[benzor]

This is an excellent answer and took the thoughts right out of my mind.

To elaborate a bit for GP: No I would not have classified early stage Google or Facebook or Amazon as "perpetually unprofitable tech" because, frankly, they clearly weren't. All 3 of these companies had strong, obvious moats that enabled them to preserve pricing power. All 3 of these companies had a small handful of initial cap raises and have grown entirely via Free Cash Flow ever since. The fact that all 3 of these companies continue to operate with staggering profitability decades later confirms this. (You can of course debate the ethics of having such a moat, antitrust etc., but you cannot deny it's there.)

[Breza]

It's incredible that Amazon was able to build such a moat in the early days. Logically, you'd think that somebody like Sears (which became a huge company in the first place by offering the convenience of shopping from home!) would have made a big early investment in online shopping and become gigantic.