The last three technological decades have been starred by an absolute market dominance -almost dictatorial- by gigantic companies. IBM’s dominance in the 80s would be followed by Microsoft’s one in the 90s, and the latter, that of Google in the 2000s. In the past few years, though, that position of dominance is no longer so clear: Facebook, Apple or Amazon (and maybe Samsung -whose golden era seems to be in decline-) claim their place in history, but none of them -even Google itself- seems to be destined to dominate the market in the coming years.

In a way, those giants of the past could dominate easier. IBM had conquered the business computer market, but didn’t seem to consider the end user as relevant. Microsoft did, and it made history by putting a PC on each desktop. Google managed something similar by connecting us all to the Internet, when the Internet seemed something weird and obscure.

The next revolution would be far more competed: the smartphone was Apple’s property for a couple of years, but nowadays the iOS/Android duopoly is mature, and draws on product and services (social networks, e-commerce, messaging and communications) which in turn are driven by other businesses.

The cake is no longer what it was. In our days a lot of companies want their piece of that cake -doesn’t matter if it is really small- and curiously there is no obvious candidate to take the baton and become itself that loved, respected, feared and hated company that we all identify as the referent of an era.

Apple seemed to be capable of becoming that when it successively launched the iPhone and the iPad, but that disruptive power seems to have been gone from Cupertino long ago. Facebook’s situation is even more significant: the most powerful social network on Earth seems unable to maintain its prominence, something that has made Zuckerberg’s company to acquire other companies that -in their opinion- will be their tickets to the future. The all mighty Amazon has also been contemplated as the heir to Apple, but even the quirky Jeff Bezos hasn’t been able to be right in his latests bets -most of us are not very convinced about the Fire Phone-. Microsoft has been able to adapt itself to that (future) present that was escaping from Redmond, and is the only one amongst the big companies that IMHO could get back that absolute relevance, specially due to that devices convergence idea (here’s a Google translation of that article) that has me a little bit obsessed.

Those big companies are flanked by many others that even been really big can’t really make that jump. The list by revenues (2013) of the most important technology companies in the world is available on Wikipedia, and leaves everyone a little bit dissapointed. We found there Samsung, Foxconn (in a surprising third place), HP, IBM, Hitachi, Amazon, Sony, Panasonic, Dell, Toshiba, LG and Intel. None of them seems to be ready to become a giant of historic proportions or to recover that condition (IBM’s case). All of them say that they innovate, but their steps are slow, conservative. Defensive.

On offense, of course, we have those thousands of startups that we see showing up everyday trying to get the attention of users, industry and, of course, investors. It seems unlikely that most of them could become that legendary entity I’m talking about, though for sure they can become incumbents in their own segments. Tesla, Oculus, Valve, Xiaomi, Square/PayPal and so many others that are fighting on different fields encourage a fragmented market, full of little kingdoms.

Those kingdoms seem to be smaller and smaller day after day, and this is what seems to show Product Hunt, a recent discovery of mine that allows to find who wants to be the next Facebook/Google/Twitter (another one that seems to be stagnant) and that is impressive by its own terms because it shows how many original (and well executed) ideas are trying to conquer the world. It’s likely that most of them will bite the dust given some time, but trying is a good sign of those times in which failure isn’t necessarily a bad thing (though some people consider it to be overrated).

And here we are, searching for the next Google. If it doesn’t get acquired by one of the big ones and puts it into oblivion first, of course.

This is an adaptation from my original post in Spanish.