The Powers That Be (Internet Edition): Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft

By: Jeffrey Rayport and Julia Kelley and Nathaniel Schwalb

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Synopsis: As of early 2018, five U.S. technology companies-Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft-were among the largest companies in the world. Similarly, three Chinese technology firms-Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, or BAT-had emerged as global players due in part to the protection of China's "Great Firewall," which made it more difficult for foreign companies to compete in Chinese markets. As these companies continued to scale by branching into new businesses, such as voice AI and self-driving vehicles, they also faced new and challenging questions about user privacy. The European Union had recently passed the General Data Protection Regulation, a comprehensive set of consumer data protection laws that would require technology companies to make significant changes to their operating model. Meanwhile, social media giant Facebook was facing allegations that Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm, had accessed information on tens of millions of Facebook users without their consent, prompting calls for big technology firms to be more strictly regulated. How would the five U.S. companies and BAT respond to these concerns? And looking forward, in what ways would these big companies compete with one another, and which would come out ahead?