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Comment by birbal | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit of shameless plug but i think quite aligned with Sam's post but makes a slightly different argument. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-have-been-bigger-tech-bubb...

Would love to get critiqued by this uber smart and opinionated crowd here.

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I’d argue on-premise software, as a category, was a bigger bubble than what we have today in tech. It delivered little value to the end-user but the companies that sold them were commanding huge valuations for years because of the huge margins that they were able to charge.

Wow. Well that's a pretty strong claim. I'd really like to see some kind of proof.

Unless I misunderstand you, you are claiming that companies like Microsoft, Oracle and SAP were (are?) overvalued.

You are also claiming that their software delivered little value.

Those are some pretty bold claims, and I don't think you've made the case well enough for them to stand up.

I think that you point about usage being a good indicator of future revenue is somewhat correct, but the really valuable analysis would be to show the types of services where usage is a good indicator of future value and ones where it isn't.

Eg:

Free file sharing? Not a good indicator

Social platform? Good indicator

I think my points are made at a macro level and not at a specific company level. There is no fool-proof proof to any business/economic hypothesis. Oracle, MSFT and SAP aren't the only companies that make up on-prem software. But even with these companies shelf-ware is rampant. It took large internet companies to come up with competitive stacks to break these virtual monopolies. Having said that your point on making a stronger case is well taken. My bigger point is that the the current trend is less of a bubble than the era of on-prem software - this is a macro level observation. There were company level bubbles then and there are now. I am not commenting on specific companies here at least.

A business model that has been overtaken by technology changes isn't a bubble.

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