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Technology

After the Pandemic, Will Big Tech Companies Be Unstoppable? (nytimes.com) 109

Posted by EditorDavid from the full-immunity dept.
After the pandemic is over, "The tech giants could have all the power," warns Recode co-founder Kara Swisher, " and absolutely none of the accountability — at least all the power that will truly matter." This is the conclusion that many are coming to as the post-pandemic future begins to come into focus. Wall Street sure is signaling that the power lies with tech companies, vaulting the stock of Amazon to close to $2,400 a share earlier this week, from $1,838 at the end of January. While the price fell on Friday to $2,286 a share, after Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, said he would spend future profits on the coronavirus response, that still gives the company a value of $1.14 trillion. And all the other Big Tech stocks, which were hit in the first weeks of the pandemic, also are on an upward march to the top of the market-cap heap. Microsoft at $1.32 trillion. Apple at $1.26 trillion. Alphabet at $900 billion. And Facebook at $577 billion. This group now makes up just over 20 percent of the S.&P. 500, which is a flashing yellow signal of what is to come.

That is to say, we live in a country in which the very big tech firms will be the very big winners in the economy of the future, which still does not look like it will be so pretty for most people and many companies, too...

I neither hate tech nor think most people who work in tech are bad people. But when this crisis is over, I can say that we most certainly should fear Big Tech more because these companies will be freer than ever, with many fewer strictures on them from regulators and politicians. The effort to rein in tech companies had been building decent momentum before coronavirus outbreak, but it will be harder when focus needs to be on building up rather than breaking apart.

Now, as we turn to the healthy companies to help us revive the economy, it could be that the only ones with real immunity are the tech giants. In this way, Covid-19 has accelerated their rise and tightened their grip on our lives. And this consolidation of power, combined with Big Tech's control of data, automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, media, advertising, retail and even autonomous tech, is daunting.
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After the Pandemic, Will Big Tech Companies Be Unstoppable? More

After the Pandemic, Will Big Tech Companies Be Unstoppable?

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  • They're already unstoppable (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday May 03, 2020 @10:38AM (#60017732)

    So what's new?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      even Orwell couldn't have guessed we'd give up all our freedom and privacy for trinkets and minor conveniences but here we are

      • While the most of what we do with technology is rather trivial. It isn’t to say that it also isn’t useful and becomes necessary for modern life.

        However technology has always won after a disaster. Because those with the best technology make it out better.

        • There were no people alive before technology??!?
          • Oh so you're saying 'we should reject technology and the conveniences it's offering us' at the same time you were saying 'we should all give up what's left of our privacy by installing an app that tracks us everywhere under the guise of tracking the coronavirus'? Did you think I forgot about that already?
            Make up your mind.

          • Correct.

            Important early technologies included scrapers made from sharpened stones, fire, clothing, and agriculture.

          • I lived... but I wasn't truly alive until I got my ZX80.

          • There were no people alive before technology??!?

            That is the mainstream theory; that our ancestors were already using tools for millions of years before they were human.

            • There were no people alive before technology??!?

              No there weren't.

              Animal behaviourists have observed use of technology. Sticks poked into termite nests, left there a short time, and withdrawn to devour the termites who wandered onto the stick. Simians have been observed pounding nuts on chisel-shaped stones to get at the nutmeats. These may not be iPads, but I'm not arrogant enough to claim it's not technology just because the human brain didn't originate it.

          • Certainly "people" and technology have always gone hand-in-hand [bbc.co.uk], as shown by this very early example of the relationship between humans and silicon

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 )

        We'll happily trade our freedom for free email, or a social network. But rest assured, we'll never give up an inch of our right to kill each other by refusing to wear masks.

        • Just like Tonto used to say to the Lone Ranger: "What do you mean we, white man?"
          Not ALL of us are 'trading our freedom for email and social networks'.
          Hell, it'd be a pain at first but I'd cancel internet service and cell service and go back to a landline and the library if I thought it was getting that bad.
          I guess if you're under the age of 40 (or 30) you don't remember a world without the Internet, but I'm mid-50's and I remember when all we had were landline POTS telephones, dialup modems were just on

        • Are you wearing your Corona muzzle and cowering under your bed, comrade citizen peon? Be verrrrrrrrrrrrry afraid - the Invisible Enemy might get you!!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 )

      In the late 1980s/early 1990s, Sears was unstoppable, in the 1990s it was AOL, in the early 2000s it was Nokia and MySpace. Give it time, they will all tumble.

