创业与商业economist.com
美国科技巨头正让初创企业举步维艰
American tech giants are making life tough for startups
2018 — 2022，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
《经济学人》2018年的文章指出，美国科技巨头凭借平台优势、收购威胁和高薪挖角，正在挤压初创公司的生存空间。文章认为，正是90年代对微软的反垄断诉讼，才让谷歌这样的公司得以成长，暗示今天需要类似的政府干预来维持竞争。
为什么经久不衰：它提出的巨头扼杀创新与反垄断问题至今仍是科技行业的核心争论，多年后仍被反复讨论。
HN 评论精选
反垄断诉讼曾保护了谷歌的诞生，说明政府干预有其必要性
这篇文章为政府干预提供了论据。核心论点是：如果微软当年没有在90年代被反垄断起诉并因此有所忌惮，它本可以在谷歌初创期就将其扼杀。据两家公司的匿名消息人士证实，这确实是很有可能的。
isolli查看英文原文
This article makes the case for government intervention [0]. The central thesis is that, had Microsoft not been sued for antitrust in the 90s and wary of yet another lawsuit, they would have killed Google in its infancy. Apparently anonymous sources in both companies confirmed this would have been a distinct possibility. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against-google.html
剧中讽刺的巨头打压手段在现实中真实存在
大公司会威胁初创公司接受收购，否则就推出竞争产品将其挤垮；它们还能砸重金留住优秀甚至平庸的员工，让员工觉得加入初创公司不划算。这让我想起美剧《硅谷》，真是绝妙的讽刺。
oldgun查看英文原文
> Big tech firms have been known to intimidate startups into agreeing to a sale, saying that they will launch a competing service and put the startup out of business unless they agree to a deal... > Big tech firms are able to shell out huge sums to keep top performers and even average employees in their fold and make it uneconomical for their workers to consider joining startups. Reminds me so much of the show Silicon Valley. A great satire!
初创公司自身运营混乱、激励错位，不值得无条件同情
我同意应该遏制科技行业的反竞争行为，巨头们也并非无辜，但把现代初创公司塑造成典型的'小企业主'并不诚实，它们自身的行为也难辞其咎。我接触过的初创公司很少让人愉快：作为员工，我薪酬过低（按风险调整后的期望值算更是如此）、过度加班，管理层无论在商业还是技术上都显得外行，更像是一群家境富裕的人把创业当作上流社会子女做慈善或读人文研究生那样的身份象征。说实话，初创公司的运营方式有很多 dysfunction，激励错位导致经营更多是为了炒作而非真正找到产品市场契合点。在喊'谁来救救初创公司'之前，我希望它们自己表现得更好：更关心健康的工作环境、更真诚地追求生产力、更愿意给出有竞争力的薪酬。如果它们都做到了，当它们因真正的反竞争行为被巨头挤掉时，我才会更同情它们。
mlthoughts2018查看英文原文
While I agree with more efforts to thwart tech industry anti-competitive behavior, and I hardly think the prominent tech giants are innocent in this, I also think it’s disingenuous to act like modern start-ups are stereotypically “the small business owner” or that their own behavior isn’t at least partly to blame. My interactions with start-ups have rarely been pleasant. As an employee, I was underpaid (and wildly so on a risk-adjusted, expected value basis when comparing the lowered salary with what could be earned elsewhere), overworked, and felt the management was not informed either on the business side or the tech side, but instead came off as people with wealthy parents who viewed starting a company as the modern day status equivalent to what socialite children used to think about non-profit work or humanities graduate school. If we’re being honest, there’s a lot of dysfunction with the way start-ups are operated, and plenty of misaligned incentives that lead to running a business more to drive hype than to actually find a product-market fit or empower employees to be productive. Before I would start thinking, “won’t somebody think of the start-ups!” — I’d expect them to be a lot better behaved, a lot more concerned with ergonomics & healthy work places, more sincerely interested in productivity, and more eager to pay competitively. If they’re doing all this right, then I might have more sympathy when a bad actor displaces then for real anti-competitive reasons.
巨头与初创之间存在结构性两难，建议引入'收购条款声明'保护用户
这里有好几层连环的两难困境。1. 巨头往往要等初创公司证明某个方向可行后才会跟进——所以你必须先做出来。2. 即使在巨头内部，各项目也在为应用里的黄金位置和晋升机会激烈竞争。业务推出的项目越多，需要砍掉的也越多，因为手机屏幕不会变大。所以被收购的公司能存活下来的有限。每个 GitHub 和 Instagram 背后，有更多死胡同，甚至更多只为数据的收购。这让人想：除了隐私政策和用户条款，每个在线产品是否还应该有一份'收购条款声明'，让用户和潜在收购方看到：如果被收购，产品是否继续运营、数据是否删除、软件是否开源、用户和员工能否得到分配等。
dzink查看英文原文
There are several stacked catch 22s here. 1. Often the giants don’t pursue a space until a startup proves it’s viable - in that case you have to start something to make it happen. 2. Even internally there is a lot of competition at the giants for prime real estate and promo space on the apps to feature existing or new internal projects. The more types of projects the business launches, the more it has to kill because the mobile screen won’t grow any bigger. So there is a limit on how many acquired companies will actually keep living. If the team is any good, they are also pulled in other directions. For every github and instagram there are many more dead ends and even more so acquisitions of data. It makes you wonder: what if in addition to privacy policy and terms documents, each online property has an acquisition terms statement. That would state for users and future acquirers see what is up for grabs if the startup is ever acquired (would product keep operating as part of the deal, would data be erased, would software be open sourced, would users/employees get some kind of a distribution, etc.)
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