10 Things You Won't See After the Recession


Nice sound bite. What does that mean?

Who knows? We can be sure that this downturn will differ totally from the Depression, and also different from the many recessions we've suffered every decade or every other decade since the 30s. I'm not an economist or a historian, but it seems to me that this recession will be something unprecedented.

One reason is that that there was no Internet or mobile technology in the 1930s. That means individual people and companies have very low cost, high efficiency alternatives for doing a wide ranging of activities. That will accelerate the demise of those things fated to be replaced anyway.

Here are 10 things that I believe won't survive the recession.

1. Free Tech Support

The practice still employed by some companies of paying humans to answer phones and solve technical problems with hardware or software purchased for consumers will become a thing of the past. PCs, laptops and hardware peripherals, as well as application software -- these categories will be purchased like airline tickets, with price becoming the sole criteria for many buyers. In order to compete on price, companies who now offer real tech support will replace it with message boards (users helping users), wikis, wizards, software-based troubleshooting tools and other unsatisfying alternatives.

2. Wi-Fi You Have to Pay For


3. Landline Phones

Digital phone bundles for homes (where TV, home networking and landline phone service are offered in a total package) will keep the landline idea alive for a while, but as millions of households drop their cable TV services and as consumers look to cut all needless costs, the trend toward dropping landline service in favor of cell phone service only will accelerate until it's totally mainstream, and only grandma still has a landline phone.

4. Movie Rental Stores

The idea of retail stores where you drive there, pick a movie, stand in line and drive home with it will become a quaint relic of the new fin de siecle (look it up!). The new old way to get movies will be discs by mail, and the new, new way will be downloading.

5. Web 2.0 Companies Without a Business Plan


6. Most Companies in Silicon Valley

Tech company failures and mergers will leave the industry with a low two-digit percentage (maybe 25%) of the total number of companies now in existence. Like the automobile industry, which had more than 200 car makers in the 1920s and emerged from the Depression with just a few, Silicon Valley is in for some serious contraction. The difference is that the auto industry ended up with the Big Three, whereas the number of tech companies will grow dramatically again during the next boom.

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