Our discussion this past week has focused on the “Gang of Four” and their monopolistic aspects as both four separate entities, as well as one collective “team.” Though we spoke plenty about monopolies and whether or not the Gang of Four is/are one, the ultimate question remains to be: Are these companies, such as Amazon, evil? , or “how much can we trust these companies, if at all?” As the market appears to be increasingly cornered by the Gang of Four—Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook—the entire concept of the “Age of Platforms” comes into question.
The readings centered on the glorious sounding “Age of Platforms,” which they state that we are currently in, however, Platforms are consumer driven and essentially run from the bottom up. Which is clearly and unquestionably the opposite of market that is more or less run by four companies. FOUR. Everyone loves their fancy smart phones right? Guess who makes most of those smart phones. That would be Apple, while the rest are made by, you guessed it, Google. Speaking of Google, what do you do when you don’t know something or need to find something or someone, you Google it. The company name has even because a verb because of its popularity/dominance. What’s that? You want to buy something online? Guess where you’re going to find it. Amazon. Now, you might say, like the reading seems to attempt to claim, that Amazon doesn’t make smartphones, Apple isn’t an online shopping place, Google doesn’t own social media, and Facebook isn’t an online shopping supercenter. Sure, despite all of the above being legitimately possible in the future, perhaps each member of the Gang of Four isn’t their own monopoly. However, if you are using your Apple smartphone to Google a product/person which leads you to Amazon/Facebook, what’s the difference? The Gang of Four is an impressively dominant monopoly in this supposed “Age of Platforms,” which, having established that—regardless of what nonsense the reading is spewing—we are left with the question of whether or not to trust these Four Horsemen.
While I could sit here typing all day and all night about their values, motives, goals, etc, it would most likely be beneficial to everyone but simply cutting to the chase. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if we trust them or not because they aren’t going anywhere (for the foreseeable future, at least). Google is still going to be Google, Amazon still Amazon, Apple still Apple, and Facebook, despite people declaring it dead almost as often as the sport of baseball, is still Facebook. Each and every one of these companies remains dominant in their specific category, and together, are a clear monopoly working together to essentially own a market that is supposedly run by consumer driven and oriented platforms.