4 Introduction
The message is clear: with the exception of Disney, flush with the
success of the Star Wars franchise among other elements, AT&T and
Comcast (which both have extensive telecommunications components
as part of their business) the larger, more traditional media companies
lag behind the main tech companies by a factor of at least ten. The companies on the right of the aforementioned chart are responsible for producing the vast majority of media consumed by audiences around the
world and yet, increasingly, it is the companies on the left that enable
the majority of that audience to consume media in the first place. When
Ben Bagdikian outlined the companies that controlled the media in the
USA in 2004, his five conglomerates were: Time Warner, Walt Disney,
News Corporation, Viacom, and Bertelsmann.
6
Just over a decade later,
it is the Big Five who are the subject of this book that, increasingly, control access to the new ecologies of media distribution in the twenty-first
century.
“Big tech” is a phrase that will recur frequently in this book, and is
often associated with the “Big Five” (Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple,
Facebook, and Microsoft) although it is not entirely synonymous with
them. The phrase itself evolved slowly, beginning with Eric Schmidt’s
reference in 2011 to the “gang of four” – Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and
Google – which at that point were worth half a trillion dollars combined
and which, in his opinion, were shaping consumer technology.
7
At this
time, the Big Four were considered the most exciting and dynamic companies in the world and were imbued with a certain glamour: Apple had
reinvented itself as the manufacturer of what would become the world’s
most popular hardware device, the iPhone, Amazon stunned the stock
market with its continued growth and acquisitions, Facebook was on the
verge of launching the most expensive initial public offering (IPO) in history, and Google had shot into the top five of the best companies to work
for in the world, offering beanbags, pool tables, and polka dot walls.
8
Unlike traditional multinationals, these were companies that were cool
and fun, and the omission of Microsoft from Schmidt’s “gang of four”
was deliberate: throughout the late 1990s, Microsoft had come to represent the aggressive, power-hungry aspects of big business that companies such as Google defined themselves against, taking up the motto
“Don’t be evil” as a reminder of what not to turn into.
Within a decade, however, the Big Four had become the Big Five and
the return of Microsoft to the ranks of big tech demonstrated that there
was less to distinguish these major, multinational corporations that had
existed in the previous decade. It was Theodore Roosevelt who first began to label “big business” as an enemy of the people in 1906, when he
began to attack corporations and anti-labour decisions in the courts,
and throughout the twentieth century, the addition of “Big X” indicated a general disillusion with an industry, whether Big Phama, Big Tobacco, or Big Oil. Such descriptions indicated popular perceptions that a
The message is clear: with the exception of Disney, flush with the
success of the Star Wars franchise among other elements, AT&T and
Comcast (which both have extensive telecommunications components
as part of their business) the larger, more traditional media companies
lag behind the main tech companies by a factor of at least ten. The companies on the right of the aforementioned chart are responsible for producing the vast majority of media consumed by audiences around the
world and yet, increasingly, it is the companies on the left that enable
the majority of that audience to consume media in the first place. When
Ben Bagdikian outlined the companies that controlled the media in the
USA in 2004, his five conglomerates were: Time Warner, Walt Disney,
News Corporation, Viacom, and Bertelsmann.
6
Just over a decade later,
it is the Big Five who are the subject of this book that, increasingly, control access to the new ecologies of media distribution in the twenty-first
century.
“Big tech” is a phrase that will recur frequently in this book, and is
often associated with the “Big Five” (Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple,
Facebook, and Microsoft) although it is not entirely synonymous with
them. The phrase itself evolved slowly, beginning with Eric Schmidt’s
reference in 2011 to the “gang of four” – Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and
Google – which at that point were worth half a trillion dollars combined
and which, in his opinion, were shaping consumer technology.
7
At this
time, the Big Four were considered the most exciting and dynamic companies in the world and were imbued with a certain glamour: Apple had
reinvented itself as the manufacturer of what would become the world’s
most popular hardware device, the iPhone, Amazon stunned the stock
market with its continued growth and acquisitions, Facebook was on the
verge of launching the most expensive initial public offering (IPO) in history, and Google had shot into the top five of the best companies to work
for in the world, offering beanbags, pool tables, and polka dot walls.
8
Unlike traditional multinationals, these were companies that were cool
and fun, and the omission of Microsoft from Schmidt’s “gang of four”
was deliberate: throughout the late 1990s, Microsoft had come to represent the aggressive, power-hungry aspects of big business that companies such as Google defined themselves against, taking up the motto
“Don’t be evil” as a reminder of what not to turn into.
Within a decade, however, the Big Four had become the Big Five and
the return of Microsoft to the ranks of big tech demonstrated that there
was less to distinguish these major, multinational corporations that had
existed in the previous decade. It was Theodore Roosevelt who first began to label “big business” as an enemy of the people in 1906, when he
began to attack corporations and anti-labour decisions in the courts,
and throughout the twentieth century, the addition of “Big X” indicated a general disillusion with an industry, whether Big Phama, Big Tobacco, or Big Oil. Such descriptions indicated popular perceptions that a