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Re Anon @ 3.51pm

The interesting observation with the companies you have cited is that they are all facilitators rather than businesses getting their hands dirty with the underlying business at hand. Uber don't own their taxis, Amazon are, largely, a marketplace, Netflix don't produce films, Apple and Google largely don't write content but re-sell it.

Each of these have ended up dominating markets by offering a clever platform on which to capture the market and yet do so without requiring the capitalisation and infrastructure to do the donkey work. Fairly staggering to see how they have cast aside longstanding competition who are now in their palm rather than providing their services directly to the consumer.

For all the mocking, one only needs to look back to the whole Claims Direct/TAG sorry saga to see how that was not too dissimilar. The brand became known by the public and although offering only a conduit service for access to the high street firm Joe Public could have walked into and instructed, it was white labelling nationwide and once the market was largely captured, the cost of those services could be dictated by the brand and not those doing the work, ultimately in the shadows. How many folks outside of the legal profession thought CD or TAG were the firm of solicitors doing the work? How many (even after introduction to the purchasing law firm) still referred to their claim as being dealt with by CD/TAG?

No different really to the likes of the companies you identify.

Whether or not evolution is a step backward or forward (or a mixture of both), it is going to move markets, even if, as has been seen from CD, TAG, Tesco, Quindell etc, it doesn't necessarily lead to a success of said businesses, that doesn't console the many firms who have seen the work disappear from under their feet. You can point afterwards and gleefully tell them it's no wonder their business model failed and profitability was unsustainable etc, but that doesn't help replenish one's own filing cabinets.