      The ONLY way this doesn't happen (tumbling) is if these big tech companies buy enough Congressmen to ensure they cannot be challenged by creating laws and carve-outs. If your rep/senator has been in Congress for more than 15 years, or has NEVER worked in the private field - vote them out. Either party.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        In the late 1980s/early 1990s, the rich were unstoppable, in the 1990s it was the rich, in the early 2000s it was some rich people.

        Fixed that for you.

        • Was is the same rich people though, otherwise I'm not sure you really have a point. You just get a pointless truism, in much the same way that saying the World Series Champions won each year. I suppose it's good for breeding resentment, but it's useless as far as helping a person figure out how to get rich.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by nagora ( 177841 )

            Was is the same rich people though

            It was largely the same class of people - very few ex-miners in the list or clever people who unfortunately were born as aboriginal Australians, for example. And from a shareholding perspective in many cases it was literally the exact same people.

            I suppose it's good for breeding resentment, but it's useless as far as helping a person figure out how to get rich.

            Getting rich is largely a matter of being lucky.

            • Getting rich is largely a matter of being lucky.

              If you said being rich is largely a matter of being lucky, OK. Most rich people were lucky.

              But if you're talking about getting rich, that's a whole different ball of wax. Very few people get rich just by luck, because the existing rich people would have vacuumed up any big piles of cash left sitting unclaimed.

              Most likely what you really mean is that you don't consider the skills involved with becoming newly rich to be legitimately Virtuous, so you call it "luck."

              • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                by shmlco ( 594907 )

                You probably consider hard work to be virtuous. Coal miners, from what I hear, work pretty hard yet tend not to become rich.

                So... something else. You may consider, say, Bill Gates, to be a virtuous example of hard work and success. Except that you may forget that Bill's mother, a regent at the University of Washington, knew John Opel, the CEO of IBM and she was the one that closed the link between IBM and Microsoft.

                Plenty of people were working in the fledgling software industry at the time... but only one

          • Those who made it during Sears' years weren't the same as for AOL, or Nokia.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          I think you're just feeding (or being baited by) a troll, though your response is mostly to the point. However I think those "rich people" are only fronting for the cancerous corporations that they think they own. In reality, the corporations outlive them and just replace the human components as needed. The only natural enemy of a corporate cancer is a bigger and nastier corporate cancer.

          Used to be a time when some cancerous governments could stand up against the corporate cancers, but I'm doubtful that is

        • Maybe you would be rich too if you didn't give your work away for free.

    • They're already unstoppable

      FOR YOU.

    • I'm guessing that FP was intended as a joke, not just to wrong-foot the discussion. If so, then the apparent basis of the joke would be that corporate cancers are already too powerful to stop.

      Note that I'm generalizing from "big tech companies" to "big corporations" in general, because there's a basic equivalence there. Every large company is heavily reliant on technology now. In addition, all of them are "unstoppable" for the same reason: They bribe the cheapest politicians to rig the game in their favor.

  • No.

    The only companies that keep running normally while the government grows, takes over small business and healthcare, are not going to be unstoppable. If anything, they'll be punished.

    • By who? Those they put in power?

    • The only reason the US government could ever grow, is because almost any positive number is bigger than almost zero.

      Or did you you mean your corporate oligarchy that calls itself "government", whenever it wants to harm others without beimg blamed for it? (The one yelling for "small government", which is code for "Less power to the people! More power to us!".)
      And guess who "the people" includes...

  • They're all very clear anti-trust violators.

    Break them each into separate verticals.

