| ▲ | mcv a day ago | |
I've heard "They're losing money" since the 1990s. About Amazon and nearly every other tech company. The strategy is always: * Build something useful * Give it away for free to get people exited * Convince investors that this is going to rule the world * Grow to dominate the world * Enshittify | ||
| ▲ | arctic-true a day ago | parent | next [-] | |
The difference is switching costs and the viability of alternatives. Even open source models are only a few months behind the frontier labs, which is a long time in tech but practically no time at all in the eyes of a business consumer. At best, one of the frontier labs will survive and get to flex its hegemonic muscle. But billions and billions of dollars worth of investments still get wiped out in that scenario, which I would still qualify as the bubble popping. This would be doubly true if the winner winds up being Google or Microsoft. | ||
| ▲ | danaris 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
I don't know about others, but with Amazon specifically, it's always been very clear that their "losing money" in aggregate was purely on paper, for tax purposes: their ability to undercut everyone else was initially based on being online without the brick-and-mortar costs that other stores did, then on economies of scale, and now on being the 900kg juggernaut that just has more money than God and can blow it on running you out of business if they feel like it. | ||