merc

If it takes multiple billions of dollars to create a product that is useful for a niche group of pen and paper RPG players, that product is probably not going to succeed.

But, also, if Facebook didn’t have such an unassailable monopoly on social networking, small, focused social networks that targeted a niche group of people might have a chance of surviving.

And Google built a search engine. Everything else they’ve tried to build has failed, other than maybe Gmail which was just a Yahoo Mail / Hotmail clone. Everything else that has been successful has been an acquisition: Maps (Keyhole), YouTube, Android, Google Photos (Picasa), Doubleclick…

We really need robust antitrust. How many of these acquisitions would be thriving companies in their own right, competing with the big tech giants if the tech giants hadn’t been able to absorb them.

Google+ is an example of what happens when companies have to compete instead of acquiring other companies. Google poured billions into it and it flopped completely.

The ergonomics aren’t great compared to a dedicated camera. The camera sensor not being in the middle is annoying unless your subject is far away. Having to hold the phone so that you don’t accidentally touch the screen, accidentally block the camera, etc. is not ideal. The shutter is never in a great position, even if you do something like use the volume button as a shutter.

Even flip phone cameras were more convenient than that. With those the camera was roughly in the middle, and you could hold the phone in a way that felt less awkward.

OTOH, the thing that killed cameras for me was the ergonomics of getting the pictures off the camera and backed up online. You either needed to remove the memory card from the camera, make sure you had a USB to memory card adapter, plug it into a computer, drag the files somewhere, etc. then wait for that to complete, and remember to put the memory card back into the camera.

For a short while, the cameras claimed to have WiFi, but it wasn’t like you could just connect them to your home router and let the camera connect to the Internet and upload the photos. No, the camera created its own WiFi hotspot and you had to connect your laptop or something to that hotspot and transfer the files that way.

To me, the killer feature of phone cameras (aside from always being in my pocket) was that to back up the pictures I’d taken I had to… do nothing. I’d get home, use my phone as normal, and within half an hour, the photos were already online and backed up.