Angelfire | Lawrence van Rijn

Yes, we all have that and I am no exclusion, ‘what is’ is the first part of a question that is dangerous. The answer that follows tends to be subjective and personal, as such it is loaded with bias, not that all bias is bad, but it defers from what actually is. This was the first stage when I saw ‘Lina Khan: The 32-year-old taking on Big Tech’. Then we get “when it comes to unfair competition, there is one sector that has been singled out by Democrats and Republicans alike: Big Tech”, this is the beginning of a discriminatory setting. There are two sides in this and let me begin that Big Tech is not innocent, so what is this about? Lets add ““What became clear is there had been a systemic trend across the US… markets had come to be controlled by a very small number of companies,” she said”, now we need to realise that there are two parts here too, in the first she is not lying and for the most, she is correct.

So why do I oppose?

The US, most of the Commonwealth and the EU all have a massive failing, they have no clue what they are doing. I have seen that side for over 30 years and it is the beginning of a larger stage. You see the big tech part needs to be split in two elements big tech and those who ‘use’ (or abuse) the elements of big tech. Big tech was more than the FAANG group (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google), in the beginning there was Microsoft, IBM and Sun as well (there were a few more players but they were gobbled up or ended up being forgotten. When we see charts of technology and market capitalisation we see Microsoft in second place, so why is Microsoft left outside of the targeting of these people? Microsoft is many things, but it was never innocent or some goody two shoes, the same can be argued for IBM, IBM have been gobbling up all kinds of corporations in the last 20 years, so why is IBM disregarded so often? It it nice to target the companies with visibility towards consumers, but that puts Microsoft with more than one issue in the crosshairs, but they are ignored, why is that?

Then we get back to the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57501579) where we see “Her general criticism is that Big Tech is simply too big – that a handful of large US tech firms dominate the sector, at the expense of competition”, she is not incorrect, but there are more sides to that story. In 1997 I gave an idea to bosses (in a software firm) on consumers messaging each other and for a firm to be in the middle of that. Being a gateway and a director of messages and giving visibility to people of other matters (I never used the word advertising). It was founded on a missing part when Warner Brothers created (in partnership with Angelfire) a website hub. So fans of Babylon 5, Gilmore Girls and a few other series could Create their own webpage, they got 20MB for free and an address, like in Babylon 5 I was something like Section Red number 23 (I forgot, it was 25 years ago), the bosses stated that there would never be a use for that, it was not their business and there was no business need for something like that and 4 years later someone else created Facebook. Now I am no Facebook creator, what I had was in no way anywhere near that, but that is a side a lot of people forget, the IT people had no clue on what the digital era was bringing and what it looked like, so as they were unaware, politicians had even less of a clue. So when Google had its day (search and email) no one knew what was going on, they merely saw a free email account with 1GB of storage and everyone got on the freebee train, that is all well and good, but nothing is for free, it never ever is.

As such a lot of companies remained inactive for close to half a decade, Google had created something unique and they are one of the founding fathers of the Digital age. Consider that Microsoft was clueless for close to a decade and when they started they were behind by a lot and there inaccurate overreaction of Bing, is merely laughable. Microsoft makes all these claims yet it was the creators of Google who came up with the search system and they got Stanford to make this for them, just look it up, a patent that is the foundation of Google and Microsoft was in the wind and blind to what would be coming. By the time they figured it out they were merely second tier junkyard vendors. And (as I personally see it) the bigger players in that time (IBM and Microsoft) were all ready to get rich whilst sleeping, they were looking into the SaaS world (diminishing cost to the larger degree), outsourcing as a cost saving and so on, as I see it players like Microsoft and IBM were about reducing cost and pocketing that difference, so as Google grew these players were close to a no-show and do not take my word for that, look at the history line of what was out there. In retrospect Apple saw what would be possible and got on the digital channel as fast as possible. Yet IBM and Microsoft were Big Tech, yet they are ignored in a lot of cases, why is that? When you ignore 2 out of 6 (I am not making Netflix part of this) we get the 2 out of part and that comes down to more than 30%, this is discrimination, it grows as Adobe has its own (well deserved) niche market, yet are they not big tech too? One source gives us “As of June 2021 Adobe has a market cap of $263.55 B. This makes Adobe the world’s 32th most valuable company by market cap according to our data”, which in theory makes them larger than IBM, really? Consider that part, for some reason Adobe is according to some a lot larger than IBM (they are 112th), so when we consider that, can we optionally argue that the setting is tainted? In a stage where there are multiple issues with the numbers and the descriptions we are given, the entire setting of Big Tech is needing a massive amount of scrutiny, and when I see Lina Khan giving us “markets had come to be controlled by a very small number of companies” I start to get issues. Especially when we see “there is one sector that has been singled out by Democrats and Republicans alike: Big Tech”. You see singling out is a form of discrimination, it is bias and that is where we are, a setting of bias and to some extent, we are all to blame, most of us are to blame because of what we were told and what was presented to us, yet no one is looking to close to the presenters themselves and it is there that I see the problem, This is about large firms being too large and the people who do not like these large firms are the people who for the most do not understand the markets they are facing. Just like the stage of media crying like little bitches because they lose revenue to Google (whilst ignoring Bing as it has less than 3% marketshare).

