[endisneigh]

> Isn't this process going to naturally select a small handful of providers? What am I missing here?

No. It's possible to not do a lot and still last a very long time. Consider zippers, YKK has existed for almost a century and they only manufacture zippers.

[badwolf]

"The YKK Group is a Japanese group of manufacturing companies. As the world's largest zipper manufacturer, YKK Group is most known for making zippers. It also manufactures other fastening products, architectural products, plastic hardware and industrial machinery."

followed by

"On September 19, 2007, YKK was fined €150.3 million by the European Commission for running worldwide price-fixing cartels and sharing markets with zipper-makers Prym and Coats."

Perhaps not the best example? (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YKK )

[mschuster91]

YKK has the unique advantage that everyone working with clothing knows that the only brand to deliver consistently high quality is, you guessed it, YKK. There have been a number of HN submissions on that subject in the past.

[endisneigh]

the fact that they were fined isn't really relevant to my point. you can use patagonia if you'd like

[corytheboyd]

I know you know this but there is quite the difference between a multi-faceted cloud compute offering and the thing that holds my hoodie together.

[endisneigh]

The point is that it's possible for a company to focus on one thing for a long time. Do you dispute this?

[corytheboyd]

I am, surprisingly, capable of understanding that companies can exist for long periods of time. Time to walk away lol

[endisneigh]

If you understand that then I don't know why you posted your original comment. It isn't true in theory nor in practice. cya, lol