Yet this amazing success story isn’t actually making any profit, even at such scale; instead, it’s losing billions, including $5 billion in one particularly costly quarter. But it is, for now, an example of a major 21st-century company invented entirely out of surplus, and floated by the hope that with enough money and market share, you can will a profitable company into existence. Which makes it another case study in what happens when an extraordinarily rich society can’t find enough new ideas that justify investing all its stockpiled wealth. And I would probably say the same thing now because, despite the stories I’ve just told, the internet economy is still as real as 21st-century growth and innovation gets. But what this tells us, unfortunately, is that 21st-century growth and innovation are not at all that we were promised they would be.

Source: New York Times February 07, 2020 19:41 UTC