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No One is Entitled to a Business Model

July 21, 2010 7:46:48.362

Via Jeff Jarvis comes a link to Google's response to the FTC "discussion draft" on the troubles newspapers are having:

The large profit margins newspapers enjoyed in the past were built on an artificial scarcity: Limited choice for advertisers as well as readers. With the Internet, that scarcity has been taken away and replaced by abundance. No policy proposal will be able to restore newspaper revenues to what they were before the emergence of online news. It is not a question of analog dollars versus digital dimes, but rather a realistic assessment of how to make money in a world of abundant competitors and consumer choice.

That's exactly right. You can't go back in time and restore the scarcity of news, anymore than you can go back in time and "rescue" various software businesses from open source. When the world shifts because of a new technology (and how it gets used), old business models often get chewed up. That's just the way it is.

How many people are mourning the loss of all the businesses that used to support horse transit back at the turn of the 20th century? I'm sure there was plenty of hand wringing about that as well, but the world didn't stop spinning.

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posted by James Robertson

Comments

Re: No One is Entitled to a Business Model

[Rob] July 21, 2010 8:10:27.585

If the sandwich was invented today, it would be patented and the patent holders would lobby to make it illegal to cut them in half because that would encourage 'sandwich piracy' whereby multiple thieves would share a single sandwich.

Re: No One is Entitled to a Business Model

[Pat Maddox] July 21, 2010 17:01:13.678

Same thing as what's going on with tv / movies / music. Except those industries are suing their customers.

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