创业与商业gwern.net
科技经济学定律：商品化你的互补品
Laws of Tech Economics: Commoditize Your Complement
2018 — 2020，它一次次回到首页
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导读
Gwern 的这篇经典文章阐述科技行业的一条经济学定律：“商品化你的互补品”——公司通过让互补品（如软件、内容、标准）变得免费或廉价，来提升自身产品的价值和利润。文章用 IBM、微软、谷歌等大量历史案例说明这一策略如何反复上演。
为什么经久不衰：它把科技商业竞争的核心逻辑提炼成一条简洁定律，案例翔实，至今仍是理解平台战略和开源生态的必读框架。
HN 评论精选
开发者通过开源和免费工具主动推动了自己的商品化
科技公司试图商品化的互补品之一就是开发者。'人人都能编程'的推广、免费开源的编译器和语言，都是在降低门槛、商品化开发者——过去开发者要花几百美元买编译器。开发者自愿教人编程、业余做开源软件免费给公司用、为免费语言和工具做贡献，最后却抱怨被商人利用。程序员是唯一积极推动自身商品化的职业。
RcouF1uZ4gsC查看英文原文
One of the things the tech economies try to commedituze is developers. While you sounding nice, the whole tech company push for "everyone can code" is an effort to commodetize developers. Having free and open source compilers and languages also serves to reduce the cost of entry and commodetize developers. In the past, developers would pay hundreds of dollars for compilers and languages (which is actually cheap compared to what other professions pay for their tools). Developers volunteer to teach new people to code. Developers spend their free time making open source software that is free for companies to use. Developers contribute to free languages and tools. Finally, developers complain that they are taken advantage by business people who think they are stupid! Software developers are the only professionals which actively work to commodetize themselves.
纠正文章对 Netscape 案例的分析：浏览器与操作系统互为互补品
这个观点总体上成立，对 PC 的分析也对，但对 Netscape 的说法完全错了。浏览器的互补品不是 Web 服务器，而是操作系统，反之亦然。所以是 Netscape 试图商品化操作系统，而微软商品化并摧毁了浏览器市场，随后差点因反垄断自毁。另外 Netscape 早期免费，但后来是收费产品，直到 IE 免费才改变——'免费浏览器'并非其原定计划（读读 Ben Horowitz 的书）。
peterarmstrong查看英文原文
This is a good point in general and about the PC in particular, but it is totally wrong about Netscape. The complement of a web browser isn't the web servers, it's the OS--and vice versa. So, Netscape tries to commoditize the OS, and MS commoditized and destroyed the browser market, and then nearly themselves with antitrust. Also, Netscape was initially free in the early days, but had become a product which cost money until IE came out and was free. The plan was not "free browser". (Read Ben Horowitz's book...)
医疗行业的整合也体现了同样的商品化互补品逻辑
医院和整合型医疗系统也在以某种迂回的方式这样做：它们收购其他医院和门诊，用规模与保险公司谈判更高费率，保险公司被挤压后削减对独立医生/医院的支付，迫使后者卖身给大医院系统。如今某些地区几乎不可能开办独立的全科诊所——奥克兰只剩一家。手段不同，但结果相同：医院系统攫取全部利润，其余都成了阻止竞争萌芽的亏损业务。
aaavl2821查看英文原文
Hospitals and integrated health systems sort of do this, though in a convoluted way. They buy up other hospitals and outpatient clinics and use scale to negotiate higher rates with insurers. Insurers get squeezed, and have to cut payments to less powerful independent physicians / hospitals. This often forces those independent providers to sell to the big hospital systems. It's basically impossible to start / run an independent primary care practice these days in some geographies. There's only one independent PCP in Oakland these days due to dominance of sutter So not the same means of making complements unprofitable as the tech examples, but the same end -- the hospitals and some hospital owned outpatient clinics drive all the profits, everything else is like a loss leader that prevents competition from springing up around the hospital
该策略依赖高风险的'傻瓜'填补互补品，且很难预判谁会被反商品化
以前见过这种策略的描述，但这篇文章列举的具体案例多得多，让我怀疑它是否已是整个科技行业的默认策略。但该策略似乎依赖'更大的傻瓜'或高风险承担者去填补互补品，最终只拿到零利润。IBM 发布标准接口文档商品化外设厂商，却被微软授权 OS 给其他 PC 厂商反商品化；微软花钱补贴应用商店，又被 Android 击败。谁能提前看出谁是输家？
HillaryBriss查看英文原文
I've seen descriptions of this strategy before, but this particular article lists way more concrete examples than I've seen before, which makes me wonder if it is now the default across the entire tech industry at all times. Also: the strategy seems to depend upon a "greater fool," or just high risk-takers to fill in the complement with what is ultimately low or zero profit product. How can we guard against being that high-risk fool? I mean, from the article, IBM tried to commoditize all of the peripheral makers by publishing standard interface documents. But then they ultimately lost out when Microsoft commoditized the entire PC by licensing their OS to other PC manufacturers. IBM didn't quite see this coming. They were out commoditized. OTOH, you look at the way Microsoft was paying app developers cold hard cash out of pocket for listing apps in the MS mobile app store (which ultimately failed) and you see that MS was out-commoditized by Google/Android/Play Store. So how can anyone be smart enough to spot the loser(s) in advance?
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