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Comment by barbariangrunge | Hacker News Reader

The news agencies are so prone to bandwagon on topics

Big Tech isn’t going anywhere. It will continue to grow. What will replace it? New Big Tech? There could be a small slump for a few years, but it’s a recession, right after everyone increased spending due to Covid. People all over are feeling the effects. It would only be newsworthy if tech was immune somehow

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Honestly the only FAANG companies that feel safe for the next 10 years are Apple and Microsoft.

Google has a high chance of being disrupted by AI-assisted search agents.

Amazon is now mostly a cloud business with a grocery store attached. Cloud will get increasingly commoditized and margins will likely erode.

Facebook is a 50-50 bet on the metaverse being the next big thing.

Netflix depends entirely on lucking out on a successful show/franchise.

Apple and Microsoft’s moats seem way more defensible.

Even if they'll get stiff competition, facebook/google et al can also simply buy the promising upstarts with the mountain of cash they (still) have. Like they have been doing for many years now.

Just like cash rich giants of the 90s and early 2000s couldn't buy Google and FB, there will emerge some startups which will resist the pressure from the Big Tech and beat them eventually. There will also be cases where the Big Tech will be shortsighted and refuse offers from the startups just like it happened earlier. History repeats.

I'm not sure that this is possible anymore, given the regulatory context. At least in the US, "big tech bad" is a somewhat popular observation on both the left and right, though for different reasons. I'm not sure that something like Facebook purchasing Instagram would fly today.

> Google has a high chance of being disrupted by AI-assisted search agents.

I doubt it, Google itself has some of the most advanced AI in the world, including Google Brain and Deepmind. For them to be disrupted means that something truly revolutionary has come about, and not from Google's own labs.

true, but the threat to them is not from superior technology, but from good technology coupled with a different monetization approach.

Google’s inertia comes from the fact that their entire organization is built around ads. An AI-powered assistant will likely not be monetized the same way.

I can totally see a situation where Google’s management rejects AI adoption because they can’t think of a way of monetizing it with their current models.

> Apple and Microsoft’s moats seem way more defensible.

Probably not defensive against antitrust action that simply defines a moat as anticompetitive.

Imo google and amazon have more of a moat than Apple. While I don't think it's easy to replicate Apples marketing and design I think its more likely that consumer preferences will change than a company being able to replicate search , cloud or amazon scale retail. It just requires less money to start a new electronics company than any of thoae

That's okay. If they get usurped then they get usurped by more tech. That doesn't change the trajectory of software become more and more essential in every moment of our lives.

> Facebook is a 50-50 bet on the metaverse being the next big thing.

That feels VERY generous. They're making two big bets here :

1. VR will be a big thing (I just don't see it. I think it's gonna be like 3d)

2. They can dominate the market (also sound unlikely since Apple is working on it)

VR is tricky. I have my own reasons rooted in personal experience for a bull case of the metaverse. But I'm also confident that it's not going to be a mass market product like the smartphone. And I'm also skeptical that Facebook can pull it off.

So yeah, probably a 20-80 and not a 50-50 bet.

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