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They maintained the 2 decades dominance by either knifing the baby (vine) or buying (Instagram, whatsapp) every upstart.

The moment they couldn't do either they got their clock cleaned (tiktok)

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They benefited greatly from the FTC not doing their job. Google too. Overall it has been extremely damaging to the industry but I suspect that it is the main reason for a small part of California (it not even American exceptionalism, it's Silicon Valley exceptionalism) completely dominating tech.

Wow, that sounds super easy. Why didn't you do it?

It's a weird assumption that the only thing stopping people from the ad business is the effort involved.

Lots of people don't want to sell ads, particularly not with a side of societal harm, even if it would be lucrative. There are other things to value.

I certainly didn't think it was effort

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