“Scott Galloway, a professor and former entrepreneur, sees an uncertain future for Amazon.com, Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google in his new book on the powerful tech giants,” Therese Poletti writes for MarketWatch. “Galloway, who now teaches marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, dissects the success of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google in ‘The Four,’ a book released this month by Portfolio. Galloway was a serial entrepreneur before teaching at NYU, founding nine companies including L2, a research company, and Red Envelope, an online gift-giving site that was one of the e-commerce busts of the first dot-com era.”
MarketWatch: In your book you talk a bit about companies that once dominated tech and how they no longer are kings anymore. Do you think that is inevitable for the Four Horsemen of your book?
Galloway: Of the Dow 100 from 100 years ago, only 11 have survived. With the business life cycle getting faster and faster, a child born today will outlive all of these firms. Do I see them getting more and more powerful? Yes. Do I see all of them dying within our lifetimes? Yes. The fatality rate among our species, and firms, is 100%.
MacDailyNews Take: A math professor Galloway is not. If 11 of the Dow 100 from 100 years ago have survived, the fatality rate is 89%.
MarketWatch: Do you think that will be in the next few decades or too hard to predict?
Galloway: Too hard to predict. Ten years ago, we were all talking about Myspace. It’s very hard to tell. The only thing I am comfortable saying is they will all go out of business, all disappear within 50 years.
MacDailyNews Take: Even though, again, 11 companies from the Dow 100 from 100 years ago have survived.
MarketWatch: Is there one company that could outlast the others in this group?
Galloway: If you are trying to pick the one, the good money right now is on Amazon. Out of the other three, Amazon is winning… Where it butts up against Apple in computer hardware, the most innovative tech hardware of 2016, it wasn’t the Apple Watch or it wasn’t the Apple Pods, it was the Amazon Echo. If you look at where they are competing against Apple in voice, Siri versus Alexa, Alexa is putting a serious beat on Siri. So in any area where these guys overlap, Amazon is winning.
MacDailyNews Take: Myopic. Smart speakers are but a molecule within a drop in Apple’s and Amazon’s oceans.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iCal’ed.
Of course, we certainly wouldn’t mind seeing a couple of Galloway’s four disappear ASAP. God forbid something worse than Google or Facebook arises to replace them.