The who? The what? Why?

This part is a little more complex, to try to give my point, I need to go back to some Google page that gives me “What is Google’s position on this new law? We are not against being regulated by a Code and we are willing to pay to support journalism—we are doing that around the world through News Showcase. But several aspects of the current version of this law are just unworkable for the services you use and our business in Australia. The Code, as it’s written, would break the way Google Search works and the fundamental principle of the internet, by forcing us to pay to provide links to news businesses’ sites. There are two other serious problems remaining with the law, but at the heart of it, it comes down to this: the Code’s rules would undermine a free and open service that’s been built to serve everyone, and replace it with one where a law would give a handful of news businesses an advantage over everybody else.”

This is about that News bargaining setting. Here we get ‘by forcing us to pay to provide links to news businesses’ sites’, and I go ‘Why?’ A lot of them do not give us news, they give us filtered information, on addition to this is that if I am unwilling to buy a newspaper, why should I pay for their information? If they want to put it online it is up to them, they can just decide not to put it online, that I their right. In addition some sources for years pretty much EVERY article by the Courier Mail get me a sales page (see below), this is their choice and they are entitled to do so.

Yet this sales pitch is brought to us in the form of a link to a news article. It still happens today and it is not merely the Courier Mail, there are who list of newspapers that use the digital highway to connect to optional new customers. So why should they get paid to be online? In the digital stage the media has become second best, the stage that the politicians are eager to ignore is that a lot of the ‘news bringers’ are degraded to filtered information bringers. In the first why should I ever pay for that and in the second, why would I care whether they live or die? Do not think this is a harsh position, Consider the Daily Mail giving us two days ago ‘Police station is branded the ‘most sexist in Britain’ after investigations find officers moonlighted as prostitutes, shared pornography with the public and conducted affairs with each other on duty’, so how did they get to ‘most sexist in Britain’? What data do they have and hw many police stations did they investigate? There is nothing of that anywhere in the article, then we get to ‘after a series of scandals’, how many is a series of scandals? Over what time frame? Then we get to ‘Whatsapp and Facebook groups used to exchange explicit sexual messages and images have been shut down’, as such were the identities of the people there confirmed? How many were there? What evidence was there? All issues that the Daily Mail seems to skate around and ‘In the latest scandal, PC Steve Lodge, 39’ completes the picture. Who else was hauled to court and is ‘hauled’ a procedural setting in an arrest? When one rites to emphasise to capture the interest of the audience it becomes filtered information, it becomes inaccurate and therefor a lot of it becomes debatable. Well over a dozen additional questions come to mind of a half baked article on the internet, and they get paid for that? And as we consider ‘He was alleged to have’ we get the ‘alleged’ part so that the newspaper cannot be held liable, but how accurate was the article? That same setting transfers to Lina Khan.

The article gives us ‘or rather a perceived lack of competition’ as well as ‘markets had come to be controlled by a very small number of companies’, they are generalising statements, statements lacking direct focal point and specifications. In the first ‘perceived’ is a form of perception, biased and personal, ones perception is not another ones view of the matter. It is not wrong to state it like that, but when you go after people it is all about the specifics and all about data and evidence, as I see it evidence has been lacking all over the board.
And when we consider ‘markets had come to be controlled by a very small number of companies’ I could add “PetSmart has 1650 shops in the US, they could set the price for tabby’s on a national level, is that not a cartel foundation?” Yet these politicians are not interested in a price agreement of pets are they, it is about limiting the stage of certain people, but by doing so they will hurt themselves a lot more than they think. On November 14th 2020 I wrote the article ‘Tik..Tik..Tik..’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/11/14/tik-tik-tik/), where I wrote “if HarmonyOS catches on, Google will have a much larger problem for a much longer time. If it is about data Google will lose a lot, if it is about branding Google will lose a little, yet Huawei will gain a lot on the global stage and Apple? Apple can only lose to some extent, there is no way that they break even”, and a lot ignored the premise, but now as HarmonyOS has launched (a little late), the stage is here. When it is accepted as a real solution, Google stands to lose the Asian market to a much larger degree and all because a few utterly stupid politicians did not know what they were doing, more important Huawei still has options in the Middle East and in Europe. So the damage will add and add and increase to a much larger degree, especially if India goes that way, for Google a market that could shrink up to 20%, close to 2,000,000,000 consumers are per July 1st ill have an alternative that is not Apple or Google, that is what stupidity gets them. My IP will connect to HarmonyOS, so I am not worried, yet as I see it the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) better start getting its ships properly aligned, because if HarmonyOS is indeed a decent version from version 2 onwards the US tech market could shrink by a little over 22.4%, the US economy is in no way ready for such a hit, all because politicians decided to shout without evidence and knowhow of what they were doing, a nice mess, isn’t it?

