Introduction 3
(the one consistent technology company to appear in this company since
the 1990s), and regularly the top positions are held by Apple, Alphabet,
Microsoft, and Amazon as these organisations jostle for the top spot of
most highly valued company. A comparison of 100 years of the market
made by Visual Capitalist using data provided by Forbes rather than the
Fortune 500 offers a similar comparison to the top companies in 2017
but also allows a much wider contextualisation. Thus in 1917, the John
D. Rockerfeller’s Standard Oil and J. P. Morgan’s US Steel dominated the
US stock exchanges, stalwarts of the industrial era although at this time
Standard had already been broken up through antitrust action. Fifty
years later, in 1967, Standard Oil (soon to be renamed Exxon) remained
important but this was now the emerging domain of hardware and telecommunications companies such as IBM and AT&T, as well as other
manufacturers such as Eastman Kodak and Polaroid.
5
It is slightly too
early to define the second decade of the twenty-first century as the decade
of digital platforms: the volatility of market values is clear over a period
of years, but it is remarkable just how stable Apple has been at the top of
the pile. In the future, emerging markets such as those around health and
medicine, or indeed a resurgence of energy in alternative forms to gas
and oil, could see a revolution in the capitalisation of companies, but to
all intents and purposes, the 2010s have been the decade of the Big Five.
This brief excursion into the financial status of contemporary technological companies is one means of emphasising the significance of big
tech. Nor should it be forgotten (Apple and Microsoft aside) just how
recent this transformation has been: until 2015, Amazon, Facebook, and
even the mighty Google never made to the top ten list of companies,
while until 2003, Intel and even IBM remained significant players. The
impact of Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft reaches
into a great variety of areas of everyday life, but for the purposes of
this book, their significance can easily be weighed by comparing their
market value to those for more traditional media companies (Table I.2).
Table I.2 Value of top tech companies versus top media companies
Tech company
2018 Q3 value
(billions)
Media company
2018 Q3 value
(billions)
Apple
1,091
AT&T
b
248
Amazon
976
Walt Disney
173
Microsoft
877
Comcast
161
Alphabet
839
Twenty-First
Century Fox
85
Facebook
a
473
Thomson Reuters 32
Source: Fortune 500.
a Number six on the overall list behind Berkshire Hathaway.
b Owner of Time Warner Inc. since June 2018.
(the one consistent technology company to appear in this company since
the 1990s), and regularly the top positions are held by Apple, Alphabet,
Microsoft, and Amazon as these organisations jostle for the top spot of
most highly valued company. A comparison of 100 years of the market
made by Visual Capitalist using data provided by Forbes rather than the
Fortune 500 offers a similar comparison to the top companies in 2017
but also allows a much wider contextualisation. Thus in 1917, the John
D. Rockerfeller’s Standard Oil and J. P. Morgan’s US Steel dominated the
US stock exchanges, stalwarts of the industrial era although at this time
Standard had already been broken up through antitrust action. Fifty
years later, in 1967, Standard Oil (soon to be renamed Exxon) remained
important but this was now the emerging domain of hardware and telecommunications companies such as IBM and AT&T, as well as other
manufacturers such as Eastman Kodak and Polaroid.
5
It is slightly too
early to define the second decade of the twenty-first century as the decade
of digital platforms: the volatility of market values is clear over a period
of years, but it is remarkable just how stable Apple has been at the top of
the pile. In the future, emerging markets such as those around health and
medicine, or indeed a resurgence of energy in alternative forms to gas
and oil, could see a revolution in the capitalisation of companies, but to
all intents and purposes, the 2010s have been the decade of the Big Five.
This brief excursion into the financial status of contemporary technological companies is one means of emphasising the significance of big
tech. Nor should it be forgotten (Apple and Microsoft aside) just how
recent this transformation has been: until 2015, Amazon, Facebook, and
even the mighty Google never made to the top ten list of companies,
while until 2003, Intel and even IBM remained significant players. The
impact of Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft reaches
into a great variety of areas of everyday life, but for the purposes of
this book, their significance can easily be weighed by comparing their
market value to those for more traditional media companies (Table I.2).
Table I.2 Value of top tech companies versus top media companies
Tech company
2018 Q3 value
(billions)
Media company
2018 Q3 value
(billions)
Apple
1,091
AT&T
b
248
Amazon
976
Walt Disney
173
Microsoft
877
Comcast
161
Alphabet
839
Twenty-First
Century Fox
85
a
473
Thomson Reuters 32
Source: Fortune 500.
a Number six on the overall list behind Berkshire Hathaway.
b Owner of Time Warner Inc. since June 2018.