[gedrap]

> GOOG, FB, AMZN

A tiny nitpick, but what's with the trend of using stock symbols in non-financial context? GOOGL isn't much shorter than Google, same with AMZN and Amazon. It just looks... annoyingly out of place.

Regarding the article itself, the topic of Facebook/Amazon/Google domination is much spoken and written about and this post doesn't really add much new. This issue is well known for a quite a long time, especially in the HN and similar social circles. What most of the posts are missing is how do we escape this? But that might be too late.

[zukzuk]

A not-so-subtle way of pointing out that these are all profit-seeking companies? A lot like how people used to write Micro$oft, back when Bill Gates was the nerds' devil. We're all sophisticated financially-aware grown ups now, so we've moved on to ticker symbols, as a way of signalling our enlightenment.

[bitwize]

Just the opposite. It actually started in the 90s during the dotcom mania when what a company was doing, for good or ill, became eclipsed by how much money its stock could make the reader base. Ostensible tech sites turned into The Wall Street Journal. During the early 90s it was "Microsoft announces a new version of Windows. Here are the features you can look forward to (or dread)!" The late 90s turned more toward "Microsoft (MSFT) experienced a stock price jump when it announced a new version of Windows."

[mc32]

I tend to agree. It's a way to signal that one is above the everyman and everywoman who don't indulge in the cants and argots that abound in the industry.

On average, when people can, they do try to sound more sophisticated than necessary to express a message, including in this message.

[convery]

Because there's a lot of longer ones and it becomes a habit. For example I often talk about ATVI (Activision-Blizzard) in chats as it's a lot shorter.

[johnchristopher]

"in chats". This is a blog post, a forum, not an SMS conversation with 1998's prices. Acronyms look-up on Google gets old really fast. I had to look for YANBU yesterday and it was not fun to get back to the orignal text after that.

[DougN7]

I would never have guessed what ATVI was. So audience is important, which means for a public post, stock symbols probably aren't a great idea.

[koko775]

It's the first result not only on Google but DuckDuckGo as well. Do you not search for unfamiliar terms?

[DougN7]

Sure I do. But if one has an aim to be understood, it's better not to make everyone lookup what you're referring to. If something has a well known name, use the name!

[exDM69]

I think the author uses GOOG to distinguish GOOG the company from Google, the service they provide.

[jannes]

Technically GOOG doesn't even stand for Google Inc. anymore. It's Alphabet Inc.'s official ticker symbol. Subtle difference.

[lemondrops]

> annoyingly out of place

Agree. I can't take an article seriously when the author is too lazy to type out Facebook.

[JustSomeNobody]

I tend to think it is passive aggressiveness[0]. Especially in articles like this.

[0] "Look! these are the large organizations ruining everything!"