Ask HN: Are there fewer companies selling software now?

If you look at the software technology landscape over the last 8-10 years, you find many innovations coming from companies that are using software to solve specific business problems: search, advertising, social networks, media and communication (I am talking of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Uber and the like). The needs of these companies outgrew what commercially available software could do, and they were forced to develop in house solutions.

Since most of these companies do not sell their software per se (Microsoft being the prominent exception) and maintain their position in the market through other means (network effects mainly), they see no harm in open sourcing their work.

But if the bulk of software innovations are coming from such companies, what does it imply about the state of the industry then?

It has already led to a peculiar situation where programmers perceive the best jobs to be in companies that do not sell software at all!