    Any vertical that can't survive was not meant to be and demonstrates the anti-trust violation.
    • Which of these companies are a monopoly? The only one that's perhaps even close is Google, but I don't use them as my primary search engine so it's pretty damned hard to argue that there aren't choices. Attempts to label any of these companies are going to devolve into narrowly defined markets created merely to apply the label of monopoly, for example one could argue that Ford has a monopoly on Mustangs. Sure it's true, but hopefully it's easy to understand why it's silly.
      • You don't understand trust or monopolies. Google is absolutely a search monopoly. 100% ownership of a market is not required. It can be argued their search monopoly was earned. However, they abuse that monopoly to take over other areas such as ads. They did not earn their position in the online ads market through superior innovation, hard work, and skill. If they didn't own search they would be no one in the online ads world.

        That is the definition of anti-trust. They abuse their search monopoly to co

        • You have that backwards. They do not have a search business. They have an ad business. Search is the free product they undercut everyone else with using their ad monopoly. Except they don't have an ad monopoly, so the issue is moot.

          • Lol, ok. Yes, their ad business is what allowed them to take over search. Right. Fortunately, you're not in the DoJ's anti-trust division, where they actually understand these things.

            When the hammer falls there will be a giant smashing sound the likes of which the business world has never seen before. It could be next week or in 20 years but it's just waiting to drop.

            • I did not claim they used an ad monopoly to take over search. But they don't have a search business, so it can't have worked the other way.

              Please find me an antitrust case where a company was broken up or otherwise punished for providing a free product without having a corresponding monopoly which is being abused.

              Otherwise I will call your understanding of anti-trust and the DOJ limited at best.

    • Define "vertical". And if a successful vertical comes to dominate its niche, do we break it up again? In other words - success can only be from anti-trust, and the proof is success, so we must cut them down to where they cannot succeed and thus we know there is no anti-trust?
      • No. You do not understand trust. The violation is using dominance in one vertical to take over another.

        A monopoly is not illegal if earned through skill, hard work, etc.

        Anti-trust is not about punishing companies for being successful for being superior. It is punishing them for abusing competitors in other verticals with power they haven't earned in that vertical.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Here is where illiteracy and a lack of history hampers us. Yes, there are monopolies. Standard Oil, ATT were monopolies. All US sporting organizations, Uber, Facebook, and Google are largely monopolies and it is unclear if the do net harm, which is why we break up monopolies.

      Amazon is simply part of long line of innovative retailers that have taken advantage of technology and government subsidy to grow their business. and in the process undercut less innovative business. In the late 1800's, for instan

      • Amazon the webstore and Amazon the "marketplace" seem to have some worrying overlap that harms the marketplace sellers.

        It seems almost guaranteed that the next Democratic administration is going to attempt an enforcement action over that part.

  • Tesla could have big unstoppable big tech companies, but then Elon had to open his big mouth, exhale a cloud of dope smoke, and say what we're all thinking aloud.

    • When PayPal bought x.com and shut it down, to make sure "internet banking" died, leaving the US with the existing legacy banking system today, they could instead have become one of the big technology companies.

      Tesla? Not really. Their user interface is worse than an analog car! They can't figure out how to make money on any of the premium solar rooftop technologies, even though the niche is profitable for others, and there is strong demand among high income Americans for the Tesla branded products. Their fi

  • You can just switch it ... off, you know?
    Just like you can just stop using their money, you can just stop using their tech.
    And it will have no power over you.
    Economic crisis of 2007? Not a crisis if you weren't part of that economy. (Also not a crisis if you were one of those that that "lost" wealth/power went to.)

    I can still go to my local farmer, and do some job for him, and get food in return. People used to live completely without tech, you know?

    A Dollar is only worth something, beause you believe in it

    • Economic crisis of 2007? Not a crisis if you weren't part of that economy.

      Also not a crisis if you didn't sell your house - it's like a stock "loss". It's on paper only until you realize the loss (or gain). On the other hand, I bought my house in late 2011 near the bottom of real-estate prices, and it's about doubled in value. The previous owner panicked and locked in their loss - I paid and have an unrealized (yet) gain.

    • Economic crisis of 2007? Not a crisis if you weren't part of that economy.

