Amazon is retail, AWS is IT, Google/Facebook are ad networks, Microsoft/Apple is hardware and software, etc.
Could people have put food in a box and mailed it to your house before the invention of computers? Yes.
Could people have offered computer hardware and software before the invention of computers? Of course not, that's silly.
Of course Microsoft and Google and Apple and Facebook are tech companies. It requires ridiculous reductionist contortions to argue otherwise.
On the other hand, Munchery could have existed at any time the USPS and Visa/Mastercard were operational. Restaurants have been delivering food for far longer than computers have existed.
Technology is scientific knowledge, strategies and processes used to solve problems. It's been around since the dawn of civilization and is used by every company to conduct and improve business.
Let me put this way: your average hospital has 1000x times more technology in use at any given moment then even the most silicon valley "tech" companies, but they are properly classified as healthcare companies.
Reductionism is considering tech to only be something about computers and that only a handful of special companies are the only ones who use it. Perhaps you missed my statement about the hospital?
Since technology is applied science, why does a hospital using complex scientific machines to deliver healthcare not qualify but a company building a webapp to order food does? Where's the line exactly?
Nowadays i'd say a tech company is defined by the "tech" it is implementing to disrupt/control the market. no disruption tech = waste of vc capital. "we do x better" isn't enough to last unless it's so radically better it is a new space(google's call screening feature could be spun off into it's own company for eg)
Doing anything at scale pretty much turns you into a tech company these days.
I think all of us in 2019 have a fairly standard consensus understanding of what technology means in the context of this conversation and it would not be good to hijack that to mean anything you want it to mean.
The actual definition[1][2][3] of technology is applied science and knowledge for practical means. Narrowing the scope to fit arbitrary companies seems like the real stretch to me.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology
2. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/technology
3. https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engi...
Amazon is retail, like Walmart has been. Netflix is media production and distribution, like Fox has been. Both have figured out new business models but that doesn't change the business that they're in.
They leverage some damn impressive technology, but their business is about delivering media for end user consumption, much like any of the TV companies during most of the 20th century, for example.
Oh hush, you. You know how much extra they're paying us because they have low profit expectations? Let the investors keep calling it tech.
But seriously, I think one could make a distinction between companies that focus on using new technology to scale businesses (which are mostly old, but can be scaled in new ways using technology) vs. old businesses that focus on just remaining old businesses. The idea being that if you are a "tech" company, you are rolling the dice on being able to expand much harder/faster than a company could have with older technology, and also have significant downside in that regard. To be a 'tech company' in this regard is to be trying to get big in ways that make it more likely you will get big or go bankrupt, whereas a more traditional company might take a more conservative approach.
I mean, the important distinction here that the market is maybe missing is that if an old company puts enough effort (or rather, has enough success) scaling their business using new technology, they probably should be put in the same risk/reward bucket, and if you do succeed, well, you probably should no longer be thought of as a 'tech' company by this definition. Like I think you could argue that Apple might not be a 'tech' company by that definition (you could argue that they were a tech company when they figured out how to sell pocket computers to normal people - of course, you could also argue that they try to do that all the time, it's just they are at the point in their product development lifecycle where they have a super successful old product and none of their new stuff is really that visible.)
But personally, I think "higher risk" is a better descriptor of 'tech' than "Better executing" - by my definition, a tech company is applying new processes to their business that would not have been possible with older technology. That's a risky thing to do, and it can go badly and go well; It's easy to overestimate how useful a new technology is, or how much difficulty your traditional competitors will have competing with you.
If relying on IT makes you a tech company, then basically everybody is. If what you provide is technology, then maybe you're a tech company, if what you do is provide a banking service, you're a bank. Try running a bank without using modern technology to the limit ...
For their tech-driven-optimization methods; one could argue they are a tech company.
I think people just conflate software as tech. Using software to run a better food business just means you're a better food business.