Don't bother wasting your time reading it. You'll have wasted two minutes, learned nothing, and have even less respect for the Economist.
In the IT industry, incrementally developing your existing businesses will quickly lead to oblivion. IBM succeeded in the transition away from the mainframe business, and thus IBM can be seen as an example what all the companies in the industry need to do to stay afloat.
I did not find this article a waste of time. It reminds me of Thomas Kuhn's view on scientific revolutions. Most of the time people try to solve problems by using already known patterns. Every now and then somebody comes up with a completely new idea; the new idea allows its possessors to solve the problems orders of magnitude better (i.e. faster, cheaper, ...).
Assuming that the core priority is to maintain and optimise their core business to a certain point of stability, they can then look at branching out into other areas that present attractive opportunities.
Of course Google has developed a very specific method to encourage this kind of behaviour (80/20) and Amazon has yet again quite a different process, so it would be very interesting to see how Facebook will go about this in the next few years.
Facebook has just as much chance of disappearing in 5 years as it does of being around in 100 year.
Google probably has a better chance than any of these companies of being around in 100 years, they are in the oldest industry of all time. Advertising. Plus they have shown they are willing to invest in new technologies to stay current, ala self driving cars.
Amazon has massive potential, but by no means are they guaranteed.
Apple, Google and Microsoft all have ridiculous piles of cash, provided they don't make any stupid big bets, all of these companies will easily be here for the next 100 years just on these cash piles alone.
Apple has a good shot, but I think Dell is not going to be around. It just seems like the integrated model is going to last and Microsoft is going to do it own thing (ala XBox).
Google might have serious problems if something other than the web shows up and advertising is harder. I am really not convinced (despite the efforts of many) that the web is the endpoint.
What is nearly certain is that there will be major technological shifts in the next hundred years. What they are is impossible to say. But the less married a core business idea of a company is to the current technologies, the more likely they can make the jump to whatever comes first.
I wonder if the author would have said the same thing about Myspace 5 years ago. I bet he would have.
Hardware (Apple, Amazon) OS (Apple, Google) Cloud services (Google, Amazon, Apple) Web services like email, maps, search (Google)
Facebook has a very large user base. Whoopee. But does that mean staying power? Nope. Just ask Myspace, Yahoo, and countless dot bomb companies. You need to invest in R&D, become a technology provider, and succeed in more than one market. Beyond social networking, what does Facebook have?
This is a horrible article, especially by the Economist's standards.
I realized this author had no clue when he/she explained that Microsoft isn't a safe bet while Facebook is. Um, last I checked MS had a $200 billion market cap. I don't think you can compare that to a website that has been in existence for 7 years and hasn't even shown profitability. I'd bet a week's pay that he/she hasn't ever used an Oracle product or could even explain how its database technology is used.
Of course, if you don't execute on your mission, dilute your franchise by buying tangentially related companies, gouge your customers, might turn out differently.
Are routers and network equipment going to be a commodity, or is a good platform going to keep providing a moat and competitive advantage?
When you look at it from that perspective, any of them could go through a downturn in the next 80+ years that leads to some hot new company just buying them outright.
