On the sale of Waze and the disposal of content
The day before yesterday, it became known that Google acquired the Israeli company Waze, a very popular “social” navigation operator in some countries. The amount of the transaction is $ 1.3 billion. Sincerely rejoicing at the company's founders, I still want to talk about a less pleasant trend.
Waze went to the big players for a long time, hanging up thingies and unnecessary functionality, often at the cost of worsening the stability of navigation. And finally, the number of ryushechek reached a critical value for sale. Congratulations on your purchase of Google! We are waiting for information about traffic jams on G + and [probable] closing of the application in its current form. A little sorry, of course, but not the end of the world. Much more regret is the incessant trade is not its content. But no, not regret - anger! As in the story of Mark Twain, in which the satirist hero used all possible sources of wit for his work, the Internet parasites climb their elephant backs into the pottery shops of any more or less noticeable party.
This is already pretty tired, honestly. Providing infrastructure and organizing a channel for communication is certainly a very important and necessary thing. For example, a medical conference of neurosurgeons cannot take place without organizers, designers, cleaners, technicians for setting up microphones and waiters for a buffet table. But from what demons do the cleaners and technicians suddenly begin to dispose of the conference materials? You will be considered crazy if you say that the owner of the projector for presentations has the right to publish, sell or prohibit the works shown on it at will and discretion. And in the digital world, this has become the order of the day! LJ, Facebook, Google, Yahu and so on. - the owners of projectors - monetize in every way, rework and manage other people's content!
')
It all started wrong. At first there was a symbiosis . The author of the content received some services, say, search, aggregation or hosting. The service provider earned on aggregation with the help of advertising, or derived useful services. Interests of authors and suppliers did not overlap: I write the text, and LJ gives me a platform for publishing and discussing my text. I pay for the service or get it for free - it already depends on the business model of the supplier, which by and large is not important to me: I do my business or hobby, and Facebook / Google / Twitter does my own.
Then the aggregators little by little began to inflate their virtual market value by a blunt multiplication of the number of aggregated by future potential profits. Content generators have become logins, tens and hundreds of millions of logins. I have ceased to be an author, but have become a faceless “active account.” At the peak of the inflation, what started happening was called “social networks” for shamefully disguising the complete substitution of concepts: a party that filled the place of its meetings with meaning, whether it was a park bench or a trendy cafe (read the site), became a counted resource of the site owners, who believed that thanks to The market valuation is precisely the place that gives meaning to the get-together! Your cats and pictures are secondary, Instagram is primary. For trivial content like likes and statuses, the user is not a person at all, but just an appendix of a mouse who clicks to show ads and collect advertising feedback.
It is interesting to note that some parties rarely demonstrated the “xy xy” aggregators. The mirage of the “billions” businesses immediately dissipated, and dirty benches and bare walls (that is, unnecessary server racks) appeared to anyone. But this rarely happened because people are naturally inert, plus the vast majority of their own content is not interesting and is not a horn. And most importantly, since the service provider continues to supply it, then how do I care about his cheeks inflating? Let him earn money, let him go to the stock exchange, let him rub it in to investors, and if you need to call the authors active accounts on the charts in the business plan, for God's sake.
Unfortunately, the leading and guiding role of content aggregators did not stop at the same content. Began aggregation of the second order: the absorption of different services. From a business point of view, the step is logical, otherwise why bother to inflate the market value of the service, if not for sales and mergers? And with sales come redundancy and inconsistency of the new service of the general strategy of the buyer. As a result, the service is converted or closed, thus hitting the authors and depriving them of the platform. And nobody already asks them, since they became meaningless accounts somewhere in the previous step.
For example, the Internet giant buys another instant messenger. Buys for the sake of an organized user base and feeling good in each other’s society, and for nothing more. In our “bench” terminology, roughly raises the bench and takes it to the other end of the park. There he already has three benches of his own, so the fourth one he will definitely begin to redo and integrate into his previous ones. Perhaps the “purchased” users will painlessly climb onto other messenger benches, or maybe not, it does not matter. It is important that the decision about the shock (and to a greater or lesser degree of destruction) of the usual and cozy company took ... a bench!
