Q: Can we say routers are simple and doesn’t have a lot of technologies?
A (by yours truly): 也不能这样说，路由器和相关技术，比如说load balancer (F5 等），firewall 等等还是有技术和市场的。思科当时的做法是支持所有去创业的员工，给投资，一般做得还行的后来都买回来。她家最主要还是dot com 那时候股价炒太高。
思科现在成长性比不过hyper scalers. 她近年买了app dynamics, splunk 等performance (production) monitoring 的软件公司。很久以前买过webex
I gave it more thought: I think the main difference between Cisco and say other hyper scalers such as Amazon and Microsoft are: the latter found new growth driver, AWS for Amazon; Azure and many other growth drivers for Microsoft (Xbox gaming, office 365, copilot and so on). In a way Nvidia is similar: they went from Graphics card, to crypto, and now to AI.
Google (Alphabet) is a bit different in terms of its business model change. Google is very lucky in the sense it quickly became the leader in the web search, and found a business model around search and ads (google ads, adSense for publishers). Later they bought YouTube and DoubleClick, and AdMobile. They invested early in the AI too, and they opened up what they use internally as Google Cloud: this is somewhat similar to AWS, but they kind of came to the party a bit late.
As I was writing this: Intel just announced it’s going to suspend the dividend and also has another round of mass layoffs.
Now we are talking about great business (Microsoft, Nvidia and so on), vs. so-so business (Cisco), and disastrous business (Intel).
Also, I just recall the pioneers of mobile phone and smartphone makers: Nokia, Blackberry and so on are all becoming irrelevant in the space now. Apple is the king of the smartphone as of this writing.
For tech companies: innovate, or die (or become irrelevant).