The other day I was reading an article about Facebook’s (or should I say Meta’s) future blockchain (or crypto) currency, Diem, formerly called Libra. It contained a lot of interesting information and analysis about its structure, its characteristics, and its differences compared to current cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin. But my point today is not about Facebook, or blockchains or Metaverse. It is about the possibility that our beloved GAFAs (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) have lost their innovative soul.
You see, most of these companies came into existence through innovating and creating something amazing: Facebook with social media, Google with intelligent search, Amazon with selling books on the net, etc… Then they expanded on these innovations with supplementary features: Apple added iTunes to its ipod and iphone, Amazon added other products and cloud services (AWS), Facebook and Google added analytics and AI and so on. I am not 100% fond of their behavior, but granted they produced a lot of firsts (although in each case, I can cite a precursor to them).
But look at them now? They have become ogres who throw money at things that someone else has introduced. Amazon creates Amazon Prime videos or Apple does Apple TV, which are nothing but copycats of Netflix (yes Apple does add a device to differentiate itself, and yes potentially Netflix is a copycat of HBO). Apple creates Apple Pay, which is very much what Stripe has done, and now Facebook wants to enter the blockchain currency world, long after Bitcoin, Ethereum and the likes have done.
So these ogres have stopped true innovation and started throwing money and their names at things to further capture markets. So long live (yet again) money and bye bye true innovation, and welcome to The Brave New (Old) World.
Paris, November, 15, 2021,
Zeejay