      That shows your ignorance. Everyone is part of the economy. Even if one lives "off the grid", one still must pay taxes and by the foods one cannot hunt and grow oneself. The only way one isn't "part of that economy" is if one owns a private, self-sufficient island with no external government control and no external trade. Only then, by living as an isolated subsistence hunter/gather/farmer lifestyle, can one avoid being part of an economy.

  • the very big tech firms will be the very big winners in the economy of the future

    All those companies are multinationals. They are global players. If they are "big winners" in the global economy of the future that tells us that the global economy of the future is doing well.

    It says nothing about the economy of any individual country.

    Of course, most countries (or blocs, such as the EU) have developed regulatory frameworks and laws to put checks on companies becoming too powerful and abusing that power. To prevent them from becoming "unstoppable".

    If other countries choose not to do s

  • Tax the fuck out of them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Sunday May 03, 2020 @11:11AM (#60017812)
    Close all of the Double Irish - Bahamas tax avoidance loopholes and seize and repatriate the trillions they've stashed offshore. There's no way that small businesses should have to pay the rates they do while big corps typically pay 0%. This should be a *requirement* before any discussion of raising other taxes is allowed.

    • Eliminate (as applicable and comparable): Value Added Tax, Income Tax, Death Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Social Security Tax, Medicare tax.
      Replace with National Retail Sales Tax.
      Simpler and less expensive to implement and enforce. No more loop-holes.

      • You mean a fuck the poors tax (Score:5, Informative)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Sunday May 03, 2020 @12:42PM (#60018112)

        How about NO. Sales taxes are inherently regressive, leaving those with the least amount of money paying the highest percentage of their income, and those with the most money paying the smallest percentage.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Ichijo ( 607641 )

          Even worse, the sales tax discourages commerce and kills your economy.

          Instead, how about a carbon tax-and-dividend? Then instead of less commerce, we'll have lower carbon emissions and less traffic congestion. (Would you rather have less commerce or less traffic?) The dividend will prevent it from being a burden on the poor, and the fact that it's a tax on carbon gives companies a way to avoid paying it (stop emitting carbon) that doesn't exist with the sales tax (stop selling anything?).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by trawg ( 308495 )

          How about NO. Sales taxes are inherently regressive, leaving those with the least amount of money paying the highest percentage of their income, and those with the most money paying the smallest percentage.

          I agree that sales taxes are generally regressive, but I think it's probably possible to have some types of sales tax that are not. It just adds a lot more complexity.

          In Australia we have the luxury car tax [ato.gov.au], which is an additional tax people have to pay on, well, luxury cars - defined as anything above a certain threshold (just checked and it is currently about AUD$67k, which is 10k more than it was when I checked last time).

          So I am not opposed to the idea of extra taxes on certain types of luxury items -

      • Taxes are the price of civilization.
        Advanced civilizations advance their taxes to higher levels.
        Complex situations and equity demand more sophisticated systems.
        Duh.

        You won't stop the corrupt from inserting loop holes into ANY system unless you cap wealth of individuals and groups(corps) who will use their power to probe the system for weak points they can exploit to get more power. If they are absolutely capped then any games they play can only go so far. The society has to be vigilant as well.

        If you put e

    • Close all of the Double Irish - Bahamas tax avoidance loopholes

      This much, they won't really have a choice in the end. It is too big a pot to leave untouched in the coming phase of the crisis.

      But they're not going to seize anything; they'll just close the loopholes and start collecting the taxes.

      In the US if the government wants to seize something they have to pay for it, so seizing money is a bit useless.

  • What will also happen is that you will have economies and whole industries reliant on these handful of behemoths. Meanwhile the financial services companies will be fighting to pick a few million difference between the top 50 tech companies. No one will bother to open an online bookshop of general goods store, you simply open a storefront through Amazon and advertise through Google and Facebook. We'd better pray these behemoths never hit any issues 'cos they will take down the world's economies overnight.

  • Every other article being about Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft or Facebook and publishing their every press release on some stupid new emoji or whatnot.
    Why not instead dig up some articles on up-and-coming startups.

    • This is supposed to be a website that publishes tech news. Since Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook are huge tech companies with multiple departments that each do a lot of things, it's normal to see news from them every week, if not every day.

  • An one of them is basing an opinion on the stock price of a company.

