Just as markets boom and bust, they also bundle and unbundle. We are currently in a phase of unbundling. 

Everyone that owns a tv show or movie now has a streaming service.

Search is unbundling from Google as specialized and niche alternatives pop up to fill the gaps Google leaves behind in its quest to realize The Future of Search™.

The shopping experience is splintering across platforms and surfaces as every company tries to shave off their sliver of the commerce pie.

Social is shifting from “one platform for everything” to “one thing per platform” (such as Facebook for groups, Snapchat for close friends, Instagram for broadcasting to connections, TikTok for discovery, YouTube learning and entertainment (and yes, it’s a bit of an overstatement)).

Plus podcasts, newsletters, slacks, discords, telegrams, messaging apps, etc. 

It appears the internet is niching back down. But the problem is all the providers and platforms still want to be monoliths.

The End of the Techno-Giants?

This unbundling could hit the current techno-giants (techno-tyrants?) the hardest. 

Google is flailing to find a post-cookie solution the market will latch onto. The current cookie ecosystem powers their money printing machine and they’ve parlayed it into a dominant market position. Content creators love to talk about not building your empire on rented land; the way things are currently shaping up, Google is poised to become a tenant of someone else’s tracking and targeting high rise.

Meta is floundering. The meta-pivot was too little, too soon (the timeline was probably accelerated to distract from all the bad headlines they were generating) and another example of techies chronically believing The Next Big Thing™ is much closer than it actually is. In this case, that’s VR. The metaverse is here, it’s just called Roblox or Minecraft or something else the kids are doing that I haven’t heard of. Meta is also getting hammered by the privacy-posturing of Apple (and others) and the years of trying to be everything for everyone is finally catching up with them.

Microsoft is no longer The Windows Company but is having one hell of a second (third?) act so far. Apple is probably just fine, unless they bet too big on The Next Big Thing™ or bet on the wrong one (that mysterious AppleCar project is getting mighty expensive), but it has more than enough money in the bank to weather plenty of storms. Amazon is in the awkward adolescent period, we may soon find out if it’s a goose or a swan.