> To be clear, I’m not alleging that the Gang of Five is colluding with each other to fix prices, or to actively suppress innovation; or to do anything illegal. I am certainly not suggesting they be sued for antitrust violations, like the once-sole dominant platform company, Microsoft, was in the late 1990’s.<p>I found this an odd comment, because we don't have to "allege collusion". It's been documented and settled in court. It was wage fixing, not price fixing, but it's still clear evidence that the "Gang" is willing to work together against the market.
After reading the article I tried to think of all of the ways which I interact with the "gang of five" and quantify their importance in my life.<p>Apple - I'm writing this on a brand new Macbook Pro, and my iPhone is sitting right next to me. I have a $5/month subscription to Apple Music. It would be painful, but with a gun to my head I could easily switch to Windows, Android, and Spotify.<p>Google - I'm browsing HN in Chrome, by far my favorite browser. I use google search dozens of times throughout the day to figure things out, it's truly an extension of my brain. I could switch to a new browser, but I haven't tried Bing enough recently to know if it would compare to Google.<p>Amazon - I have a Prime membership, but I'm only a sporadic online shopper. That said, the Amazon shopping experience has provided me with a lot of value. No real alternatives here.<p>Facebook - I don't use Instagram, I don't use WhatsApp, I do have a Facebook but I don't use my real name and I have very few friends. I use the News Feed Eradicator extension to get rid of the Trending section and the News Feed. Of all of the companies, I consider Facebook the most dispensable from a personal perspective . The only features I regularly use are Chat, which is functionality that existed long before Facebook, and sometimes stalking people that I just met to see more pictures and get a "life resume" on them, which is a habit that I would rather not be able to indulge in to be quite honest.<p>Microsoft - My work computer runs on Windows, I use Office 365 at work, and of course tons of companies that I rely on in my consumption supply chain and infrastructure are dependent on Microsoft in some form or the other.<p>I'm truly shocked at Facebook's ascendance to the tech stratosphere. Obviously the numbers don't lie, but Facebook just seems like it has so much lower utility than all of the other companies mentioned here. Yes, it's younger and in a newer category, but all of the other companies provide fundamental building blocks to the modern technological experience. Social media seems so much more superfluous by comparison.
I'm not sure what the point of this piece is. There is fierce competition between these five and consumers are better for it. I think you can look at the cloud war between Google, Amazon, and Microsoft as a great example of competition among these companies producing better technology and lower prices. If there was collusion, we would see cloud costs and technology stagnate like cars from Detroit in the 70s and 80s. Instead the opposite is happening.
The exascale technology corporation of the 21st century is a completely different beast than the mega-corporations of the 20th century in one absolutely key way: They are disrupting themselves to successfully stay relevant in a fast moving market.<p>Back before Google became Alphabet, they made a huge decision to realign themselves around Machine Learning as the core of how they do business in all aspects [1].<p>It could do that because 1. Their services could benefit from the improvement directly and 2. it didn't need to build a new machine factory, or assembly line like GE would have had to, if it wanted to completely realign themselves to eg. solar production or a 21st century technology.<p>It sounds trivial and obvious but Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple are all information management companies. They are all trying to become the central nervous system for consumer behavior in all aspects. That means collecting ungodly amounts of data, having a dense psychometric profile of users and then feeding users what they want to feed them. The better data they have the more locked in people become and there are fewer sources of data available for other people.<p>So they most important thing is to get users to become part of their ecosystem - that means having some kind of insight into every digital system that a user interacts with. Unless you can create a new ecosystem that people interact with at such scale (Snap is probably the closest) then you can't compete with them. Also notice that Snap is still relying on Google Cloud [2] so Google wins either way.<p>The fact that the top 5 have so much money, talent etc... also means that any company that isn't a leap beyond in user interaction, can be easily wooed through a lucrative acquisition and access to user data at massive scale.<p>It's only going to get more consolidated because the average person only cares about usability and interoperability - so even if you aren't locked into just Apple, or Google, they all touch each other in some way that you are going to be part of the big 5 ecosystem no matter what.<p>[1]<a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/11/google-facebook-microsoft-remaking-around-ai/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/2016/11/google-facebook-microsoft-rema...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.recode.net/2017/2/2/14492026/snap-ipo-2-billion-contract-with-google-cloud" rel="nofollow">http://www.recode.net/2017/2/2/14492026/snap-ipo-2-billion-c...</a>
I don't think you can consider 5 companies to be an oligopoly especially when you don't see monopolistic practices. These companies regularly undercut each other and innovate.
IS this not just a symptom of a maturing industry? At one point America had hundreds of automotive companies, those hundreds consolidated down to three. 100 years later, those three are still dominate. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it sounds like something that has happened before and from that we can drive the discussion on weather this is good or bad, or something we can ignore.
Funny how amazon gets thrown in with facebook under the 'consumer tech industry' moniker. facebook sells ads to make money. amazon sells physical stuff. how are they related besides both using technology? I think we should group businesses by how they make money and who they compete against. 'technology company' doesn't mean anything in a world where every company has technology.
It's quite interesting to speculate who would be the sixth empire. Based on their attempts to dip their fingers into as many pies as possible, I'd say Uber is a would-be contender, and the platform they've been trying to own is the real world. As far as on-demand service economy startups go, they're certainly preeminent.
> In fact, I’d be amazed if there weren’t plenty of startups whose main goal is to be purchased by the Gang.<p>This happens whenever an industry has a dominant player with deep pockets. For example, back when telecom was a much healthier industry, the main reason why anyone would start a telecom startup was to get acquired by Cisco.
Very large companies are keeping a lot of money overseas. It seems be very inefficient if their saving are not used in investments that are closely connected to consumer financial benefits.<p>Should society be concerned with the flow of money out of the local economy? Isn't it a idea (for the companies) to move hundreds of billion dollars out of the economy their customers need to make a living?<p>I wonder if these companies should offer low interests loans to people to buy their products in much the same way that China buys US treasury bonds.<p>Maybe there should be limits to how much a company should be allowed to save and it should return the rest to investors.
The way I deal with it is not to put all my eggs in one basket. For instance, don't link your online accounts to one email, have one separate email address just for those. And try to use a different email provider to the company who makes your mobile OS.
And just don't use proprietary OSs where possible, go with Linux or BSD. In fact these days I'd recommend BSD if you really want to avoid too much bad data-gathering practice (even though I still use Linux myself out of habit), just because BSD still has a relatively unsullied rep.
As everything else on HN, this is a very American-centric perception. There are a lot of other companies that are not "big whales in the see but are crocodiles on the Yang-Tse", as Jack Ma once said.<p>China is the most obvious example (Alibaba, Taobao, Weibo) but there are also some European and Indian companies worth paying attention. If Asian growth takes a hold on this century and if Europe keeps getting freaked out about American espionage then this "Gang of five" will face some tough competition.