Please don't be discouraged by whatever "Big Tech" is doing.
Products that we build today represent many millions of decisions and trade-offs.
If you believe something should exist, please build it and don't worry about what anyone else is doing or saying.
I was working on an application in the early 2000's and learned that Gigantic Inc. launched something to solve the same problem. I immediately bowed out, and they immediately let that first-launched beta languish for more than 10 years with less staff than we had.
In the intervening years, another startup built a similar competitor and sold for hundreds of millions of dollars.
As another example, I eventually worked at Gigantic Inc, and the org that I was part of had been failing to deliver a useful product to the public for about 7 years, and continued to fail for many more. This was an organization with hundreds of people and many hundreds of millions of dollars of budget, and they were being absolutely clobbered by a combination of their own unbelievable incompetence and the brutality of the market around them.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned in my career, is to never assume that just because Big Tech has some budget, that they also have attention or competence.
Products that we build today represent many millions of decisions and trade-offs.
If you believe something should exist, please build it and don't worry about what anyone else is doing or saying.
I was working on an application in the early 2000's and learned that Gigantic Inc. launched something to solve the same problem. I immediately bowed out, and they immediately let that first-launched beta languish for more than 10 years with less staff than we had.
In the intervening years, another startup built a similar competitor and sold for hundreds of millions of dollars.
As another example, I eventually worked at Gigantic Inc, and the org that I was part of had been failing to deliver a useful product to the public for about 7 years, and continued to fail for many more. This was an organization with hundreds of people and many hundreds of millions of dollars of budget, and they were being absolutely clobbered by a combination of their own unbelievable incompetence and the brutality of the market around them.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned in my career, is to never assume that just because Big Tech has some budget, that they also have attention or competence.