In the previous article, I wrote about buying Vietnamese dong, but while I was thinking of writing the continuation, two news items I was interested in jumped in, so I would like to write my opinion. Two of the news that catch me are that Clubhouse has implemented a fee-free payment feature and that Google has won a proceeding with Oracle.

The Clubhouse is a social network that is less than a year old, but it has a $ 1 billion valuation. Even in Japan, it became popular on Twitter as of around January of this year, and some people sold users’ invitation slots on the flea market app Mercari.

There will be little novel technically. It’s a mystery why services that only deliver audio are so expensive, but it’s symbolic that Clubhouse has implemented a fee-free payment feature. It attracts as many people as possible to not-bland-new products and services, making it appear the user base has expanded. Doing so aims to raise the expected rate of return on subsequent advertising revenue, raise the corporate value, and exit through IPO or M&A. In other words, it probably does not aim to become a continuous business in itself.

And the Clubhouse’s fee-free payment feature makes other fee-based applications and services less attractive and jeopardizes their profitability. It’s a so-called disruption. They continue to make their service free that competitors cannot imitate and think about monetization after all the competitors are destroyed. This creates an atmosphere between creators and their supporters that the platform should not take charge, and the profitability of the companies that operate such platforms declines.

Already powerful platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube can quickly implement similar functionality. Or maybe they’re trying to establish a user base to be acquired by such a platform, but the software isn’t competitive in its services. Therefore, it seems that the software industry itself has become one big advertising business. This was preceded by Google, which has turned almost every software service into an advertising industry.

One way to avoid turning your software business into an advertising business and protect your company from competitors may be to patent your source code. Still, the world isn’t heading in this direction. The second news reveals that.

Google has been sued for the Android system for using Oracle’s programming code as of 2010, but the Supreme Court has ruled that “Google didn’t commit copyright infringement.”

For several years, Oracle has been trying to develop businesses that utilize its source code and intellectual property rights, such as charging Java for business. However, losing the proceedings indicates that the line has failed.

 In short, software source code no longer has much to maintain a competitive advantage.No matter how much you want to patent Java source code or make Java a good programming language, users are rushing to it if there is another free programming language or services that can implement similar functionality. This is especially true for companies that are not as profitable, user-based, traditional, or branded as Oracle.

Everyone in the world benefits from GAFMA, their services, open-source projects, and “disruptions.” But I recommend you not enter the industry and think of making money out of it, but use software and services as your tools.