History has a sine-like wave between the extremes of capital intensiveness and commodification. One of the best examples of this is warfare which was capital intensive with the Knights in shining armour before quickly becoming commoditised by gunpowder - which any riff raff could load and aim. The nation-state as an organisational technology proved well suited to the capital and state intensive period of the late 19th and early 20thC. However, now we are in a commoditisation swing and need to re-seek out decentralisation structures.
(more)
The internet boom of the late nineties saw many winners and losers. Some of the big winners were companies such as Amazon, Yahoo, Ebay and Google. These exemplified the changing technology and the new ways it allowed those businesses to not only reach customers, but to allow other customers, to reach their customers. This is the many-to-many economic model. It would not be possible without the rise of the decentralised data network, the http protocol, and the internet web browser. The market success of this economic model has ramifications for representative democracy.
(more)
Their two main products are commodities. Apple understands the value point and Opera is one of those rare businesses able to swim upstream. Those are the options left to a company when their software products gain an opensource competitor.
(more)
