internet map cut up
Interesting article here. Take a look.
http://www.paulgraham.com/bubble.html

Pretty interesting article on the dot.com boom, and its subsequent dot.bomb. It sites a good amount of things that can be learned from what happened with the dot.com businesses. Its not talking about the stigma attached to it now, its talking about good things that dot.com companies brought out, and things that can be learned. As with everything that is good, its only good in moderation. The bubble, was a bubble and it invariably burst. Not all things in it were bad. There is a whole slew of things that survived and are quite successful today.

One of the more interesting business practices that is sited in the article is the idea of building a startup from day one that is intended to be sold to a larger company, along with all its technological innovations or whatever else they innovated. I have to say I’ve thought of this very idea myself. Small companies have nothing to loose by trying something new. Thats what they are, something new, its inherent. Big companies excel at getting product to the masses. New things don’t really feed their bottom line. Its far easier for the big company just to buy the new innovative thing and then do what they do best, punt it out to every breathing body that they can.

You know, i can’t really say i blame big companies for doing this sort of thing. I was reading a conversation that I had with my friend Dan a little while ago, and saw a comment about Microsofts business practices. He was referring to the fact that they buy up anything that comes along and assimilates it into the M$ fold. I mean is that really evil? Some say yes. I’m not too sure I know. On one side its like the little guy has no chance. On the other hand. Those little guys sold out cause they got a whole freakin lotta money from M$. So really? did the little guy loose out there? The small company got bought, and now its innovation are gonna reach everybody? How is that bad? Sure ok, you can say maybe M$ bought some company like that just to shelve its product, but really, there is two sides to it. That little company that got shelved didn’t have to sell themselves. They could have stayed a small company and found other people to buy them who would actually put their product out. But they did sell. What does that say about the people behind the product? I bet you’d have never seen that product anyways. You didn’t loose that product to M$, because it probably never would have seen that light of day.

Hey this is all just me spouting off B.S. lol, so go read that article, its pretty excellent.