[jamesaguilar]

> Remember Facebook?

This delusion that Facebook is somehow dramatically more replaceable than Google or Amazon is kinda amusing. There are plenty of other places to buy online and plenty of other places to search. I can't imagine the mental contortions that are required to hold both of these beliefs at once: "Facebook is replaceable," and, "Google is irreplaceable." They are both replaceable, but it would be tough in both cases.

[notatoad]

Google has a search algorithm that outperforms any other. Their value proposition is that they can help you find what you are looking for better than their competitors can. Amazon has a vast network of suppliers and infrastructure. Their value proposition is that they can provide better selection and delivery than their competition. In both cases, the value is provided by the company.

Facebook is a website that lets you share text and images with your friends. Their only value proposition is that they have a lot of customers: the value of facebook is not provided by facebook. What makes them valuable is simply inertia, and if they lose that inertia they are dead. They have no technical advantage to the competition.

[jamesaguilar]

Have you not done the Google-Bing side-by-side stuff? Personally, I can barely tell the difference. It's far from clear that Google outperforms any other algorithm by enough of a margin to matter. Certainly, Facebook outperforms all other social platforms by a much greater margin, both in terms of the network and ease of use.

[waterlesscloud]

Google has almost no lock-in at all for their main economic engine, search.

If a notably better competitor comes along tomorrow, within a year the whole money empire could crumble. People would just go to the new place, one at a time.

Facebook has TREMENDOUS lock-in. For any new place to have value, it's got to have the majority of the people Facebook has change over in a very short timeframe.

The problem with technical advantage is that when it's gone, it's gone.

[pnathan]

> Facebook has TREMENDOUS lock-in. For any new place to have value, it's got to have the majority of the people Facebook has change over in a very short timeframe.

Eh. I quit it a few years ago and honestly, no one cared. I kept up with the people I kept up with, they did the same.

it completely vanished with nary a ripple.

[ralfd]

I want to argue that the lock-in for Google is pretty huge.

Consider this web ad from three days ago from Microsoft:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNWuOJXP-R4

It makes the claim that in blind tests people choose Bing to Google nearly 2:1. Which is a pretty bold and substantial claim. Question: Do you believe that? Does this new info make you want to try it and set bing even one week as your default search engine? Do you even care? (Notice also that I linked to the bing account on Youtube, a subsidiary of Google, and the chances are high that you are either browsing with Chrome or use Safari/Firefox which use Google as default search.)

[waterlesscloud]

Bing may be marginally better than Google. It's certainly possible that it is.

But marginally better doesn't matter much, which is why I was careful to say "notably" better.

Search now is nothing like what it will be in a decade, and someone is going to make that leap. Might be Google, might not.

What happens when someone makes that quantum leap in delivering the information you want?

If it's not Google, the ad network disintegrates at least as fast as the search users vanish.

I would argue that Youtube has the most lock-in of any Google product, with Gmail second. Neither is invulnerable, but Youtube in particular will be hard to pull folks away from. Moving video around is tedious, and people largely just won't do it.

[xyzzyz]

I was working at Google when this Bing campaign went live. People didn't believe this, so they spent some money on Mechanial Turk, so that people do the "Bing challenge" and report results. I recommend doing that, if you have some disposable money.

I'd say, though, that the ads network is the bigger lock-in for Google, because it's vastly superior than alternativea.

[ralfd]

Uh, nice. What was the result of the Turk people?

[adgar2]

Just to be clear: you are agreeing with your parent poster. Here's your response: Facebook's value IS lock-in, and companies with real technical prowess will fail because they rely on producing something new.

[jlujan]

> Facebook has TREMENDOUS lock-in. For any new place to have value, it's got to have the majority of the people Facebook has > Facebook's value IS lock-in

How can a website lock you in to only being able to share things with your friends through their website? Do they lock you out of your friendships if you quit the site? This is a very bizarre notion to me. Facebook accounts have no value, the people behind the accounts and the relationships have the value. Facebook disappearing wouldn't prevent you from communicating with them. Is this real life?

> and companies with real technical prowess will fail because they rely on producing something new

Err, what? Do you mean that smart people working on hard problems are destined to fail? That facebook has some how consumed all of the available users and prevented them from existing any where else on the internet?

[edj]

The only website he lists that seems irreplaceable to me is Wikipedia.

Everything from source discovery, to unearthing basic facts, to hypertextual excursions through human knowledge is so much easier and more fruitful now, it's hard to imagine going back to the way things were before.

[lmm]

I don't think I've used wikipedia in the past three years.

Life would be a lot worse without my Kindle, but in terms of a website that changes the world in itself, I can only think of arXiV. I remember what trying to look up actual research papers as a high school student was like before it.

[moocow01]

Everything is replaceable or at least thats how the saying goes. I think the point being made is that if Facebook/social media disappeared that it would barely make a dent in how we live compared to if Amazon/e-commerce or Google/search disappeared. At least thats how I interpret it.

[jamesaguilar]

That's probably true, as indicated by the order they arrived on the scene. Social media is at a more rarified level of need. But to jump from there to saying nobody would care? I could say that computers are useless compared to, I dunno, the wheel, therefore no one would care if computers went away. Would you say that rhetoric is useful? Personally, I think not.