Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

The world wide consortium

cliffski

There was a time… it seems silly now, and Aleks talked about it on BBC TV recently, when the web was open, free, and very very democratic. Pretty much every site was some dude in their bedroom hitting a keyboard (like me!), but that didn’t last long.

Remember download.com? It used to just be download.com, then it was CNET’s download.com. Now it is owned by CBS Interactive, who also own TV.com, ZDNet,  News.com, VersionTracker.com, gamespot.com and many others.

Remember slashdot.org? it’s now part of geeknet, who also own sourceforge.

Remember IMDB and Alexa? Both owned by Amazon.

YouTube? owned by Google, of course.

Slowly but surely, in fact maybe not even slowly, all the sites on the net buy each other until there are fewer and fewer owners that control what we read, buy, see, listen to and discuss. I see this as very bad. I’m not some bearded anti-capitalist hippy, I’m VERY much a capitalist at heart. But I’m a pure free-market, small-business style capitalist. I love the idea of a dozen different companies competing to make the best product, and to give the consumer better value. I worry these days that the net is heading towards a time where we don’t do that.  Games are going that way too. Lionhead bought by Microsoft. Maxis bought by EA, etc etc…

Facebook are having a rough time over dodgy privacy settings. The problem is, it’s too late to hassle them about it. Facebook have won. they are huge, valued at 20 billion dollars. Thats bigger than the GDP of Nicargaua. Nobody is about to topple facebook as the top social website. Competition is failing.

Amazon have a similar position in the UK for shopping. Ebay have it for auctions, Google for search, maps, video and most likely small business advertising too.

The really scary thing is that this is MUCH worse than the situation at retail. With physical stuff we have vast competition. I bet you can name ten manufacturers of laptop. ten manufacturers of cars. Now name me ten online book stores.

Or even five.

13 thoughts on The world wide consortium

  1. With all due respect, I don’t think that particular issue is that bad.

    For every site that is bought, 1000 new ones sprout.

    Trouble is, most of them are crap.

    I’d worry about the increasingly crapification of the internet before worrying about its monopolism.

  2. Agreed. I think Facebook is the scariest proposition though: they are getting the hooks for logins that Microsoft failed to get with Passport. I am seeing more and more sites give the option (sometimes, only the option) of a Facebook login to access the site.

    The issue here is lock-in. I can change to Bing if I really get annoyed with Google. I can go directly to companies websites if Amazon goes rogue. Even on the front of OpenID, I have choice of *providers* of OpenID and I can have several if I want to keep aspects of my life apart.

    With Facebook, it is technically a TOS violation to have multiple accounts: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=721

    No, I don’t worry about Steam taking over the online distribution space (at least not yet) because I can buy a game anywhere and have it work. Nor the previously mentioned companies and their spaces: alternatives may be smaller, but they work.

    But if Facebook succeeds in supplanting OpenID (and in places it appears they are pressuring companies to use Facebook Connect and diminish the visibility of OpenID) then we could end up with an Internet with a central authentication scheme.

    One that wants to broadcast your every video game achievement unlocked, even if you would prefer to keep that information from your business contacts.

  3. smashwords.com (ePUB)
    bn.com (Barnes and Nobel)
    lulu.com (also a publisher)
    borders.com
    powells.com

    But, I do agree, there is a consolidation of bookstores online, but judging from where my novel pops up (according to Google trends) there are still quite a few bookstores still out there. Just not as many as I can pull out of a hat. I happen to use Amazon when I don’t have any other place, but they also have a decent wishlist that I use for family.

  4. I think you’ll find that while ownership of the most popular megasites has been contracting, the number of sites made by some dude in his bedroom has been increasing. Well, unless you count all of the Blogger blogs as one site, all of the ScienceBlogs ones as one other site, etc.

    I don’t think it’s fair to count Wikipedia as just one site, either. It’s definitely not as many sites as there are pages, or as there are users, but it’s also not a corporate behemoth forcing users to Do It Our Way, harvesting their personal information for gain, etc.

    I also think it’s a mistake to presume that everybody who runs a series of sites – say, the Gawker family, including Gawker, Jezebel, Lifehacker, Jalopnik, io9 and a few more, though no longer Consumerist – runs it like Rupert Murdoch. There may be pretty big money involved now – nothing compared with News Limited, but lots compared with some five-publication regional newspaper outfit – but those site-chains are often still structured like a hippie collective, with everybody left to pretty much do their own thing as long as they keep the post and reader count high and the lawsuit count low.

    I think a lot of these setups are among the best examples of functional anarchism yet created. Local rules as necessary to get the job done, whatever it happens to be, without overarching control by a corporation or state whose purpose, as time passes, becomes more and more just the perpetuation of itself.

  6. Grrr…. having a hard time posting this list. Some sort of spam protection tripping me up?

    Bookstores? Glad you asked. Here’s a good list, including a few of my local Australian stores.

    —
    Those with a huge range:
    —
    Book Depository (US, UK), Amazon (UK, CA, US), Big W, Chaos, Borders, Emporium Books, Mosaic Resources, Fishpond, Booktopia, The Nile, BuyAustralian, Melbourne Uni Bookshop, Seekbooks, Shearers, Angus & Robertson, QBD, Abbey’s, Readings, Dymocks, Collins Booksellers, CookBooks, The Co-op, Glee Books, DA Direct

    —
    Those with a more select range:
    —
    ABC Shop,Better World Books, Book Bargains, Bookware, Boomerang, DStore, Deep Discount, Doubleday Entertainment, Elsevier, IT Books Online, Medical Society Bookshop, Text Books Oz, The Book Abyss

  7. I agree with the facebook part. It scares me that millions of people all over the world give the nature of their relations to one single company.
    I might be paranoïd there, but European history of last century showed that that type of information is very valuable for states to control people. And if we we know what type of governement we have today, and for most of us trust them, we don’t know what we will have tomorrow, or what type of leak there could be. And once given, that information has been given for ever.

  8. @flap “It scares me that millions of people all over the world give the nature of their relations to one single company.”

    I agree, it’s creepy.

  9. Facebook is owned by the British government, deficit anyone? Who needs ID cards when people tell you everything you need to know.

  10. “I’m not some bearded anti-capitalist hippy”

    Capitalist is the OPPOSITE to Monopolist. Capitalist consist in COMPETITION. So, a true capitalist MUST to be against Monopolies. So, obviously your not a bearded anti-capitalist hippy

  11. @Alejandro:

    Risking being a bit off-topic, I disagree. Capitalism consist on PROFIT. Competition is only good if there’s profit to be made.

    In other words: If one heavily capitalistic company has the opportunity of increasing profit by completely obliterating their competitors, they will not hold it off in order to “keep the competition going”. I don’t think you believe that. Otherwise, you would be the hippy :D

    So I think it is fair that Cliff made the distinction; he’s saying that he likes profit as anyone else, but with some limits.

  12. No, capitalism is an economy system, is not only about profits. Sorry, but you need to read about the topic, a recommend you “Principles Of Economics”, by Gregory Mankiw.
    Companies always used the “free competition” thing to justified they bad behaviors, but for example a Monopoly like Microsoft is anti-capitalism in essence. The problem is that people don’t understand what is really capitalism and put that label in anything who looks like a company.

  13. Capitalism is just a name for freedom in economic sphere.If company becomes so big that it is the only company on the market, it means that it offers such a good service/product that it is simply not worth to compete with them. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

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