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[...] Google, Microsoft and Facebook need relatively few tangible assets compared to the manufacturing giants of yesteryear. They can scale their intangible-asset bundle or software and reputation and so get very big. This type of scalability is, of course, enhanced by network effects.

[...] A valuable asset of so-called sharing-economy businesses like Uber or AirBnB is typically their network of committed suppliers--Uber's drivers or AirBnB's hosts. This too is an asset of lasting value that both companies have invested heavily to develop (and which they invest to protect, for e…