<story><title>Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39875417</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wildmusings</author><text>I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of online advertising is massively inflated.&lt;p&gt;Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services to real end users.&lt;p&gt;Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in particular, as well as a hypothetical alliance&amp;#x2F;merger of supermarket chains, are well positioned to break Amazon&amp;#x27;s dominance of e-commerce. But they will need the ambition and ruthlessness that has served Bezos so well. Few large American corporations still have the vigor and virility of Bezos&amp;#x27;s Amazon.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft (full disclosure: my former employer) too is strong but not unbeatable. All of their products are facing tough competition from Apple (in OS and hardware sales), Google (in online services), and multiple others (in business software). Microsoft&amp;#x27;s wins are hard fought and fair, and the competition never lags too much.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>&amp;gt; Microsoft&amp;#x27;s wins are hard fought and fair&lt;p&gt;No, they were unfairly fought. Don&amp;#x27;t let the fact that it is your former employer cloud your vision.&lt;p&gt;Not many companies have such a sordid history of unfair competition as Microsoft does.</text></comment>
<story><title>Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39875417</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wildmusings</author><text>I am ultimately skeptical of companies that get all of their revenue from advertising and who fail to make money from sales of products. The value of online advertising is massively inflated.&lt;p&gt;Of the tech giants, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft seem to be in the best shape at the moment. They make their money from selling real products and services to real end users.&lt;p&gt;Amazon is strong but not unbeatable. Walmart in particular, as well as a hypothetical alliance&amp;#x2F;merger of supermarket chains, are well positioned to break Amazon&amp;#x27;s dominance of e-commerce. But they will need the ambition and ruthlessness that has served Bezos so well. Few large American corporations still have the vigor and virility of Bezos&amp;#x27;s Amazon.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft (full disclosure: my former employer) too is strong but not unbeatable. All of their products are facing tough competition from Apple (in OS and hardware sales), Google (in online services), and multiple others (in business software). Microsoft&amp;#x27;s wins are hard fought and fair, and the competition never lags too much.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>izacus</author><text>The problem with that is that those companies can use the ad revenue to dump prices in other field and essentially drive any possible competition out of the market. This can cause a dangerous snowball where a few huge corporations control several markets and competing is impossible because they don&amp;#x27;t need to earn profit (or earn anything at all) on those secondary markets.&lt;p&gt;Add vendor lockin and you just created a corporate monopoly which is terrible for consumers.</text></comment>