Big Tech’s Dominance Depends on Our Laziness
Facebook, Google, Amazon and other platforms have invested heavily in creating convenience cocoons that make switching to competitors feel like too much of a heavy lift.
A decade ago, many were ready to declare a winner. As business pundits saw it, a handful of major tech platforms had simply beaten the rest. New York University professor Scott Galloway called them “the four.” CNBC host Jim Cramer labeled them FAANG—for Facebook, Apple, Amazon.com, Netflix and Google—based on their stock performance. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. coined yet another acronym: GAFAM.
Almost 10 years later, the most interesting and underanalyzed question isn’t just how these companies gained dominance but also how they’ve managed to keep it. Many tech businesses have grown large, only to come crashing down—defeated by what’s newer, better or trendier. How have the main platforms, for the most part, avoided that fate?