The Power of Tech Giants ⇥ nytimes.com

John Herrman, in an editorial for the New York Times:

The companies most vulnerable to easy questions tend to be the ones that can no longer be understood in terms of former competitors or current peers — because they don’t really have any. Google doesn’t have to worry about losing its users; it simply wants them to use Google more and to use more Google products. Vindicated by growth, these businesses take the liberty to redesign more of our online lives than any of us have asked for. As with Facebook, and to some extent now Amazon, there is no overarching pitch to its users beyond: Where else could you possibly go?

Are tech companies now too big to fail? It sure seems like it: Amazon and Google are now part of the infrastructure of the web; Facebook owns WhatsApp, which is an essential communications product for much of the world.