Wow. If you want to keep up with the rapid change around us, you really need to keep an eye on The Economist. I’ll have 2 posts and a comment in another post based on ideas in this week’s edition.
Magazine cover has four deep-sea monster squids fighting each other. Nearby is a bathysphere with two little people watching the battle. Labels identify the giants of the deep as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook.
There’s a great three page article, Survival of the biggest. Paper edition had a cooler title: Another game of thrones.
I won’t summarize the article. It describes the strongholds of each company and where they are trying to expand and move into each others territory. Check it out.
Two tidbits. First, check out the size:
Apple has become a colossus of capitalism, accounting for 4.3% of the value of the S&P 500 and 1.1% of the global equity market.
Look at the revenue and cash hoard (from the paper edition), which I’ll reformat but still quote:
Rev / cash – company
156B / 121B Apple
57B / 5B – Amazon
47B / 47B – Google
5B / 10B – Facebook
Oh yeah, another deep-sea creature, Microsoft, isn’t part of the epic battle, according to the article. That ought to give pause to the trust-busters, since the biggest baddest assumed-monopolist of yesteryear is not a major player today. Who knows which of those big sea creatures so dominant today will fade in the future?