest companies are affecting smaller competitors.
But the other way in which I think they've grown to such scale is the sort of Silicon Valley mentality, this "growth at all costs" culture.
So Facebook, for example, its old slogan used to be "move fast break things".
They were really looking to keep people on the platforms as long as possible, regardless of users' mental health or the fact that there might be false information on the platform.
They just wanted to grow.
    You must  Log in  to get the function.
Tip: Click on the article or the word in the subtitle to get translation quickly!

Loading…

Loading…

B1 Intermediate UK

How did the biggest tech companies end up without competition?

188 Folder Collection
Jessieeee published on July 5, 2019    April Lu translated    Winnie Liao reviewed

Learning Words

loading

Comments

Loading…
More Recommended Videos

  1. 1. Search word

    Select word on the caption to look it up in the dictionary!

  2. 2. Repeat single sentence

    Repeat the same sentence to enhance listening ability

  3. 3. Shortcut

    Shortcut!

  4. 4. Close caption

    Close the English caption

  5. 5. Embed

    Embed the video to your blog

  6. 6. Unfold

    Hide right panel

  1. Listening Quiz

    Listening Quiz!

  1. Click to open your notebook

  1. UrbanDictionary 俚語字典整合查詢。一般字典查詢不到你滿意的解譯，不妨使用「俚語字典」，或許會讓你有滿意的答案喔