Hacker News Reader

I paid 1 buck for WhatsApp back in the day. Better business model than what meta did with it. But we're moving closer and closer to 8 companies controlling the world. Both WhatsApp and github are owned by them.

View on HN

> we're moving closer and closer to 8 companies controlling the world.

Which 8? In the control the world domain I see Meta, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft. In terms of Market Cap you would add Tesla, Nvidia and TSMC, but these three aren't any where close to "controlling" the world category.

I would put Disney in there. I picked 8 arbitrarily but those companies have substantial pull in governmental regulations and the state of the web. Probably missing some Chinese companies.

imo corporations have more pull on governments than governments have on businesses at this point as far as long term culture goes.

Had you said these 8 companies controlling the world 5 to 6 years ago I would have partly agreed.

But right now I see so many cracks in their game I am optimistic they wont control world and there will be new competition to challenge them.

The trick will be getting around the regulations that are being set up to protect interests of government and big business at the expense of everybody else. This will only become more difficult as time goes on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com