[silisili]

This is all correct, but kinda shifting timelines.

For example, if Kodak had been first to digital, that doesn't mean they'd have had to give up any film at all. And since they were first, they could have set margins where they liked. Whether it would have survived and thrived...who knows. As others have pointed out, computers weren't commonplace back then.

Digital cameras did get commoditized, nearly 30 years after Kodak had invented it. So obviously, by today they'd had to have move on. High end sensors, glass, heck even cloud computing, something akin to Google Photos... there's no telling where they could have been if they'd have leaned in early.

That said, you point out the sensor market is 15 billion today... and Sony has about half. This is way, way more money than Kodak makes anymore. Today Kodak is at about a billion revenue per year.

[sidewndr46]

Right, but the margins on what you're describing as Kodak's hypothetical business is nowhere near as good as what they had on film.

Who wants to invest time & money into developing a mature, low-margin business?

[bscphil]

In this context, it's sort of interesting to compare Google's approach of trying a million ideas, then killing the ones that don't take off or don't make money. Maybe that's how you stay ahead of the game and don't become a Kodak, which failed to sustain an experimental new business for long enough. Google takes quite a lot of shit for this approach (understandably).

[dmicah]

But are any of Google's side projects an existential threat to their main business of search / ads in the way that digital cameras were to film for Kodak?