Silicon Valley Values Shift To Customersploitation

theodp writes "Bill Davidow is the real Silicon Valley deal. Commenting on how Silicon Valley has changed over the decades, Davidow is not impressed, dishing out harsh words for Facebook, Apple, Google, and others. 'When corporate leaders pursue wealth in the winner-take-all Internet environment,' concludes Davidow, 'companies dance on the edge of acceptable behavior. If they don't take it to the limit, a competitor will. That competitor will become the dominant supplier — one monopoly will replace another. And when you engage in these activities you get a different set of Valley values: the values of customer exploitation.'"

Customerspliotation?

[sanosuke001]

Customerspliotation? Are you fucking kidding me? Blogosphere was bad enough. Internet, stop making up stupid words.

Re:Duh

[mfh]

Once your market saturation crosses a tipping point, the only way to further increase profits is to ADAPT

FTFY

Re:Hmm ... sounds familiar.

[alen]

a customer supplier relationship means that you buy enough crap and send large commissions to the sales guy for simply filling out some paperwork. it only exists until someone starts selling similar products for a lot less and then your PHB starts asking why are we paying $30,000 for a server or whatever when someone else is selling the same for half the price.

  i've seen the same thing except i've noticed a lot of things get commoditized and some are still higher end where a sales person is needed.

tape libraries for one. IBM, Sun and a few others will sell you a tape library and lock down most of the tape slots to be unlocked by buying special keys. by the time you add up the price of these licenses the total price is beyond ridiculous.

HP will sell you a decent enough tape library with all slots usable. A LOT cheaper. they all use the same connections and LTO-4/5 tapes except with HP you don't need to pay some ridiculous commission. same with servers and a lot of other gear. its simple enough for the buyer to figure out what to buy or for few CDW sales guys to serve a lot of customers remotely instead of your local reseller coming out with 5 people to sell a tape library

Re:ok, like IBM and others didn't exploit customer

[jrroche]

Nobody forces anyone to go to work, stop at red lights, wear clothes outside, or the like either.

Actually the police do (other than the going to work part).

If I want to listen to Spotify or other services, guess what? They use FB for their access.

Actually they don't. I have Spotify fully disconnected from Facebook.