Meta deserves a bit of a discount off of its recent highs, but a number of myths about its business have caused the market to over-react. | Continue reading
Understanding the path the semiconductor industry took to today both shows where China needs to go and also explains why the risks for geopolitical conflict are higher than ever. | Continue reading
Microsoft has come full circle from the company that cared more about Windows than Office; the retirement of the Office name is possible precisely because Microsoft gave up on Windows and went to the cloud. | Continue reading
Meta’s new hardware is more impressive than expected, and the Microsoft partnership makes a lot of sense. The question is if Meta will capture enough value to outweigh their costs. | Continue reading
Nvidia is in the valley in terms of gaming, the data center, and the omniverse; if it makes it to future heights its margins will be well-earned. | Continue reading
Stratechery is launching a new podcast: Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson. In addition, the Stratechery Update subscription has now been expanded to the Stratechery Plus subscription, including the Stratechery Update, Stratechery Interviews, Sharp Tech, and Dithering. | Continue reading
AI is starting to unbundle the final part of the idea propagation value chain: idea creation and substantiation. The impacts will be far-reaching. | Continue reading
Apple introduced some impressive product updates; the real news, though, were the prices, which suggested that Apple is fully embracing being a services company. | Continue reading
Google is not bound by the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, but its actions in a false positive CSAM case show that it is flouting the spirit behind them. | Continue reading
Trends in medium, AI, and user interaction underpin Instagram’s response to TikTok, and will determine Meta’s long-term moat. | Continue reading
Chips are the clearest example that economic efficiencies will not be the ultimate decider of technology’s end state: politics will play an important role. | Continue reading
The Big Ten’s recent expansion is being blamed on Fox and ESPN, but it is actually an example of content extracting maximum value through consolidation | Continue reading
The original definition of Aggregation Theory emphasized the importance of commoditized supply; that makes Spotify more of an Aggregator than Netflix | Continue reading
Explaining exactly why Apple’s approach to ATT is anti-competitive | Continue reading
Explaining exactly why Apple’s approach to ATT is anti-competitive | Continue reading
Zero-COVID is possible, but few of us in the West are willing to pay the costs; the exact same reasoning applies to free speech; in both cases China-lite is the worst possible strategy. | Continue reading
Elon Musk may be trying to renegotiate his Twitter deal by citing bots; all available evidence suggests that Twitter’s number is not only accurate, but conservative. | Continue reading
The Microsoft and Stripe developer keynotes were both examples of the rise of Thin Platforms | Continue reading
Warner Bros. Discovery is a company that makes a lot of sense, both because of its content and also its strategy, which treats streaming as an additional channel, not a reason-for-being. | Continue reading
Cable companies survived the great unbundling thanks to selling Internet service; they may be best place to make the bundle of the future. | Continue reading
Amazon’s new Buy With Prime announced the arrival of Amazon Logistics as a Service, and is a big red flag for Shopify. | Continue reading
Twitter should go private and return to its pre-2012 approach of being a centralized service with third-party clients. | Continue reading
Machine-learning generated content has major implications on the Metaverse, because it brings the marginal cost of production to zero. | Continue reading
Netflix has been resolutely opposed to selling ads, prioritizing the user experience; however, the market conditions for streaming have changed, and so should Netflix | Continue reading
It took a few moments to realize what was striking about the opening video for Nvidia’s GTC conference: the complete absence of humans. That the video ended with Jensen Huang, the founder and… | Continue reading
If businesses are subject to Aggregation Theory, then so are ideas: this is the root of the "The Current Thing" meme, and it should drive a re-evaluation of how we think about moderating content on the Internet. | Continue reading
The reaction to the Ukraine invasion has been a demonstration of tech capabilities; those capabilities may be the key to compelling China to pressure Russia. | Continue reading
An interview with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger about IDM 2.0, the acquisition of Tower Semiconductor, and the choices Intel did not make. | Continue reading
Shopify should build an advertising business to complement Shop Pay and the Shopify Fulfillment Network | Continue reading
The advertising has shifted from a Google-Facebook duopoly to one where Amazon and potentially Apple are major forces. | Continue reading
The spate of recent acquisitions in the gaming space — Take Two and Zynga, Microsoft and Activision, and Sony and Bungie — make sense in the context of the Smiling Curve. | Continue reading
It appears that Intel’s partnership with TSMC is much larger than it first seemed; the implications for Intel as whole are massive. | Continue reading
OpenSea is positioned as another Aggregator, which is evidence that Web 3 is a layer on top of the Internet, not a replacement. | Continue reading
The most popular and most important posts on Stratechery in 2021. | Continue reading
Tracing the evolution of tech’s three eras, and why the fourth era — the Metaverse — is defined by its bifurcation with the physical world. | Continue reading
Amazon’s logistics investment makes the company increasingly attractive to 3rd party merchants. | Continue reading
Twitter is changing CEOs once again; what if the company changed its business model from ads to subscriptions? | Continue reading
Unity’s acquisition of Weta digital makes sense for both sides, and positions Unity to be an essential platform for tech’s future. | Continue reading
Defining the Metaverse, and explaining why Microsoft is well-placed for the virtual reality opportunity | Continue reading
An Interview with Mark Zuckerberg about the Metaverse | Continue reading
Facebook’s reorganization into Meta is the ultimate bet on the power of founder control. | Continue reading
Sequoia’s transformation of its venture capital is actually a shift from financial capital to productive capital | Continue reading
Carlota Perez documents technological revolutions, and thinks we’re in the middle of the current one; what, though, if we are nearing its maturation? Is crypto next? | Continue reading
Facebook’s political problems stem directly from its size and drive for growth; they are societal issues, not antitrust ones. | Continue reading
Facebook’s political problems stem directly from its size and drive for growth; they are societal issues, not antitrust ones. | Continue reading
Cloudflare’s new storage offering is potentially disruptive both economically and strategically. | Continue reading
Understanding Apple’s victory in Apple v. Epic, and the limitations of the injunction on anti-steering provisions. | Continue reading
Centralized control is useful at the beginning of an economy, but limits innovation in the long run. That is as true for China as it is for the App Store. | Continue reading