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How FANGs Kill Innovation?
This is a short and sweet Medium post about the FANGs, and how they kill innovation.
What Are The FANGs?
The FANGs are Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google.
Years ago, I heard a presentation on how all new industries go down the same growth path. They start out as many competitors in every trend whether it was the Internet, car companies, cigar companies, electric vehicles, dating business. Eventually the growing trended businesses consolidate and kill off the remaining competitors, especially when the market is not fragmented. The Internet presents itself as the least fragmented market that ever existing.
In the end during this business consolidation typically 3 top competitors emerge in every industry. Sometimes the 3 become 1. And that is what we call a monopoly.
For instance, there were a dozen competitors offering Internet search between 1996 and 2007 from Yahoo to AskJeeves to Dogpile and Altavista and Crawler.
Where did they all go?
One of my MBA marketing professors at FDU in Madison, NJ once said that there are 3 channels for all businesses, high end, niche and lowest cost with highest value. That lowest cost with highest value can acquire the entire market, like a Wal-mart.
