<story><title>If AT&amp;T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google</title><url>https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/if-at-and-t-had-managed-the-phone</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>paxys</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think people realize just how expensive and congested these networks were back in the day. Phone calls cost what they did because capacity was a real constraint. It&amp;#x27;s not that they were all ethical businessmen doing a public service as the article makes them out to be (some old business tactics of AT&amp;amp;T, Standard Oil, American Tobacco etc. would make the most ruthless big tech exec of today blush). They simply could not conceive of a business model where customers could use their service 24x7 because it was impossible to provide it.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t even have to go all the way back to the 70s or 80s to see this. We used to pay by the minute for dial up internet and cell phone calls well into the 00s.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;all you can eat&amp;quot; business model — whether ad-supported or for a fixed monthly fee — is a very recent invention, and is only possible because of massive improvements to the underlying infrastructure (fiber, LTE, cheap servers).</text></comment>
<story><title>If AT&amp;T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google</title><url>https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/if-at-and-t-had-managed-the-phone</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jay_kyburz</author><text>This is not a good analogy at all for so many reasons.&lt;p&gt;Here is something closer.&lt;p&gt;Google went to University and read all books and created the worlds largest filing cabinet with an amazing index of the worlds information.&lt;p&gt;They decided to allow other students to use the index to help track down the information they need for their assignment. They ask Google, where do I find information about X and Google tells them they will find it in some obscure corner of the library they would never have thought to look.&lt;p&gt;The index becomes so popular that some business people show up and suggest to Google that if people are looking for information about X, they might also want to buy some Y. Google shrugs and says, sure I&amp;#x27;ll tell them about your product as I send them off to find what they are looking for.&lt;p&gt;Then Google notices that email sucks (and they fix it), and maps suck (so they fix it).  Then they buy the local video store and make it really popular.&lt;p&gt;But by this time Google is so huge its a mostly out of control monster.</text></comment>