Evans: Big Tech exits markets that require manual labor instead of software
Benedict Evans · Are you a seal? · Apr 11, 2022 · at 9:31
Technology analyst Benedict Evans outlines a framework explaining why companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon retreat from businesses requiring dedicated sales or field operations.
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“They want to turn it, particularly for Google, Facebook, Amazon, they want to turn it into automated self-service software. And if it turns out that you kind of can't do that, and you need a bunch of salespeople, or you need a bunch of offices, or you need a bunch of guys in pickup trucks, they've got the money to hire a bunch of guys in pickup trucks. But if they would, but if they were to do that, think about how many of those things they'd have. Like, they'd have, they didn't, they would become a conglomerate. They did everything, and they, then they wouldn't be, then they'd, and meanwhile, most of those things, if you've actually got to the point that you employed a bunch of people going to people's houses, installing alarm systems, well, what would Google be adding to that then? And so there's this sort of, the kind of the Occam's razor is, Can you turn it into the thing that they already do? Can you make it a kind of a trivial extension of what they already do?”
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