The digital giants occupy the commanding heights of the contemporary economy. Of these, Facebook, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Apple dominate; they have accumulated the most data, developed the best analytical capabilities and gained greatest ownership of the foundational infrastructure, from mapping to cloud computing, that underpins all digital technology.
In turn, immense wealth and power is generated from the many and enjoyed by a few. Apple is the first trillion-dollar company in history. Jeff Bezos, the founder and owner of Amazon, is the richest person in history, with his net wealth increasing by $400 million dollars a day in 2018. The tech ‘Big 5’ – Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, and Microsoft – have a combined annual revenue larger than the GDP of 90% of the world’s countries.
Critically, this wealth is generated by a business model founded on the extraction and analysis of data generated by users of the platforms for profit and control of the digital infrastructure; a business model that is increasingly responsible for serious economic, social and political problems. Crucially, these problems are neither glitches nor temporary phenomena, but are rooted in the purpose and revenue model of most major platforms.
