Gwern Branwen personal blog
Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement
A classic pattern in technology economics, identified by Joel Spolsky, is layers of the stack attempting to become monopolies while turning other layers into perfectly-competitive markets which are commoditized, in order to harvest most of the consumer surplus; discussion and examples.
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Linked from 60 Hacker News comments by 56 different people, from Feb 2023 to Oct 2026.
Most recent:
- mrandish · Oct 10, 2026
- alexpotato · Sep 22, 2026
- Centigonal · Jul 31, 2026
- rlt · Jul 20, 2026
- gordonhart · Jun 29, 2026
- ForHackernews · Jun 26, 2026