    Many analysts think the market will see another rapid decline within the next year, like it had in mid March.

  • Grow a pair. Just Say No. And then actually follow through. That is the part where most of you useless spineless American slaves fall down, you *say* no, but really you mean "Yassir uncle bill, two bags full sir right away sir". (And no, American Slaves does not equate to Black folks, but it does relate to N iggers).

  • Big Tech is the least of our worries (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday May 03, 2020 @11:54AM (#60017954)
    what we should be worried about is how every 10 years there's a massive economic collapse, we all take pay cuts and sell our property off for cheap to the rich while they get bailed out and we lose more ground. This has been going on for at least 50 years. Big tech didn't make that happen, it was happening long before Facebook & Twitter & Google were a thing.
    • Not sure where my mod points went but I would give one to you if I had one. I think you hit the nail on the head. Through my life I have seen corporations offset all risks to the little people. A lot of technology is precisely this. Look at Uber.. A 'worker' now owns the property of the car and take all the risk for anything that happens to it.. any cost increase like, say, when insurance companies feel free to increase their rates "due to costs related to covid-19" then the Uber drivers will bear the b
      • except the part where they used tech to detect when police were using the App in stings to try and shut down their illegal Taxi service.

        Uber could have done the same thing 20 years ago except for 2 things.

        First, cars are a _lot_ safer now. As a result there are relatively few nasty crashes involving an Uber driver who's driving on a non-commercial insurance policy. This is why you need a pretty new car to drive for Uber.

        Second, we've eroded worker protections. There's always been a handful of th
    • Socialism is ok if it is benefiting the rich and powerful.
  • There's always some asshole saying shit like this for whatever attention-grabbing reasons they have for saying it, and the proper response is always the same: IGNORE IT. All these shithead companies want you to BELIEVE that you have no control over your lives anymore, want you to BELIEVE that your privacy is dead and gone and you should forget about it, BUT THAT IS ALL BULLSHIT. You ALWAYS have control. EXERCISE IT. NOW. FFS.

    • There's always some asshole saying shit like this for whatever attention-grabbing reasons they have for saying it, and the proper response is always the same: IGNORE IT.

      Kara Swisher is a highly respected journalist who has been covering this for a very long time. As a tech insider myself, I generally trust her insight into my daily life. Her proclamations about tech trends are the equivalent of Warren Buffet's proclamations about the stock market. I don't treat either as gospel or fact, but I listen and respect their opinion even more than my own.

      Also, what control do you really have. Hate MS? Good luck finding a job where you don't have to use Work, Excel, or at t

      • My central point really is that especially right now doom-and-gloom from pundits of any sort is not what anyone needs to hear. We all need HOPE for the future that things will return to some semblance of normal, not continue to devolve into something resembling an 80's disaster movie. Most people are panicky enough animals to begin with, you keep them terrified long enough they may never return to being anything close to civilized again. That would be very, very bad.

  • Big Tech loves you.
    Big Tech would never harm you.

    Won't you please think of Big Tech? Now for the 3 minutes hate on liberals. Please bow your heads.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday May 03, 2020 @01:16PM (#60018220)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The story of the rise of Big Tech has uncanny similarities to the rise of the East India Company, sans all the colonization and murder. It took the EIC a century or so to get to that point, though. Let's see how things look in the next century.

  • Many small business don't provide a wide variety of goods and services. They are usually very specialized. For example, in my community (and probably most communities) virtually all small businesses have been shut down for the past month. The only exception are restaurants that have been providing to-go meals. However, Walmart has been busier than ever. Want to buy a video game (yes people still buy them on discs) you go to Walmart because GameStop is closed. Want to buy socks, go to Walmart (or Amazo
  • I'm tired of Google and Facebook deciding truth and what news is fake. They may complain about things like Russian interference in our elections but only because they think that election interference in favor of their favorite political party is their job.
  • Big companies weather downturns better and often do better in the recoveries better due to have more assets and more options. Big tech companies tend to do better during downturns and in recoveries because many people treat their luxury services as necessary utilities and because they have more cost-cutting options such as delaying new development and moving some units off-shore.

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