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Tech's Ruling Class Casts a Big Shadow (theverge.com)
Veteran technology columnist Walt Mossberg believes that Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, or Gang of Five -- as he likes to call them, are casting a big shadow over how today's startups foster, a phenomenon he believes will continue to happen over the years to come. From his column for The Verge: What we have now in consumer tech, in 2017, is an oligopoly, at least superficially similar to the old industrial-era American corporate groups that once dominated key industries. I think that their enduring and growing power casts a shadow over the Silicon Valley legend that there are lots of great new consumer tech innovations being incubated right now in garages or dorm rooms somewhere that will be taken all the way to becoming great companies, the way each of the Gang of Five was. What I fear is more likely to happen to any such startup is that, if they're good, they get acquired by a member of the Gang, or that their idea is turned into a feature for one of the Gang's products. And, even if that never happens and a startup thrives, too often it can only thrive by being successful on a platform controlled by one or more Gang members, with the big guy maybe taking a cut. For instance, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, which went public last week, famously spurned a $3 billion takeover offer from Gang member Facebook in 2013. But it depends for its very operation on the cloud services of Google and on the mobile app platforms of Apple and Google. And plenty of other companies which either presented threats or opportunities to the Gang have been snapped up by them. Each of the five companies actively scoops up numerous smaller companies every year, in many cases just for their talent and / or patents. In fact, I'd be amazed if there weren't plenty of startups whose main goal is to be purchased by the Gang.
This newb sounds like a babe wet behind the ears.
>> "I'd be amazed if there weren't plenty of startups whose main goal is to be purchased by the Gang."
Welcome to the industry, er, Walt.
Seriously, he's been around long enough to know that every single one of his "gang of five" got where they are by starting up out of nowhere, blindsiding a dominator of a key industry, and knocking the fromer king of the hill off his perch. Apple and Microsoft have even been blindsided themselves, knocked down before (Apple almost to bankruptcy), and shifted gears to become dominant again.
If Mossberg's notions were correct, none of the five would exist now in the first place. They'd all just be sub-divisions of IBM.
Imagine all the people...
What about Moz://a? Why wasn't it included?
Because they are all but bought by Google already. Why else do you think they would fire Eich, adopt DRM, ape Chrome, and plan to kill off the browser extenstion system that gave users unprecedented control over their own browsing experience (through adblocking and script-blocking and a million other essential features).