Do you think big buisness will take over the internet?

[Vesayen]

I am finishing up a paper and thought... why not ask some intelligent internet going people what they thought about it?

Here is the quote:

"By 1999 notions of the Internet providing a new golden age of competitive capitalism were quickly fading from view in the buisness press. The New York Times argued that the lesson of the Internet was that "The big get bigger and the small fade away." Indeed, as the newspaper noted, the Internet, rather than having a competitive bias, may in fact stimulate monopoly and oligopoly. "At first glance, the Internet seems to favor David over Goliath, as any upstatrt can open an on-line store or an electronic publication. But it appears that the first capable pipsqueak to shoot a slingshot in any given area may grow to giant size so quickly that any new challengers have been kept at bay." The prospects for new giants emerging was even more remote in the area of "content." Despite its much-ballyhooed "openness," to the extent that it becomes a viable mass medium, it will likley be dominated by the usual corporate suepcts."




As you might guess my paper is mostly wripping this guy apart, any thoughts on that quote which epitomizes his whole argument? A sagacious reply might get this thread into my bibliography.

[Agathon]

Hasn't it already?

The internet is perfectly adapted to capitalism. You get a wide variety of choice (if you look for it) and instant gratification (resist temptation to insert porn joke here).

Many people seem to think that AOL and MSN are the internet, but who cares about them..

On the other hand, things like file sharing are a dagger aimed at the heart of traditional corporate models.

[Vesayen]

By "take over" it is meant in a malicious way. The internet will become a giant evil tool like the current media monopolies who will spoon feed us lies and most consumers will routinley be dupped by the evil big companies in a new medium.

There is a difference between capitalism taking over the internet and the industry and media giants.

[Urban Ranger]

How do you dominate the Internet? A small website is just accessable as a huge one. I reckon brand recognition is important, but AFAIK word-of-mouth is the most important way to build up a company's reputation on the Web.

[Dis]

hackers will keep them at bay.

hackers are the freedom fighters of the modern age.

In ways, we have seen how big business has succeeded where small ones fail. Amazon.com, yahoo.com, google.com. Others haven't done a whole lot. If they have they were bought out (like CD Now was bought out by Amazon.com).

I can't see business "owning" the internet, that seems impossible. But I can see them having a great influence over it.

[chequita guevara]

Re: Do you think big buisness will take over the internet?

What do you mean, will? It already has.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Vesayen
By "take over" it is meant in a malicious way. The internet will become a giant evil tool like the current media monopolies who will spoon feed us lies and most consumers will routinley be dupped by the evil big companies in a new medium.

you sould like the brainwashed one

[Vesayen]

That is currently, obviously not the case.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Who's the quote from? It sounds like Robert McChesney. Just wondering...

Anyway, the question you need to ask yourself is what you mean by "take over"? There are two ways to measure this, it seems to me. One is by number of servers; if that's your measurement, I'd say "no." But the other is by profit generated, and here I'd say "yes."

Consider this analogous question: has big business taken over your city? Because I think the internet is rather like a city. If you go around counting individual businesses in your town, you'll probably find that most of them are small, local, and independent. But big business (McDonald's, Walmart, Blockbuster, The Gap, Starbuck's, ad infinitum, ad nauseum) nevertheless sucks up the vast majority of every dollar spent in town. By contrast, mom-and-pop operations survive only by finding their niche and offering those things the big boys have overlooked (vegetarian food, foreign films, vintage clothing). Mom-and-pop operations, in fact, probably constitute the majority of businesses in your city -- but the big boys are still taking in the most money. I suspect the 'net is headed that way, too -- if it's not already there.

[Shi Huangdi]

The internet is unconqurable.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Consider this analogous question: has big business taken over your city? Because I think the internet is rather like a city.

It's not quite the same. In a city, physical distance matters, so Starbucks can win the lion's share of business by having 50 outlets. On the Web, everything is just one click away, so it's just as easy to access Tinystore.com as Amazon.com.

[Dis]

but no one knows about tinystore.com.

Unless it's a niche business (some small business sell some unusual things over the internet), the big ones will continue to dominate.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


It's not quite the same. In a city, physical distance matters, so Starbucks can win the lion's share of business by having 50 outlets. On the Web, everything is just one click away, so it's just as easy to access Tinystore.com as Amazon.com.

That's a good point. Maybe, regarding businesses, the equivalent is being able to get Google to kick your website out first when someone does a generic search. Hits on Google's first page are "closer" than those on its tenth, so in a way geography does matter. And those with the most resources win; my father-in-law runs a very successful internet business, and spends an enormous amount of time, money, and resources staying on Google's first page.

Of course on teh net as in life, a successful small business becomes Big Business. Amazon and Google are two good examples.

[Vesayen]

Okay seems like I won't get any paper worthy quotes to toss in

For the actual topic..... However in this case big buisnesses "domination" does not neccesarily drive the competition out of the market.

Smallsite.com can still exist and be profitable even if bigsite.com makes the majority of the money-in reality bigsite.com drives the smallsite.com out of buisness if they are in the same town-not on the net.

More importantly the big media monopolies are irrelivant online-I can just as easily find my source of news from cnn or fox as I can from a million independant sources. Political advertisments and messages can be spread without owning television stations.


Google did not start off giving any kind of preferential searching treatment and by and large, still don't.


I used metaweb(what was it? some AOL search engine) years ago, then when they turned to garbage... people stopped using it and it collapsed, then lycos, alta vista, ask jeeves(very short amount of time) and finally google... moving on as they turned to garbage. None of these search engines were overtly commercial and NO ONE used them because they were profitable, they used them because they were USEFULL. If a search engine makes money-who cares? If it stops providing the service AS DESIRED BY THE PUBLIC however, they can very easily and very simply go to another search engine that gives them what they want. Google started off as a non commercial website..... google is run pretty damn smart and if they do manage to sell their integrity(which I doubt it), people will move on and google will sink.

Buisnesses making money is no problem as long as the public is served and the internet the free market forces of competition for price, or quality are expediated online where one can VERY easily go to another "supplier" of a good of service.

[:) Smiley]

More than half of my online time is spent on Apolyton, which is hardly a "big business". While there may be economies of scale in using the internet as a distribution tool for physical goods and services, dominance in media and content is simply not going to happen, as people are different.