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Is it any different to the last 100 years where "enormous companies are owning the future" could be applied to railways or oil giants. Tech is just the latest

Is it any different to the last 100 years where "enormous companies are owning the future" could be applied to railways or oil giants. Tech is just the latest iteration and these 5 companies are our front runners. Will something else come along and dethrone them? Maybe, who knows. The only difference i see here is these large companies are generating wealth for a much larger group of people via employment or shares. I'm willing to bet Microsoft and google have made far more millionaires then Rockefeller adjusted for inflation.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
Their products and services also obviate many more people, contributing greatly to the wealth and income gap in my opinion. Office can do the work of many secretaries, Amazon can do the work of many retail establishments, Google lets people do work quicker with instant information, airline/hotel websites cut out the need for most travel agents, Apple's and others' devices cut out the need for 10 different devices and package it into 1, Netflix and streaming services remove the need for "TV channels" and all the people that worked in that field. Much of these productivity gains due to the scalability of software solutions result in fat margins for those companies, hence the high pay for people in the tech field, but the remainder also goes to the capital owners who get more productive workers.