Re: Blockchain

On 06/29/2018 02:20 PM, Karen Shaeffer wrote:

> Hi Michael,
> Your presentation is scattershot. 

I dunno.  There's nothing scattershot about saying that an argument 
based on a foregone conclusion is circular.

Let me summarize: Google offers free
> services. Blockchain services are for profit -- end to end -- someone
> has to pay for each service used. It seems reasonable to think Google is
> nimble enough to lock in those folks who are willing to trade off their
> privacy for free services. This seems entirely reasonable. A very
> significant number of folks don't care about their privacy. And so
> blockchain will be limited to application spaces with consumers who are
> willing to pay for the services. This is still a very large market. IBM
> thinks so.

This wasn't my argument, even if you think it was.

In any case, how much are you willing to pay for the services which 
Google provides for free?  How much would you spend if only you could 
Ask Jeeves to recommend a restaurant, instead of asking Siri or Alexa?

Google sells services as well, such as email, document management, 
search, cloud services, and who knows what.  I imagine that if there are 
applications for blockchain in these services, they will use it.

Some of Google pay services like Google Cloud may not be competitive 
with other providers ranging from Amazon to RackSpace to every other 
fortune 500 company which thinks they can carve out a piece of the 
market.  Not prevailing in a given market doesn't mean that Google will 
topple.  Look at Google Fiber: lots of promise, not lots of profit.

But the article wasn't about paid services killing free services.  (When 
you put it that way, it does seem unlikely.)  The article was about 
blockchain toppling Google.  And there wasn't much of an explanation how 
this would happen.

> https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/what-is-blockchain
> 
> https://www.ibm.com/blogs/blockchain/category/blockchain-education/blockchain-explained/

There are literally dozens of similar websites.  As the IBM websites 
explain, blockchain supports secure transactions.   How does that relate 
to toppling Google?

> Interestingly, IBM has already lost out to the Google and Amazon
> empires. And so they are jumping in on this next wave as an
> enthusiastic early adopter.

So?  Where is this Google killer?

> I have no doubt blockchain is going to generate a lot of wealth for
> entrepreneurs. The question is When. Not if. Your point about those who
> are willing to tradeoff privacy for free services is a good one. It does
> seem like a reasonable bound on the extent of where this is likely going.

I'm not seeing the wealth being generated by entrepreneurs, if by that 
term you mean people building successful businesses.  Most of the 
current blockchain wealth seems to be made by the buy-and-hold investors 
(e.g., the Winkelvoss brothers), poorly run exchanges (e.g., Mt Gox), 
people who break into poorly run exchanges (e.g., Mt Gox), and the 
latest blockchain craze, ICOs, where people you don't know sell you 
something with no intrinsic value, with none of the ownership or voting 
rights you might get with stock, based on the expectation (well placed 
it seems) that there will be someone willing to pay more for this 
ephemeral object than you did.

None of the people making money in blockchain are doing it by replacing 
free services with paid services.

None of them are creating a revolutionary new World Wide Web, one of the 
common blockchain hype themes.

-- 
Michael Eager    [email protected]
1960 Park Blvd., Palo Alto, CA 94306