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
The FTC’s new Facebook case isn’t any better than the old one, even as there are ever more questions about the potential harm of regulatory interference | Continue reading
While it’s possible to understand Apple’s motivations behind its decision to enable on-device scanning, the company had a better way to satisfy its societal obligations while preserving… | Continue reading
The Metaverse of Snow Crash is not a good analogy for the future, as the Internet breaks down into Stephenson’s dystopia | Continue reading
Instagram’s shift away from being a photo-sharing app is very much inline with the service’s continuous evolution. | Continue reading
The Windows 11 announcement was fun and interesting, but there is a reason that Windows is no longer the center of Microsoft’s business. | Continue reading
Marc Andreessen has changed his tone over the past year; there is a cynical interpretation, but I think the shift is justified. | Continue reading
A package of new proposed laws for regulating tech companies are in part a negotiating ploy, but also an indicator of change. | Continue reading
WWDC highlighted how Apple’s differentiation is based on integration; the company ought not risk that differentiation for exploitive App Store policies. | Continue reading
Announcing Passport, the new infrastructure supporting Stratechery. | Continue reading
Stratechery is on break June 1–2, 2021. | Continue reading
There are all kinds of arguments to make about the App Store, and nearly all of them are good ones; that’s why the best solution can only come from Apple. | Continue reading
Distribution on the Internet is free; what matters is controlling demand. AT&T and Verizon didn’t understand the distinction. | Continue reading
Cloudflare is uniquely positioned to become a major player in an Internet 3.0 world, where politics matter more than economics. | Continue reading
It’s not enough to see the future; timing matters. Plus, Clubhouse is struggling, which means it time for me to take accountability for my analysis. | Continue reading
More and more opportunities on the web come from market marking, not for advertisers, but for real goods and services paid for with real money. | Continue reading
Spotify’s new subscription podcast offerings embrace the open ecosystem of podcasts in multiple ways. | Continue reading
Apple’s new Podcast Subscription service is what the App Store should be: a great Apple experience competing for customers. | Continue reading
New Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger delivered a keynote with the right strategy, the right tactics, and most importantly, the right spirit to return Intel to success. | Continue reading
Substack is at the center of media controversy, most of which misses the point that sovereign writers — not Substack — are in control. | Continue reading
Substack is at the center of media controversy, most of which misses the point that sovereign writers — not Substack — are in control. | Continue reading
Infrastructure companies need a distinct approach to moderation that focuses on neutrality and due process. | Continue reading
Roblox is something new and interesting that abstracts away the platforms underneath it. | Continue reading
Truly unlocking competition in tech means increasing interoperability; an absolutist approach to privacy is doing the exact opposite. | Continue reading
More and more companies are announcing new products based on human curation, even as the most important content players — Google and Facebook — rely on algorithms. When does curation make sense, an… | Continue reading
Information on the Internet is conveyed by memes, which can be anything and everything. The real world impacts are only now being understood. | Continue reading
A quick rumination on where Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs were similar, and then an interview with Eric Seufert about mobile advertising and the dispute between Apple and Facebook. | Continue reading
Jeff Bezos is retiring, and will go down as one of the great CEO’s in tech history, in part because of how he transformed Amazon into a tech company in every respect. | Continue reading
Jeff Bezos is retiring, and will go down as one of the great CEO’s in tech history, in part because of how he transformed Amazon into a tech company in every respect. | Continue reading
Journalism cannot afford to be divorced from business realities; that applies to Australia, the New York Times, and even Andreessen Horowitz. | Continue reading
Journalism cannot afford to be divorced from business realities; that applies to Australia, the New York Times, and even Andreessen Horowitz. | Continue reading
A new CEO has taken over Intel. Their core business, upon which the company has been built, is floundering. Does the new CEO, who is not really new at all (he’s the current COO), have the vis… | Continue reading
Intel is in much more danger than its profits suggest; the problems are a long time in the making, and the solution is to split up the company. | Continue reading
The disruption caused by the Internet in industry after industry has a common theoretical basis described by Aggregation Theory. | Continue reading
The actions taken by Big Tech have a resonance that goes beyond the context of domestic U.S. politics. Even if they were right, they will still push the world to Internet 3.0. | Continue reading
Twitter and Facebook face the gravest Trump crisis yet, and this time, I think it is time to act. | Continue reading
The pandemic and vaccine rollout have highlighted where the West has lost its way; we need new defaults about information, change, and speed. | Continue reading
The most popular and most important posts on Stratechery in 2020. | Continue reading
Facebook and Twitter represent the v1 of Social Networking; it’s a bad copy of the analog world, whereas v2 is something unique to digital, and a lot more promising. | Continue reading
Mapping the technology adoption curve to ideas gives insights as to which business models work on which parts of the addressable market. | Continue reading
Apple’s position on privacy seems unimpeachable, but it ignores trade-offs, and risks a bad outcome for the Internet as a whole. | Continue reading
Stripe’s announcement of Treasury — banking-as-a-service — manifests the breadth of the company’s ambition. | Continue reading
Dave Chappelle has a new special about his old show that includes fundamental lessons about how the Internet has changed the content business. | Continue reading
Mapping the technology adoption curve to ideas gives insights in which business models work on which parts of the addressable market. | Continue reading
Airbnb and DoorDash both created new markets where ones did not previously exist; they are startups played on “hard” mode. | Continue reading
Apple is about the integration of hardware and software, but the balance between the two has shifted over time. | Continue reading
A response to a critique of Aggregation Theory, and a defense of debate on an Internet devoid of gatekeepers. | Continue reading
A response to a critique of Aggregation Theory, and a defense of debate on an Internet devoid of gatekeepers. | Continue reading