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‘Big tech’ buys hundreds of startups, but what are they, what does that mean for competition, and how does this fit into the broader market? How many more Instagrams are there, and how many DAOs?
over a year ago

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More from Essays - Benedict Evans

AI’s metrics question

With every platform shift, we want to measure the growth but we’re confused about what to measure. That’s partly a problem of data and definitions, but it’s really a question about what this is going to be.

3 weeks ago 18 votes
GenAI’s adoption puzzle

Generative AI chatbots might be a life-changing transformation in the nature of computing, that can replace all software, but so far, most of its users only pick it up every week or two, and far fewer have made it part of their lives. Is that a time problem or a product problem?

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What kind of disruption?

Software ate the world. Uber and Airbnb didn’t sell software - they disrupted and redefined markets. But what kind of disruption are we talking about ?

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Apple innovation and execution

It matters that Apple’s new Siri will be late, and it matters more that Apple didn’t realise. Is it more than that?

3 months ago 38 votes
The Deep Research problem

OpenAI’s Deep Research is built for me, and I can’t use it. It’s another amazing demo, until it breaks. But it breaks in really interesting ways.

4 months ago 44 votes

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5 days ago 11 votes