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I ended my last article with these lines: “Listen to cousin Ed and the gang talk about this for a few minutes in the video below. I’m going to move on to writing the second part of this two-part series, primarily because I think it’s a really big second point that is getting very little attention. Frankly, I think it’s the most important part, and it’s sort of funny that it’s getting ignored so much by the Big Money community since it’s a serious basic of their whole world.”
I’m going to cut to the chase first. The title says it. The big, gigantic problem Big Tech companies have is that none of them have a monopoly on AI.
I’ve been in a variety of discussions and sessions this week that either centered on AI or touched on it. I’ve also been using it a bit for a few things to see how much it can help. One thing that struck me is that while it might have seemed for a while like one or two companies were on a revolutionary path and had a monopoly on the market, the issue is that there are now several companies doing essentially the same thing and there’s really no hope of developing a monopoly. Maybe it’s also because it’s summertime and my kids have been playing Monopoly a lot, but the fact is that this is a fundamental way a company makes a fortune. Google became gigantic because it basically monopolized the “search” market. Microsoft — well, we know all about that. (Those of us who grew up before the turn of the century at least.) Facebook came to dominate social networks in the early stages of that industry. YouTube found a way to edge out the competition and take a completely dominant position in the online video entertainment space. Yes, there are others in each of their fields and there were competitors early on that couldn’t compete, but there were user nuances and network effects that made the winners dominant.
