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This increasing spread of FAANG companies across all domains in an attempt to keep customers completely contained in their ecosystem reminds me of the megacorps

This increasing spread of FAANG companies across all domains in an attempt to keep customers completely contained in their ecosystem reminds me of the megacorps in the Shadowrun universe. We are not too far away from the point where national law does not apply to them any more. It is certainly already hard to make tax laws stick. And all the googlers that are proud to slave away for that particular overlord remind me of the sarari men.

AJ007 7y ago
Rather than some sort of intentional cyberpunk dystopia I think in part what we are seeing is some pressure by American tech companies to emulate Chinese tech companies such as Tencent. One app to rule them all, perhaps would make a good catch phrase. Some of it is a mix of offense and defense, just trying to copy each other and expecting zero margin while preventing a loss in market share. The national law avoidance, tax avoidance, are both being dealt with by EU. Google is being incredibly cagey about how much of a material impact this is going to have on their business. I don't believe they are complying with GDPR, among other things. Google / Alphabet has basically handcuffed themselves and thrown out the keys in the EU vivisection room. If you examine Google / Alphabet's position in the US, they went from being the most frequent visitor of the Obama White House (something like weekly visits) to be vilified by the far right, the far left, and the center. The customers that still trust Google have been left largely in the dark and don't read the news. I've been negative on Google for about a decade now, arriving to the party far in advance of everyone else. I saw the tricks they were pulling back then when they were celebrated. Yesterday's story about Google working with Ascension was extraordinarily shocking. There are, of course, serious privacy issues, and that dominated the headlines. What is truly appalling is that Google is using their artificial intelligence / machine learning work to help a major healthcare company "extract more revenue from patients" (WSJ.) Google has veered so far off course, one wonders if Larry Page and Sergey Brin may be suffering from head injuries or dementia, or just drowned themselves in their own hubris. It starts to sound a lot like OpenAI, where there tech firms believe they are going to do something so substantial, are execute above and beyond what anyone else is capable of, that the entire world is there's for the taking. It is more likely that these companies will cease to exist, by a wide margin. With or without regulators. The more pots they stick their hands in, the less consumers will trust them. We already see it here on hn, people no longer bother to try new Google products because we don't believe those products will still be around in a few years. What happens when the early adapters reject your products?
lawn 7y ago
Facebook is even trying to create their own money. We really are moving towards a cyberpunk dystopia.
- username90 7y ago
  Won't happen until these companies can field their own drone armies, until then the people with the guns will always have the last word and tech companies don't have the social clout to raise a human army.
segmondy 7y ago
No, it's setting themselves up for breakup, an it's the FAAG, Netflix is not engaging in these shenanigans. Sad to say, you would think the most corrupted of the FAANGs would be the entertainment company, but they are the most pure of them all.
- mrep 7y ago
  GAFAM is what the french use and I think it is most fitting [0]. [0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAFAM https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAFAM
theandrewbailey 7y ago
I realized a few years ago that we've been steadily moving towards a cyberpunk dystopia for a few decades.

AJ007 7y ago

Rather than some sort of intentional cyberpunk dystopia I think in part what we are seeing is some pressure by American tech companies to emulate Chinese tech companies such as Tencent. One app to rule them all, perhaps would make a good catch phrase. Some of it is a mix of offense and defense, just trying to copy each other and expecting zero margin while preventing a loss in market share. The national law avoidance, tax avoidance, are both being dealt with by EU. Google is being incredibly cagey about how much of a material impact this is going to have on their business. I don't believe they are complying with GDPR, among other things. Google / Alphabet has basically handcuffed themselves and thrown out the keys in the EU vivisection room. If you examine Google / Alphabet's position in the US, they went from being the most frequent visitor of the Obama White House (something like weekly visits) to be vilified by the far right, the far left, and the center. The customers that still trust Google have been left largely in the dark and don't read the news. I've been negative on Google for about a decade now, arriving to the party far in advance of everyone else. I saw the tricks they were pulling back then when they were celebrated. Yesterday's story about Google working with Ascension was extraordinarily shocking. There are, of course, serious privacy issues, and that dominated the headlines. What is truly appalling is that Google is using their artificial intelligence / machine learning work to help a major healthcare company "extract more revenue from patients" (WSJ.) Google has veered so far off course, one wonders if Larry Page and Sergey Brin may be suffering from head injuries or dementia, or just drowned themselves in their own hubris. It starts to sound a lot like OpenAI, where there tech firms believe they are going to do something so substantial, are execute above and beyond what anyone else is capable of, that the entire world is there's for the taking. It is more likely that these companies will cease to exist, by a wide margin. With or without regulators. The more pots they stick their hands in, the less consumers will trust them. We already see it here on hn, people no longer bother to try new Google products because we don't believe those products will still be around in a few years. What happens when the early adapters reject your products?

lawn 7y ago

Facebook is even trying to create their own money. We really are moving towards a cyberpunk dystopia.

username90 7y ago
Won't happen until these companies can field their own drone armies, until then the people with the guns will always have the last word and tech companies don't have the social clout to raise a human army.

segmondy 7y ago

No, it's setting themselves up for breakup, an it's the FAAG, Netflix is not engaging in these shenanigans. Sad to say, you would think the most corrupted of the FAANGs would be the entertainment company, but they are the most pure of them all.

mrep 7y ago
GAFAM is what the french use and I think it is most fitting [0]. [0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAFAM https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAFAM

theandrewbailey 7y ago

I realized a few years ago that we've been steadily moving towards a cyberpunk dystopia for a few decades.