Comment by queenkjuul
20 hours ago
People talked about streaming years before Netflix. Online maps apps date back to the 1990s. E-commerce as well.
I definitely get the impression that many people thought it would eventually create shopping, streaming, and mapping sites.
I think people were less likely to have predicted things like social media or YouTube, though those weren't ideas sprung from a vacuum either.
If it were that simple and obvious, Blockbuster would have beat everyone to streaming. Sears would have digitized their catalog and used their vast brick-and-mortar stores as fulfillment centers for same-day shipping.
None of these shifts were obviously the right bet and many organizations lost because they missed the opportunity. Now orgs are on the same horizon and I can see why they don't want to miss this window.
Blockbuster actually did try to beat everyone to streaming. Notably, Blockbuster and Enron [1] entered into a 20-year partnership for online video delivery.
Sears was a different story, in that they were a real estate company with a store front and retail real estate took a nosedive due to ecommerce. But that's a different discussion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal