Amazon executives considered publishing people anti-diluvian losers with rotary phones and inventory systems designed in 1968. Publishers kept no data on customers, making their bets on books a matter of instinct rather than metrics. They were full of inefficiencies starting with over-price Manhattan offices. Well, I mean, the internet, if anything demands efficiency, it strips out all the digital channel, completely changes it.
This episode surprised us; through a discussion of who is at fault in the latest series of new vs old-world spats, we realized that not only has the Internet fundamentally changed winners-and-losers, but also the very nature of economic competition and the type of regulation that is required.
Topics & Links
- Mathew Ingram: Giants Behaving Badly – GigaOm
Google v MetaFilter
- Matt Haughey: On the Future of MetaFilter – Medium
Journalism v Facebook
- Mike Hudack: A Rant About the State of Media – Facebook
- Ben Thompson: Newspapers are Dead; Long Live Journalism – Stratechery
Amazon v Publishers
Antitrust, Network Effects, and the Age of Abundance
Do Tech Companies Have a Responsibility to Society?
On how the Internet has fundamentally changed the world, and how government regulation is hopelessly behind
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