[hknmtt]

Ive done many projects in my life, none took off. I've got my first computer in 96 and been online around 2001. So I think i have seen the internet evolve for the past two decades. And what I have been observing ever since we left the 2010s is the rise of monopolization. The 2010s were magical years. Internet was amazing place where you could find a lot of things, communities, people... you could have made anything and you had good odds of attracting people and making it work. For profit or for fun. But ever since we left those golden year, it no longer is about the idea, or even execution. Now it is solely about how much money you can spend on advertising. The internet is too noisy and too monopolized. All meaningful services are owned by big tech. They either compete with you directly or they own services you will have to use(cloud, maps, translations...) so they will make money off of one anyway. And if you hit a unicorn status, they will give you the led or gold offer(they buy you out or make a competing service and bury you business in no time) so you are f'd one way or another, unless you have a ton of cash backing you up and even then you have hard fight against you. And it will only get worse. So good luck to all.

[withinboredom]

This is not strictly true. But if you want to "make it big," it's pretty accurate. However, as a one-or-two-man-shop, you can make a pretty good living off of "commodity software," for which there is still a lot of competition. To make money there simply requires showing up daily and maintaining the service, adding new features, etc. As you show your service to be more reliable, your small customer base will recommend you more and more, and you'll grow.

An excellent way to spot these opportunities is to see what services big companies give away for free. These companies feel threatened by these things and need MORE competition, not less (look at what happened to email hosting for a good example of what happens if people don't compete).

When I see a company offer me something for free, I immediately see what it costs (I want to understand the value I'm getting, at a bare minimum). What I see out there is a thriving economy that I never would have thought to look for if it weren't advertised as "free."

[kmarc]

While I mostly agree with you and the sentiment (and also a bit sad about it), I want to point it out that parting mainstream, staying explorative still helps you discover cool technologies and services outside big tech.

I kinda _depend_ now on syncthing, organicmaps (openstreetmaps), and maybe even Firefox's offline translation service (just to name solutions to those concerns you also mentioned).

Maybe the common theme here is "offline" (so that you are off the loop of big tech's services), and being offline has other positive consequence anyway.

[herbst]

That's a sad POV. Sure it might be hard to build the next social network without a lot of ad spent (likely always was) but you can definitely build the biggest social network for let's say tee drinkers and grow it naturally within an enthusiast community.

I too built things my whole life and have years of 'failure' on my back but I live of income I make on 'niche' sites no major company is ever going to compete for. No unicorns, no million dollar business but honest money for honest work.

[lugu]

Same profile. I think what changed is how dependent to internet we became. Our dependency drives our need for reliable services and long term assurance that the services will operate. This need is best addressed by large companies. Make the Internet a less central part of your life and it will become fun again.