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Comment by richardwhiuk | Hacker News Reader

I'm always surprised that FAANG - or Big 4, excludes Microsoft....

>I'm always surprised that FAANG - or Big 4, excludes Microsoft...

Because the original context in 2013 of Jim Cramer popularizing "FANG" / "FAANG" was growth and even though Microsoft was already one of the biggest tech companies, their stock price wasn't really growing like the newer FANG.

https://hackapedia.com/terms/f/faang

Others later tried to revise the acronym to include Microsoft with variations like FANGAM -- but it doesn't seem to gain any popularity in internet discussions or mainstream media.

In Japan it's called GAFA at least in the news I watch

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%93%E3%83%83%E3%82%B0%E3...

In france, it is GAFAM: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAFAM

> Jim Cramer

The guy yelling on TV all the time?

MSFT not growing?

https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/msft/advanced-...

>MSFT not growing?

Are you talking about recently or circa 2013 when Cramer popularized his FANG acronym? Before 2014, MSFT growth didn't compare to the newer web dominant companies like Facebook/Amazon/Netflix/Google. He also left out other giant tech companies with lower growth like IBM, Oracle, SAP, Yahoo!, Hewlett-Packard, etc.

I think Microsoft likes it that way. It's a little thing, but it's just one more little piece that helps them go unmentioned in most of the culture war bomb-throwing about Big Tech.

FAMANG doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

I have seen real people using FAANGMULA in official documents in real life. Some people don't care about the ring.

U, L, and A are Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb.

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