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Tech Giants Spend $80 Billion To Make Sure No One Else Can Compete (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Google parent Alphabet and the other four dominant U.S. technology companies -- Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook -- are fast becoming industrial giants. They spent a combined $80 billion in the last year on big-ticket physical assets, including manufacturing equipment and specialized tools for assembling iPhones and the powerful computers and undersea internet cables Facebook needs to fire up Instagram videos in a flash. Thanks to this surge in spending -- up from $40 billion in 2015 -- they've joined the ranks of automakers, telephone companies, and oil drillers as the country's biggest spenders on capital goods, items including factories, heavy equipment, and real estate that are considered long-term investments. Their combined outlay is about 10 times what GM spends annually on its plants, vehicle-assembly robots, and other materials. The splurge by tech companies is behind an upswing in capital-goods spending among big U.S. companies, which is seeing its fastest growth in years, according to a Credit Suisse analysis. The $80 billion tab also is a snapshot of why it's tough to unseat the tech giants. How can a company hope to compete with Google's driverless cars when it spends $20 billion a year to ensure it has the best laser-guided sensors and computer chips? There are a lot of physical assets behind all those internet clouds.
'letting them hold on to that much cash'?
Fuck you socialist.
I have an idea to remove the need to complex AI for long haul.
You build a network of rails, and put the trucks on the rails, no steering required!
You could connect a hundred of the trucks together and then you'd only need one driver for the whole lot!
You could also power the rail-trucks through a wire above them and the steel rails they ride on, no more diesel!