They were revolutionary as product genres, not necessary individual companies. Ordering a cab without making a phone call was revolutionary. Netflix at least with its initial promise of having all the world's movies and TV was revolutionary, but it didn't live up to that. Spotify because of how cheap and easy it was to have access to all the music, this was the era when people were paying 99c per song on iTunes.
I've tried some AI code completion tools and none of them hit me that way. My first reaction was "nobody is actually going to use this stuff" and that opinion hasn't really changed.
And if you think those 3 companies weren't revolutionary then AI code completion is even less than that.
> They were revolutionary as product genres, not necessary individual companies.
Even then, they were evolutionary at best.
Before Netflix and Spotify, streaming movies and music were already there as a technology, ask anybody with a Megaupload or Sopcast account. What changed was that DMCA acquired political muscle and cross-border reach, wiping out waves of torrent sites and P2P networks. That left a new generation of users with locked-down mobile devices no option but to use legitimate apps who had deals in place with the record labels and movie studios.
Even the concept of "downloading MP3s" disappeared because every mobile OS vendor hated the idea of giving their customers access to the filesystem, and iOS didn't even have a file manager app until well into the next decade (2017).
> What changed was that DMCA acquired political muscle and cross-border reach, wiping out waves of torrent sites and P2P networks.
Half true - that was happening some, but wasn't why music piracy mostly died out. DMCA worked on centralized platforms like YouTube, but the various avenues for downloading music people used back then still exist, they're just not used as much anymore. Spotify was proof that piracy is mostly a service problem: it was suddenly easier for most people to get the music they wanted through official channels than through piracy.
DMCA claims took out huge numbers of public torrent trackers which was how 99% of people accessed contraband media. All the way back in 2008, the loss of TorrentSpy.com probably shifted everybody to private trackers, but it's a whack-a-mole game there too and most people won't bother.
DMCA also led to the development of ContentID and automated copyright strike system on Youtube, but it didn't block you from downloading the stream as a high bitrate MP3, which is possible even now.
> streaming movies and music were already there as a technology, ask anybody with a Megaupload or Sopcast account.
You can't have a revolution without users. It's the ability to reach a large audience, through superior UX, superior business model, superior marketing, etc. which creates the possibility for revolutionary impact.
Which is why Megaupload and Sopcast didn't revolutionize anything.
Yes, but Google left that functionality half baked intentionally, letting 3rd party developers fill the void. Even now the Google Files app feels like a toy compared to Fossify Explorer or Solid Explorer.
There was a gain in precision going from phone call to app. There is a loss of precision going from app to voice. The tradeoff of precision for convenience is rarely worth it.
Because if it were, Uber would just make a widget asking "Where do you want to go?" and you'd enter "Airport" and that would be it. If a widget of some action is a bad idea, so is the voice command.
"Do something existing with a different mechanism" is innovative, but not revolutionary, and certainly not a new "product genre". My parents used to order pizza by phone calls, then a website, then an app. It's the same thing. (The friction is a little bit less, but maybe forcing another human to bring food to you because you're feeling lazy should have a little friction. And as a side effect, we all stopped being as comfortable talking to real people on phone calls!)
The experience of Netflix, Spotify, and Uber were revolutionary. It felt like the future, and it worked as expected. Sure, we didn't realize the poison these products were introducing into many creative and labor ecosystems, nor did we fully appreciate how they would operate as means to widen the income inequality gap by concentrating more profits to executives. But they fit cleanly into many of our lives immediately.
Debating whether that's "revolutionary" or "innovative" or "whatever-other-word" is just a semantic sideshow common to online discourse. It's missing the point. I'll use whatever word you want, but it doesn't change the point.
"Simple, small" and "good marketing" seem like obvious undersells considering the titanic impacts Netflix and Spotify (for instance) have had on culture, personal media consumption habits, and the economics of industries. But if that's the semantic construction that works for you, so be it.
I've tried some AI code completion tools and none of them hit me that way. My first reaction was "nobody is actually going to use this stuff" and that opinion hasn't really changed.
And if you think those 3 companies weren't revolutionary then AI code completion is even less than that.