It may be objected that under capitalism the workers are not the owners of the goods produced, to which I will answer that the aggregators have no ownership of the means of production! Telecoms or HTML developers might as well claim content rights.
But back to Waze. The idea for a startup was simple and ingenious, as everything is simple: to give drivers the opportunity to a) build and adjust maps and b) inform each other about traffic events. I tell drivers about my traffic jams, and they tell me about their own. Together we create a fairly truthful picture of the condition of the roads at any given time. I repeat once again: we are creating this picture. We observe, we analyze, we report (and could, as before, call the radio station dealing with traffic announcements). We draw them maps: I personally diligently marked at home and corrected many cartographic errors. By the way, the first discontent of Waze happened several years ago: the community created cards for them, which the company did not want to open to public access. Dissatisfied, in the end, they fell silent, because the service was so necessary, and the Wazians were so positive, such nyashki.
Speaking all the time “we”, I nevertheless did not at all claim to share in the Waze business and do not downplay the importance of what they did. They contain a platform, they have developed client applications for many operating systems, they are engaged in algorithms and coordination. Waze has every right to enjoy the results of his work. There is a classic symbiosis in which both the content generators, and consumers, and the aggregator are good. But then a meta-aggregator appeared, which least of all worries that all around is good!
Google Waze in its current form does not need nafig. He has Maps and own navigation. He has a fix idea of “splitting up” everything around, and what does not work out is to close it. At best, they will take deserving attention, draw some time, and then - goodbye, favorite bench? But excuse me, because we have been setting it up so long and carefully!
I understand perfectly well that it is much easier to write a critical article than to abandon the proposed billion with a third of dollars, and in the name of some kind of symbiosis there. There is no one to blame for what is happening. So there were stars, that the financial lever is now with the aggregators. I can only wish them to burst quickly under their own weight in order to return them to the logical place of providers of important and necessary services, but not the managers of the information accumulated by mankind. In my virtual spherical universe, community collected / created content should not and cannot be resold at all. It is not an asset of startups, which I, however, wish and wish you every success.
Waze went to the big players for a long time, hanging up thingies and unnecessary functionality, often at the cost of worsening the stability of navigation. And finally, the number of ryushechek reached a critical value for sale. Congratulations on your purchase of Google! We are waiting for information about traffic jams on G + and [probable] closing of the application in its current form. A little sorry, of course, but not the end of the world. Much more regret is the incessant trade is not its content. But no, not regret - anger! As in the story of Mark Twain, in which the satirist hero used all possible sources of wit for his work, the Internet parasites climb their elephant backs into the pottery shops of any more or less noticeable party.
This is already pretty tired, honestly. Providing infrastructure and organizing a channel for communication is certainly a very important and necessary thing. For example, a medical conference of neurosurgeons cannot take place without organizers, designers, cleaners, technicians for setting up microphones and waiters for a buffet table. But from what demons do the cleaners and technicians suddenly begin to dispose of the conference materials? You will be considered crazy if you say that the owner of the projector for presentations has the right to publish, sell or prohibit the works shown on it at will and discretion. And in the digital world, this has become the order of the day! LJ, Facebook, Google, Yahu and so on. - the owners of projectors - monetize in every way, rework and manage other people's content!
')
It all started wrong. At first there was a symbiosis . The author of the content received some services, say, search, aggregation or hosting. The service provider earned on aggregation with the help of advertising, or derived useful services. Interests of authors and suppliers did not overlap: I write the text, and LJ gives me a platform for publishing and discussing my text. I pay for the service or get it for free - it already depends on the business model of the supplier, which by and large is not important to me: I do my business or hobby, and Facebook / Google / Twitter does my own.
