Top all-time · #85
Benedict Evans
Personal blog · ben-evans.com/benedictevansbusinessstartups
Benedict Evans's personal blog at ben-evans.com covers business and startups. Since 2012, 405 different Hacker News readers have linked it 751 times, most often “The Great Unbundling”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 39 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Evans's essays and newsletter on tech business, platforms and Amazon and Apple economics, citing them as support and recommending them as deep, readworthy reading.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- Worth reading, great, fascinating, respected, precocious, readworthy; good arguments; a favourite; nice deep dives.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 39 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
What matters in tech? Newsletter, essays and presentations by Benedict Evans.
Most-linked posts?
- The Great Unbundling22 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2020-01-29
- Why Amazon Has No Profits, and Why It Works14 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2014-09-05
- Mobile, Ecosystems and the Death of PCs9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2015-11-08
- Not Even Wrong: Ways to Predict Tech8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-05-17
- Mobile is eating the world8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2016-12-09
- How to Lose a Monopoly8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-01-01
- /8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-03-07
- Mobile, smartphones and hindsight8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2016-02-19
- What's Amazon's market share? 35% or 5%?7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-12-19
- How Will OpenAI Compete?7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2026-02-19
What Hacker News says?
> This has been true since approximately the beginning of newspaper-time. This article posted yesterday about cascading collapses seems relevant: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/5/4/covid-and-c... Business models that used to work well can collapse in a hurry.
Comment linking /benedictevans/2020/5/4/covid-and-cascading-collapses
on “New York Times phasing out all 3rd-party advertising data”Submitted We might be swinging away from the newsfeed as a story · 400 points
HN discussionI subscribe to Benedict Evans newsletter. It's basically a collection of interesting tech related links with commentary. It's not daily though. http://ben-evans.com/newsletter/
Comment linking /newsletter/
on “Ask HN: What are some good technology blogs to follow?”Submitted Does Amazon make more from ads than AWS? as a story · 334 points
HN discussionCitations are not needed, my friend. This is not a college report or a Wikipedia article. This is a discussion. But since you made a bunch of loose cannon statements without citations yourself... Peter Thiel himself would tell you, that "he would never compete with Musk" [1]. He went on to say, in an interview with Rubin, "...after Paypal, Elon set off to start both the rocket company and the electric car company, S…
Comment linking /benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-no-profits-and-why-it-works
on “SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal”Submitted Ways to think about machine learning as a story · 309 points
HN discussionAlmost every mom-and-pop store sells your data to Facebook & co. That's what those fidelity cards are for. I didn't realize that either, until recently. Secondly, we're all doomed. I recently read an article about Amazon's ad division being as big as AWS and growing as fast, if not faster: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/3/14/do-amazon-... If even AWS isn't bigger and isn't growing faster than ads, what…
Comment linking /benedictevans/2021/3/14/do-amazon-ads-bring-in-more-cash-than-aws
on “Can I Email?”Submitted The Deep Research problem as a story · 302 points
HN discussionI'm afraid this won't help, considering current progress in AI [1]. Facebook will soon be able to match your HN (and every other) account with your FB account just by the words you write. [1] http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/6/23/ai-apple-and-go...
Comment linking /benedictevans/2016/6/23/ai-apple-and-google
on “Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook”Submitted Netflix is not a tech company (2019) as a story · 254 points
HN discussionThere are still a lot of people, especially on the general web stuck in the Steve Job's era believing in bad developers, quote; "What happens sometime though is that some people, uh, lie. Some people use unpublished APIs and their app gets rejected. Some people submit an app that they say does one thing, but really does something else. They try to hide it from us, they get very clever about that. They try to hide it…
Comment linking /benedictevans/2020/8/18/app-stores
on “Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint”Submitted Asking the wrong questions as a story · 247 points
HN discussionhttps://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/4/30/resetting-...
Comment linking /benedictevans/2021/4/30/resetting-the-app-store
on “Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers”Submitted The Great Unbundling as a story · 246 points
HN discussionNearly everyone in the world owns a phone. It's the default computing device for the world. See: http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/7/8/capitulation http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/11/7/mobile-ecosyste... Any additional computer purchase is some kind of conscious choice, and people will default to what they are familiar with. I.e. iOS and Android. This is a big hurdle for microsoft to overcome to convin…
Comment linking /benedictevans/2015/11/7/mobile-ecosystems-and-the-death-of-pcs
on “Microsoft Surface Studio”Submitted The end of smartphone innovation as a story · 209 points
HN discussion>I disagree. I dont think we disagree. Like I wrote in another post, most on HN couldn't understand the difference between placement ad on Google Search Engine and Google Ads Network. And suggested we should ban all "tracking ads". And later all ads. I explicitly ask them and suggest what you just wrote. That there could be good ads, and they, by majority disagree. This isn't just on HN, it is pretty much across the…
Comment linking /benedictevans/2021/5/13/apples-ads-music
on “Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B”Submitted Outgrowing Software as a story · 204 points
HN discussionThe way I used FAANG wasn't very precise. It is possible that Netflix will become a feature of Google, Amazon, or Disney. I was referring to the concept of "bundling and unbundling" [1] which is beneficial to the big rich companies. The big players have the money and the control over the eco-system (files, documents, events) which gives them the advantage to go against smaller products and make them features. https:…
Comment linking /benedictevans/2013/9/21/atomisation-and-bundling
on “Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce”Submitted Asking the wrong questions (2017) as a story · 203 points
HN discussionThis is the now-dated article i used for my comment: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/7/30/android-re... You can supplement this with the OS share stats of android phone and combine it with the safe assumption that the majority of android phones are lucky to see one OS update. Consumentenbond in the netherlands estimated an average life of around 2.5 years. This is their source Android: beperkt houdbaar.…
Comment linking /benedictevans/2014/7/30/android-replacement
on “Steve Wozniak backs right-to-repair movement”Submitted New productivity software startups as a story · 200 points
HN discussionStill very relevant: http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-n...
Comment linking /benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-no-profits-and-why-it-works
on “Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders”Submitted What's Amazon's market share? 35% or 5%? as a story · 186 points
HN discussionI side with you. Ben Evans shares a lot of good arguments here: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/12/amazons-mark... When people say they got a solution to “the problem” for me this sounds every time like they not even started to understand anything they are talking about. FAANG is a sui generics case. And looking at Amazon’s service, I believe they do a lot of things right that others do not. And that’s…
Comment linking /benedictevans/2019/12/amazons-market-share19
on “U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown”Submitted Amazon as experiment as a story · 185 points
HN discussionThe key difference is, Microsoft was able to leverage their monopoly in one industry (Desktop) to destroy the competition in another (Browsers, though yes, that phoenix did rise from the ashes) The war is over because Microsoft no longer has a monopoly they can leverage to do this again. Microsoft is not, and will not be a force in the mobile phone world for the foreseeable future. Re: "probably hoping to keep Apple…
Comment linking /benedictevans/2015/7/8/capitulation
on “Windows Bridge for iOS”Submitted The Amazon Machine as a story · 183 points
HN discussion"in 2020, Apple’s app store commission revenue was close to $15bn, which was larger than total global revenue from the entire digital music industry... Around 90% of this revenue comes from games, and almost all of that comes from in-app purchases." https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/5/13/apples-ads...
Comment linking /benedictevans/2021/5/13/apples-ads-music
on “Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing”Submitted LinkedIn as a story · 176 points
HN discussion