The stage of ‘What is’ depends on reflection and comprehension and both were lacking in the US, I wonder what they will lose next.

Seems an odd title to start with, but whenever I see certain reports by boards of directors as they make it to the press, then I am reminded of an old Dutch cartoon called ‘father and son‘ about the conservative father and the progressive son. It was a political cartoon by a man called Peter van Straaten. In one of these drawings a man is standing with a camera whilst the woman is standing not that dressed next to the fireplace, the by-line is ‘Look Horny’. It was hilarious! So was the published remark from the Apple board of directors “Apple’s (AAPL) Board of Directors has grown frustrated at the company’s lack of visible innovation.”

Be innovative in this light is as weird as being horny on command. We can all be innovative at times, but we are innovative with the means at our disposal. In his case this is about vision. Was Steve Jobs the visionary, or was he the man who could recognise it when it was shown to him? Let’s face it; we all have ideas at time. I remember coming up with something that is now called Facebook. Hold on, wait! I am not claiming I invented Facebook. In the late 90’s Warner brothers had these web spaces that were hosted through a provider called Angelfire. There was the Halliwell home, the Babylon 5 home, the Bat cave. All forms of addresses that linked the subscriber to their favourite series, or movie. It was free and it came with 20Mb space. However, it was completely static. I thought it would be a good idea to have something similar and to let these members talk to one another. Our benefit would be that we could talk to them all, a place for free advertising at the cost of one web server and a few additional costs. My boss stated that this was not our mission (which was true) and that this would never work (Really?). I think I still have the e-mail somewhere. I had no other means to pursue this idea and in the end it would never have been anywhere near Facebook, so it does not matter.

The moral is that if your boss lacks insight, things will never get pushed forward. It seems that Steve Jobs had this insight in abundance. Likely he was one of these true visionaries and the timing was right. Timing is all in that field, come a little too soon and it will not happen, come too late and you are a copycat at best.

Does the board of directors at Apple comprehend this?

Perhaps Tim Cook has part of these abilities, perhaps not. Perhaps there is no real innovation to be gotten. Let’s just face that between the cassette, the mini-disc and the iPad there were many years of waiting. The origin of the cassette recorder was around the 1930’s, which was PRE WW2 and would not be a consumer item until decently after WW2. So it took almost half a century to get to the Mini-Disc and almost a decade to get to the iPod. Will it take that long for the iPod to evolve to something truly new? There is no way to tell, innovation comes in many forms and a real breakthrough is needed to shape innovation.

I reckon the new Mac Pro is sure sign that innovation is not dead, this is however nothing more than displayable innovation with to a smaller extent an engineering level of innovation, yet, this is nothing more than a new step forward, not a leap forward onto a new train. As for ‘new’, let’s not forget that Cray had the round professional computer (read mainframe) first, the Cray CDC8600, which was released in the late 60’s, so is the idea Apple had truly innovative? The Cray version came with a bench around it, so where’s my chair Apple!

There is also a downside to innovation the way Apple does it. That part is becoming more and more visible with the iPad. There is now the iPad2 and iPad3. My iPad1 is great, I bought it to use in University and it does exactly what it needs to do and I was until recently quite happy. Developers make applications for the device and I have bought a decent amount of them. However, recently, more and more applications can no longer be updated. Even more irritating is that some updated applications will no longer work and crash as these developers only seem to consider the new iPad’s for testing and not the old ones. More important, new software often no longer works on the old models, so from that we could come to the thought that the innovation of Apple comes at the price where a device like the iPad, must be replaced after two years, which seems an expensive approach for consumers.

Now let’s take a step back. Innovation should not be a hype word. The dictionary states it as: “the act of innovating – introduction of new things or methods.”

So Apple is not really adding anything truly new to their cascading fleet of devices. There is even the idea that in the end this step like approach is a really bad idea. They seem to forget that the economy is in a slump and most of us cannot afford a steplike replacement of our devices.

I reckon the board of directors should also realise that the ‘innovative’ track of Apple has been an expensive one for its consumers; I lost close to $8000, whilst Apple was all too eager not to step forward on their failings and I am not alone. How is that related? Well, when you lose money, until something TRULY innovative comes, why would you purchase that brand? In my case my expensive laptop had to be replaced after only 14 months and as such I did not buy an apple. I am not alone; several around me had such an uncomfortable experience with the iPhone 4 that they have since moved to a non-Apple android solution.

So perhaps their board of directors need to focus on quality of the innovation, not quantity of innovations. In the end, they have nothing valid to complain about. Apple is in the bulk of the homes in one way or another. Whether it is through desktop (iMac), laptop (Macbook Air/Pro) or handheld (iPad/iPod/iPhone). If you talk to 10 of your friends then it is likely that 5 out of 10 have at least one Apple device and 2 out of these 5 are likely to have more than one device. Plenty of CEO’s would sell their first born into slavery for such returns. So in plain words, what are these board members bitching about? Is it truly about innovation or is it about simple greed?

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