The term tech giant is used to describe technology establishments with a colossal global presence, billions of users and a huge impact on the world. They are the leaders of their fields and the innovators behind groundbreaking technologies like AI, IoT (Internet of Things) and cloud computing.
They are also the kingpins of the platforms that form the infrastructure on which economic, social and political processes take place – and they have a level of power beyond what is typical for business giants. That’s because they control key parts of our digital lives, such as search engines, social media and communication software.
How have these companies accrued such enormous power? The chief mechanism, research suggests, is their platform business model. This involves connecting suppliers to consumers – whether advertisers to social network and search engine users, app developers to device owners or vendors to online shoppers. Platform businesses benefit from ‘network effects’ that give them a winner-takes-all advantage in their markets.
This gives them an extraordinary amount of power, which has increased even more as the world has become more and more dependent on digital technology. That’s why some are calling for new regulation to address what some see as the rise of a new kind of power – tech power.
But can these giants be contained? To find out, FRESH AIR’s Terry Gross interviewed Utrecht University’s Dr Joachim van Dijck, who studies the role of big data in politics. He is part of a team of researchers that has studied how these five big tech companies – Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft – make decisions and influence public policy.