Capitalism, Internet Bubble and Beyond

Section I Anecdote: Criteria for My First Job

When I first visited the U.S. in 1993, I was impressed with the information technology of the country. In 1995 I started to subscribe to an ISP paying approximately US$30 per month for narrowband dial-up access. There was no e-mail account from my university. Before the Internet prevails, Japan, was once respected as the land of high-tech with strong presence in consumer electronics. A generation before me enjoyed the hikes of Japanese economy in the 80’s, however, the 90’s was called “a lost decade”. I still remember the day when Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 4,000 in mid 90’s, I was using a black-white screen Macintosh and watching financial news on the Japanese satellite broadcasting. There were no Google Finance website and no Bloomberg on iPhone which now tell me that Dow Jones regained 10,000.

When I looked for my first job in 1996, I realized that even top Japanese blue-chip companies were not using the Internet and it took until 1998 that most of Japanese employers allowed their employee to assign a personal e-mail account. I started to use the Internet relatively early in Japan and once I started to use it, I could not think of moving back to the days without the Internet. So, I looked for a job in an American firm in Tokyo where I could use the Internet as much as I wanted.

Section II Capitalist Behavior and the Internet Bubble Burst

Besides from enjoying surfing on the web, I got involved in capital raisings for some Internet companies for initial public offerings and other capital raisings. The late 90’s and until September 11th was a so-called Internet Bubble, and many companies with “.com” names easily raised capital and founders of those “.com” companies made a large fortune out of IPOs. I was sitting in the core center of the capitalist system and some of my work was to assist kind of capitalist names which Eben mentioned in the class.

Microsoft, Oracle, News Corp… Many lawyers and bankers are chasing for big capital raising or acquisitions by those blue chips. In the capitalist game, what matters are quarterly financial results and how a corporation increases its shareholder value. However, it is almost impossible for those big players to keep constant earnings growth for a long period of time. CEOs do not have much time to think about advancement of technology or social benefit, rather they concentrate on how to look beautiful from investors. For that, they even try to have a plastic surgery to look pretty. In this mindset, even a corporation with strong research and development function is tempted to look for outside solutions to increase its share price by buying a new business or purchasing a competing business to dominate a certain market. At the end of the day, many of big business leaders turn out to be pirates who are good at acquiring other people’s technology, know-how and brands. Or, it may be a sad saga for No.1 giants to do anything as long as it is not illegal to keep its position.

Let’s take an example of a web browser company, Netscape, which had a historic record of going IPO in 17 months from its inception. They went public in 1995 and merged with AOL in 1998. AOL then merged with Time Warner in 2000. Aside from professional fees for lawyers and bankers, I am not sure if value has been really created in a series of transactions. However, Netscape was constantly battling against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Through the competition between Netscape and Microsoft, the browser technology seems to be advanced, thus probably benefited Internet users (here, I apologize for my ignorance about impact of Firefox in the web browser technology).

Following the landmark IPO of Netscape, many start-ups tried to go public or to sell its business to a large acquisitive company. However, as things go forward, there were fewer companies who could meet high expectations of investors. After everyone in carnival danced pretty crazy, the Bubble was evaporated. Microsoft seems to have won this battle in the capitalist context. Google was still a start-up with no significant presence in 2001.

Section III Google and Beyond

As large numbers of websites became available, internet users looked for a better solution for search technology as a concierge or a butler on the Internet. Google succeeded in monetizing search technology and they became the largest company in the Internet. While Microsoft charges consumers high costs for their products and provides unfriendly technology with constant upgrades, Google is based on advertising fee and is free of charge for users. However, Google’s book effort is potentially dangerous in a way that one corporation will control information on a person’s behavior on what he or she reads. If Google monopolizes the Internet access of the citizens of the world, it potentially puts Google in an unfairly privileged position to influence media and public opinions.

Now is a critical point when the Gilded Age of the Internet may turn into monopolistic situation in media. Free software effort such as Mozilla has enormous raison d’être to combat the unhealthy monopoly in the Internet. Currently, the focus of the Internet technology for ordinary people is on Twitter, Facebook and Google book. All the ventures have significant investors seeking for higher return to recoup their investment. They will probably benefit and entertain users to some extent. However, they are aiming to achieve a No.1 position in what they do and they may try to control people’s behavior about expressing their opinions and how people communicate each other. As Microsoft distorted the way how the Internet originally operates, a next generation empire may try to control and potentially distort the way the Internet operates. I hope that the Internet will evolve further to benefit all the citizens and to keep its soundness to efficiently and fairly facilitate communications at various levels. Issue is how?