Then the aggregators little by little began to inflate their virtual market value by a blunt multiplication of the number of aggregated by future potential profits. Content generators have become logins, tens and hundreds of millions of logins. I have ceased to be an author, but have become a faceless “active account.” At the peak of the inflation, what started happening was called “social networks” for shamefully disguising the complete substitution of concepts: a party that filled the place of its meetings with meaning, whether it was a park bench or a trendy cafe (read the site), became a counted resource of the site owners, who believed that thanks to The market valuation is precisely the place that gives meaning to the get-together! Your cats and pictures are secondary, Instagram is primary. For trivial content like likes and statuses, the user is not a person at all, but just an appendix of a mouse who clicks to show ads and collect advertising feedback.
It is interesting to note that some parties rarely demonstrated the “xy xy” aggregators. The mirage of the “billions” businesses immediately dissipated, and dirty benches and bare walls (that is, unnecessary server racks) appeared to anyone. But this rarely happened because people are naturally inert, plus the vast majority of their own content is not interesting and is not a horn. And most importantly, since the service provider continues to supply it, then how do I care about his cheeks inflating? Let him earn money, let him go to the stock exchange, let him rub it in to investors, and if you need to call the authors active accounts on the charts in the business plan, for God's sake.
Unfortunately, the leading and guiding role of content aggregators did not stop at the same content. Began aggregation of the second order: the absorption of different services. From a business point of view, the step is logical, otherwise why bother to inflate the market value of the service, if not for sales and mergers? And with sales come redundancy and inconsistency of the new service of the general strategy of the buyer. As a result, the service is converted or closed, thus hitting the authors and depriving them of the platform. And nobody already asks them, since they became meaningless accounts somewhere in the previous step.
For example, the Internet giant buys another instant messenger. Buys for the sake of an organized user base and feeling good in each other’s society, and for nothing more. In our “bench” terminology, roughly raises the bench and takes it to the other end of the park. There he already has three benches of his own, so the fourth one he will definitely begin to redo and integrate into his previous ones. Perhaps the “purchased” users will painlessly climb onto other messenger benches, or maybe not, it does not matter. It is important that the decision about the shock (and to a greater or lesser degree of destruction) of the usual and cozy company took ... a bench!
It may be objected that under capitalism the workers are not the owners of the goods produced, to which I will answer that the aggregators have no ownership of the means of production! Telecoms or HTML developers might as well claim content rights.
But back to Waze. The idea for a startup was simple and ingenious, as everything is simple: to give drivers the opportunity to a) build and adjust maps and b) inform each other about traffic events. I tell drivers about my traffic jams, and they tell me about their own. Together we create a fairly truthful picture of the condition of the roads at any given time. I repeat once again: we are creating this picture. We observe, we analyze, we report (and could, as before, call the radio station dealing with traffic announcements). We draw them maps: I personally diligently marked at home and corrected many cartographic errors. By the way, the first discontent of Waze happened several years ago: the community created cards for them, which the company did not want to open to public access. Dissatisfied, in the end, they fell silent, because the service was so necessary, and the Wazians were so positive, such nyashki.
Speaking all the time “we”, I nevertheless did not at all claim to share in the Waze business and do not downplay the importance of what they did. They contain a platform, they have developed client applications for many operating systems, they are engaged in algorithms and coordination. Waze has every right to enjoy the results of his work. There is a classic symbiosis in which both the content generators, and consumers, and the aggregator are good. But then a meta-aggregator appeared, which least of all worries that all around is good!
Google Waze in its current form does not need nafig. He has Maps and own navigation. He has a fix idea of “splitting up” everything around, and what does not work out is to close it. At best, they will take deserving attention, draw some time, and then - goodbye, favorite bench? But excuse me, because we have been setting it up so long and carefully!
I understand perfectly well that it is much easier to write a critical article than to abandon the proposed billion with a third of dollars, and in the name of some kind of symbiosis there. There is no one to blame for what is happening. So there were stars, that the financial lever is now with the aggregators. I can only wish them to burst quickly under their own weight in order to return them to the logical place of providers of important and necessary services, but not the managers of the information accumulated by mankind. In my virtual spherical universe, community collected / created content should not and cannot be resold at all. It is not an asset of startups, which I, however, wish and wish you every success.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/182952/
All Articles