Credit; Mario Tama / Getty
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You may have heard of GAFA – a quick way of referring to the big four tech companies (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon); but if you add Netflix to the line-up, then you have the FAANGs: a suitably scary acronym for the companies that are disrupting – and, some would say, sucking the life out of – capitalism.
Last week I wrote about the fury provoked by Amazon’s search for a second HQ – and the special favours and subsidies offered by cities and states vying to play host. It was, said the critics, a grotesque example of corporate welfare.
Of course, Amazon is not the only tech giant to come under political pressure – whether at home or abroad.
But what does it all amount to? Will we see concerns about the power and practices of the FAANGs turn into something like the antitrust reforms of the early 20th century?
In a convincingly pessimistic article for Vanity Fair, William D Cohan doesn’t think so:
“On Wall Street, however, bankers are betting that Americans don’t really care about reining in Silicon Valley—and that Congress, for the most part, doesn’t really care, either.”
Well, the bankers of Wall Street should know all about the failure of government to properly regulate an out-of-control industry. They certainly recognise a weakness of political will when they see it.
Cohan mentions a conversation he had with a Wall Street executive whose job was to ascertain the likelihood of meaningful regulation for the tech sector:
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