« The education bullshit | Main | The next UI »
One-hit wonders
May 13, 2005
A couple of months ago, I tweaked Dell CEO Kevin Rollins for dismissing the iPod as a one-hit wonder. Yesterday, in a speech at Stanford, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer echoed Rollins, but this time the target was Google rather than Apple. The rapidly growing search company, said Ballmer, "may just be a one-hit wonder." Such talk from dominant industry players reveals a dangerous kind of complacency, an assumption of invulnerability that can get in the way of truly creative thinking about how traditional markets may be reshaped. I would guess that 25 years back IBM probably thought Microsoft was a one-hit wonder, too.
Advertisement: Coming this spring: Nicholas Carr's new book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Preorder now from Amazon.
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
Nick's next book:
Nick's latest book:
"Future Shock for the web-apps era" -Fast Company
"Ominously prescient" -Kirkus Reviews
"Riveting stuff" -New York Post
Greatest hits
Avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians
The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock's avatar
Flight of the wingless coffin fly
Other writing
The end of corporate computing
Nick's first book:
Order from Amazon
Visit book site