The flip side of unbundling: Later on, the unbundlers tend to try to rebundle in the image of whatever they unbundled. So Yahoo adds an ISP, and Google adds email/IM/sports-scores/stock-quotes. Twitter changes its user profile page to look more like Facebook 🙂
Sun unbundled DEC with commodity components, then re-bundled into a proprietary computing stack just like DEC w/Solaris, Sparc, etc. Microsoft likewise unbundled DEC minicomputers w/PC OS + tools, then rebundled into DEC-like integrated stack now including hardware (!).
Paraphrasing Harvey Dent: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the company you first competed with.” And then sometimes the rebundlers realize what they’re doing and try to reverse course. E.g. Microsoft building apps for iOS & Android. And thus the cycle of life repeats with yet more unbundling :-).
Source: Tweets – 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
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@pmarca Says 