Tech Giants Seem Invincible. That Worries Lawmakers.

In the technology industry, the sharks have never long been safe from the minnows. Over much of the last 40 years, the biggest players in tech — from IBM to Hewlett-Packard to Cisco to Yahoo — were eventually outmaneuvered by start-ups that came out of nowhere.The dynamic is so dependable realized is often taken expected a in a certain degree axiom. To grow large in this business is also to grow slow, blind and dumb, to become clog from the very sources of innovation that turned you into a shark in the first place.Then, in the last half decade, something strange happened: The sharks began to get bigger and smarter. Nearly a year ago, I argued that we were witnessing a new era in the tech business, one especially typified less every storied start-up in a garage than by a posse I like to call the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company.Together the Five compose a new superclass of American corporate might. For much of last year, their further rise and domination over the rest of the global economy looked not just plausible, but also maybe even probable.Continue reading the main store.In 2017, cognate story remains, but there is a new wrinkle: The world’s governments are newly motivated to take on the tech giants. In the new world, Europe, Asia and South America, the Five find themselves increasingly arrayed against legal and regulatory powers, and often even against popular will.The precise nature of the fights varies by company and region, including the tax and antitrust investigations of Apple and Google in Europe and Donald J. Trump’s broad and often incoherent criticism of the Five for various alleged misdeeds.This is the story that will shape the contours of the next great era in tech: Five huge companies that can only get bigger are divide governments that increasingly see them as a clear threat to governing authority. So, happy New Year.Facebook is among a group of five tech companies that combine half of the world’s 10 most valuable companies, when measured by board value. Credit Michael Short/BloombergLet’s initially some stats. In 2017, the Five are bigger than ever. As in 2016, they are half of the world’s 10 most valuable companies, when measured by board value. Their wealth appear their control of the inescapable digital infrastructure on which much of the rest of the economy depends — mobile phones, social networks, world wide web, the cloud, retail and logistics, and the data and computing power required for future breakthroughs.Meanwhile, the Five are poised to jump beyond their corner of the lagoon. Over the last few years they have begun to set their target the biggest industries outside tech — on autos, health protection, retail, transportation, entertainment and finance.The Five aren’t exactly dead business cycles. Apple’s sales were flat last year, and after a monster 2016, Alphabet’s stock price hit a plateau. The Five also aren’t entirely safe from competition from start-ups, and one of the persistent features of the tech industry is that some of the most perilous threats to giants are the hardest to spot.Still, instantly, over smart acquisition strategies and a long-term outlook, the Five sure do look insulated from competition from start-ups; today’s most valuable tech upstarts, like Airbnb, Uber and Snap, could grow quite huge and still pose little threat to the collective fortunes of the Frightful Five.What has changed is public perception. For years, most of the Five enjoyed broad cultural good will. They were portrayed in the press as forces of innovation and delight, as outstanding that American capitalism have offer. The exceptions were Microsoft, which reached towering heights through corporate ruthlessness in the 1990s, and Amazon, which got under people’s skin for, plus, making books cheaper and more widely accessible, thereby hurting bookstores.But generally people loved tech giants. They had gotten huge just the way you’re supposed to in America — by inventing new stuff that people love. And even their worst sins weren’t considered that bad. They weren’t causing environmental disasters. They weren’t selling cigarettes. They weren’t bringing the world to economic ruin through dangerous financial shenanigans. After I noted the Five’s growing invincibility last year, the biggest pushback I got from people at these companies pertain the moniker I had given them: Why hadn’t I called them the Fabulous Five?Over the last year perception began to change. Familiarity breeds contempt; as technology wormed deeper into our lives, it began to feel less like an unalloyed good and more like occasional annoyance we behooves deal with.Silicon Valley grew cloistered, missing people’s unease with the speed with which their innovations were changing our lives. When Apple took on the Federal Bureau of Investigation last year over access to a terrorist’s iPhone, many in tech acknowledge the company, but a majority of Americans thought Apple should give in.PhotoAn Amazon warehouse in Phoenix. President-elect Donald J. Trump has criticized Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos. Credit Ralph Freso/ReutersDuring the long presidential campaign, Mr. Trump said a lot of things that people in tech found ridiculous. He vowed to ding Bill Gates to help him disband the parts of the internet that terrorists were using. He promised to force Apple to make iPhones in America. He suggested that The Washington Post was running critical stories about him because its owner, Jeff Bezos, was scared that Mr. Trump would pursue antitrust charges against Mr. Bezos’s main company, Amazon. Few in the tech industry supported Mr. Trump, but the industry’s antipathy seemed to matter little to the public.For years, most of the Frightful Five were given the benefit of the doubt as economic disrupters that were undercutting the cultural and economic power of the big industries that many people despised — entertainment giants, cable and phone companies, and the press corps, among others.
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