New post format: a weekly rollup of links, comments on those links, activity updates and attempts at humor. The intention is quicker hits in addition to the less frequent big posts and more timely hammering on my favorite themes. This is my primary hangout until the contours of the post-Twitter world become clear. Be sure to subscribe below and to the right to receive all my output via email.
Note that my poor, overtaxed server struggles to serve up all the images to email users at the same time, so if you don’t see images, be sure to click through. Server upgrade in the works.
BREAKING NEWS: We’re Rebranding to Platformonomics X
Based on a random late night whim (bad tacos?) and a complete lack of appreciation for brand equity, we’re rebranding this weekly newsletter to Platformonomics X. Management reserves the right to rebrand again in the wee hours for arbitrary and nonsensical reasons.
Taking a Modest Victory Lap on Antitrust
Hipster antitrust authorities (slogan: “we love to lose”) are on a PR offensive:
But maybe they are coming to their senses and recognizing who the real villains are:
Previous: A New Antitrust Doctrine, A Glimmer of Antitrust Sanity, Another Glimmer of Antitrust Sanity?
Amazon’s Relentless PR Campaign About Nothing
Amazon is now on day four or five of their relentless PR campaign about nothing (their generative AI offerings). But sure, the LLM producers are going to let AWS wrap (and commoditize) their models with an AWS API (Bedrock, slogan: “POSIX but for LLMs”). Will we have to endure this campaign until re:invent?
Previous: A PR Campaign About Nothing: AWS and Generative AI, Day Two of Amazon’s PR Campaign About Nothing
German Auto Industry Reaches Hail Mary Stage
The increasingly desperate German auto industry is doubling down on China, a move that both confirms their weakness in the transition to EVs and is unlikely to yield the sales volumes they so desperately need. And as goes the German auto industry, so goes the European economy, with major geopolitical implications. One commentary:
VW brand boss Thomas Schäfer said about the company’s situation: A “perfect storm” is brewing. An impending recession and the fact that the competitors in the volume business earn significantly more than the core brand of the Volkswagen Group are causing great concern: “The roof structure is on fire,” warned Schäfer. VW CFO Patrik Andreas Mayer is said to have said in the video link: “Our car business is sick”. The current operating return of three and a half percent comes exclusively from the parts business and license income from China. That means that the very survival of VW now depends on China and Germany’s bailout in the worst case.
Previous: How Do You Say “Burning Platform” in German?, Volkswagen’s Death Throes Continue, The Fate of the European Economy: Automotive Edition, Europe: Investing in Slave Labor
Q2 Cloud CAPEX: Early Returns
The (lack of) CAPEX mystery at Google continues.
