Why are big companies buying small companies for billions of dollars? The nominal annual gross domestic product of Serbia was just over $40 billion in 2018. For Switzerland, over 700 billion dollars. Ask yourself why someone wants to give so much money for a small company as 7 million people produce in a few days or weeks?
10 working years x 10 workers ~ 100 years (invested work of a small company)
1 business day x 3000000 workers ~ 10000 years (invested small country work, for one day)
If you've been involved in programming, then you know that a truly top software developer can be incomparably more efficient than the average, and even more than that, the average will simply not be able to do something a superb programmer is able to. However, keep in mind that at least 100 years of top performers have probably partake in the above 10000 years. From the above, it is quite clear that the value of a company does not only come from its top developers, but also from the users' data.
Often, at the time of acquisition, these smaller companies do not earn much or even have big losses; but they have many users who use their service and have data from these users. Often inertia, habit, and the inability of easy migration of data keep those users trapped in the given service.
Large companies are centralized and have full control over all data. They can access, read, analyze, sell. They can be hacked by others and steal data from millions of users with a single attack.
Some of us may not understand why this data is so valuable to them, and how they are used exactly. Nevertheless, be convinced that if people who are so rich want to give so much money for your data, then your data is worth the it! Therefore, consider carefully whether you should give it up to them so lightly.
Amazon, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Ebay, etc. All of these companies rely heavily on the data created by the users themselves. However, for us to be more precise, Amazon, for example, almost does not earn at all through its sales portal, but through its cloud computing services that are not based on user data. This is not the case for other listed companies.
The original internet was not so conceived. Fortunately, for years, thousands of developers around the world have been working individually and within organizations on technologies that will put the Internet back on track, where the dominance of central authorities with the help of their servers with increasing control and influence over customers (clients) drastically decreases. It is the Internet where peers communicate directly with each other, and share information with those individuals and groups they choose. Any mass hacking and data theft will be dramatically hampered, as will the control of large companies in terms of what is available of the information to most, and the use of the same by the companies themselves. Take, for example, the Arab Spring, and how some intelligence services may have used social networking data to influence the protests.
The above is just an introduction to the reasons why block technology (which will be explained next) is incredibly important for the future of the Internet, and the way this will affect the real life of all of us.
Soon the real introduction to block technology will be published here. Here, I will just tickle your imagination with a few interesting uses and consequences:
Serbian translation
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