Thanks for sharing that comment.
I found this section of Shaun’s comment to be particularly reflecting of the way North American investors treat their businesses.
とくに近年の外資系企業では大規模な投資に対して短期間での成果を求める傾向が強まり、十分な時間をかける前に株主の期待に応えるための方向転換が行われる場面も少なくありません。今回の報道もそうした構造の中で起きた出来事だと受け止めています。
For those who need a translation:
In recent years, particularly, when it comes to companies that rely on foreign investment, there’s been an increasing expectation that large scale investments will be met with quick results in the short-term. And it has become commonplace that before enough time can be spent on a project, these companies opt to switch directions in order to satisfy investor demands. That the events this time is yet another such example, is what we’re taking of this situation.
The later paragraphs lament the lost opportunities and wasted efforts that employees have to witness and go through, and how customers are disappointed that something that they’ve looked forward to failed to materialize.
Working in a company with a strong venture capitalist voice from above, I feel this. People in the company are trying really hard to create features and address problems for our customers, to make a really good product, and fortunately we do have a really good product. But the constant “you have to do this (because it increases your company value, but I won’t say that part out loud),” just to catch a hype, even when it doesn’t make sense, forces us to have to spend resources to essentially placate the investor, thus stretching us thin.
These people have no idea why businesses are successful, and they don’t really care. All they’re doing is to spray and pray, and hope that one of their investments will become the next Stripe, the next Spotify, the next Netflix, etc, and they would’ve made much more than what they’ve lost from businesses who can’t keep the engine burning.
While it’s true there’s a lot of that, AWS just dominates the cloud, and many of our own tech companies here in Canada use AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, not because they’re cheap, but because they have good uptime guarantees, security guarantees, easily allow you to deploy worldwide and provide fast access to customers almost everywhere (especially major markets like the EU and Asia), and provides companies access to a large talent pool who know how to use these systems. You’d be hard-pressed, as a business owner and/or CTO, to use other options and handle all those downsides yourself, slowing down your ability to do business. The only other potential non-US alternative here is probably Alibaba, but they’re not even close to being considered competition internationally.
Aside from Apple, the big tech companies down south are big and hard to displace not because of what most people know them for, but because of this large arm of software infrastructure that basically serves as the literal backbone of the consumer-side of the Internet.
And for those who think that we can just build that infrastructure ourselves, take note that these companies have been doing this for at least a decade, and spent billions and probably trillions doing this in the US and abroad. AWS itself claims that between 2011 and 2022, it invested $108.9 billion in USD, just within the US alone, and they have data centres in many parts of the world. Not discouraging anyone, but you have to think about where that kind of money has to come from.