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Voyager 1 (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 23 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Microsoft is 49.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Yeah. Technically I'm not talking about Microsoft, as their primary product is the OS and they are not purely Internet-based. IBM, of course, is much older than that and also has some Internet products, as does every software company.

    In my statement "Internet company" means a company whose only product is SaaS on the Internet; i.e. someone who, if they went away, their product would disappear with them.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

    I guess it is hard to imagine an internet company lasting that long mostly because the hasn't been around that long, it's only been 31 years since it went public. A year later Amazon was formed. I would bet money Amazon and Google easily make it to 50. Along with many many others. A small, not overly commercialized company like slack would be crazy. I wouldn't be surprised if they get gobbled up by a mega Corp as the enshitification continues.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Google is actually the sine qua non of what I'm talking about. I'll concede that it's possible Google as a corporate entity will still exist in 2048 (it was founded in 1998). But Google has undergone such a drastic and dystopian management change that it's almost not even the same company now--

    --but that isn't relevant to what I'm actually talking about, which is the products. The proposition that Slack logs would still be around 50 years from now was what catalyzed my quip. Google kills everything it makes, usually quickly. Will we be able to look at Google Reader logs in 2048? Or--even closer to the target--Google Wave logs? Google Podcasts? Google Stadia? (I could go on.)

    At the end of the day it was just a quip, but I fully expect the SaaS companies you currently think of as indestructible titans to be on the dustheap of history in 20 years, let alone 50.

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