Tech’s ‘Frightful 5’ Will Dominate Digital Life for Foreseeable Future

Tech’s ‘Frightful 5’ Will Dominate Digital Life for Foreseeable Future
State of the ArtBy FARHAD MANJOOJanuary 22, 2016


科技行業五大巨頭：生生不息，繁榮昌盛
科技FARHAD MANJOO2016年1月22日

Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images

位於馬德里的亞馬遜物流中心。五大科技巨頭公司在競爭的保護中越來越龐大，越來越穩固。An Amazon fulfillment center in Madrid. Five technology companies are getting larger, more entrenched and better protected from competition. 翻譯討論：http://hctranslations.blogspot.tw/2012/10/blog-post_25.html

硅谷的人喜歡玩一個小小的室內遊戲。咱們就叫它「誰在走下坡路」吧！

在目前的消費科技行業，亞馬遜(Amazon)、蘋果(Apple)、Facebook和谷歌(Google)是無可爭辯的統治者。後者現在隸屬於一家名為Alphabet的母公司。當然，還有微軟(Microsoft)。微軟的影響力一度讓人感覺是在衰減，但現在有所回升。

那麼，這五家公司中誰在走下坡路呢？一年前，當谷歌的廣告業務似乎更容易受到Facebook崛起的影響時，該公司似乎處境艱難。但現在，谷歌的情況正在好轉，因為iPhone銷量放緩而引發日益強烈擔憂的蘋果，卻可能會經歷一些痛苦。接下來的幾周里，隨着這些公司公布能彰顯自己2015年戰績的收益，局面可能又會產生變化。

但不要指望會有大的變化。問「誰在走下坡路」忽略了一個更廣泛的事實。這個事實涉及當前亞馬遜、蘋果、Facebook、谷歌和微軟對科技領域方方面面的全面控制。

There’s a little parlor game that people in Silicon Valley like to play. Let’s call it, Who’s Losing?

There are currently four undisputed rulers of the consumer technology industry: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, now a unit of a parent company called Alphabet. And there’s one more, Microsoft, whose influence once looked on the wane, but which is now rebounding.

So which of these five is losing? A year ago, it was Google that looked to be in a tough spot as its ad business appeared more vulnerable to Facebook’s rise. Now, Google is looking up, and it’s Apple, hit by rising worries about a slowdown in iPhone sales, that may be headed for some pain. Over the next couple of weeks, as these companies issue earnings that show how they finished 2015, the state of play may shift once more.

But don’t expect it to shift much. Asking “who’s losing?” misses a larger truth about how thoroughly Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft now lord over all that happens in tech.

Stuart Goldenberg

誰真的在走下坡路呢？縱觀全局，它們誰都沒有。和科技行業的其他企業及其他經濟領域相比，它們沒有走下坡路，就它們各自對我們生活的影響而言，答案也無疑是否定的。

科技圈的人喜歡把自己所在的行業說成是一片波濤洶湧的海洋，時刻面臨顛覆性的變化。在這片海洋中，每一個贏家都容易遭受尚且不為人知的新對手出其不意的攻擊。Alphabet公司執行董事長埃里克·施密特(Eric Schmidt)喜歡說，「在某個車庫裡，某個人正在伺機攻擊我們。」

但在過去五年中的相當一部分時間裡，五大巨頭中大部分都沒遇到從車庫裡走出來的強勁對手。而且可以肯定他們會繼續獲勝。因此，我給它們起名叫「五惡人」(Frightful Five)。

這不僅因為我是塔倫蒂諾(Tarantino)的粉絲。從能收集到的幾乎每一項標準來看，美國這五家消費科技公司的規模都在擴大、在各自所在領域的地位都更加穩固、抵禦初創公司出其不意地發起的競爭的能力也更強。

儘管五家公司之間的競爭依然頗為激烈——且每年各自的實力都有消長變化——但想像它們中的一家喪失對美國企業和社會方方面面日漸增加的影響力變得越來越困難，更別說是其中兩家或三家了。

「五巨頭一路走來正好趕上了積累用戶基礎的最好時機，」杜蘭大學(Tulane University)商學教授傑弗里·G·帕克(Geoffrey G. Parker)說。「這五家公司搭上了最好的那股科技變革浪潮：信息技術成本顯著下降、網絡連通性全面提升、流動電話崛起。這三個方面匯合到一起，而它們生逢其時，處於不斷成長和從變革中獲利的完美位置。」帕克與人合著的《平台革命》(Platform Revolution)即將面世，該書列出了一些原因，解釋這些企業的統治地位為何可能會繼續下去。

帕克指出，五巨頭的力量不一定會妨礙更新的科技公司壯大起來。Uber可能會顛覆性運輸行業，Airbnb可能會主宰住宿招待行業，且正如我上周所說，Netflix一心想顛覆娛樂業。但如果真出現這類新巨頭，它們可能會站在當今的五巨頭旁邊，而不是取代它們。

的確，面對初創公司，「五惡人」被保護得非常好，以至在大部分情況下，新公司的崛起只會鞏固它們的領導地位。

考慮一下，Netflix把其電影存放在了亞馬遜的雲上，而谷歌的風險投資部門則在Uber投入了巨資。或者想想蘋果和谷歌從各自的應用商店裡獲取的應用內付費，以及谷歌和Facebook從很多希望用戶下載自己的內容的初創公司那裡收取的營銷費用。

這就說到了「五惡人」地位不可撼動的核心。有些強大的技術，對我們使用電腦時的幾乎方方面面都起着核心作用。而五巨頭中的每一個都開發出了多項這樣的技術。用科技行業的術語來說，他們在世界範圍內擁有很多極其重要的「平台」。這些平台是其他所有企業，乃至未來的競爭對手所仰仗的基礎。

這些平台是避不開的。人們可能會選擇不使用其中的一兩個，但它們合起來構成了一張如同金子般熠熠生輝的網，涵蓋了整個經濟。

五巨頭的平台涵蓋了所謂的老科技——Windows在台式機領域的地位依然至高無上，谷歌統治着網絡搜索——和新科技領域，谷歌和蘋果掌控着流動電話操作系統和搭載在它們上面的應用；Facebook和谷歌控制着互聯網廣告業務；亞馬遜、微軟和谷歌控制着雲基礎設施。而很多創業公司都是在雲基礎設施上運營的。

亞馬遜擁有一個購物和貨運基礎設施體系，它正在成為零售業里至關重要的部分。而Facebook一直在積聚人際社交領域的強大力量。人際社交是所有平台中最重要的。

這些平台中，很多都產生了經濟學家所說的「網絡效應」。隨着用戶增加，它們變得更加不可或缺。為什麼要用Facebook Messenger或同樣隸屬於Facebook的WhatsApp聊天呢？因為其他人都在用。

五巨頭的平台也讓它們各自在開拓新市場時擁有巨大的優勢。看看蘋果最近推向市場的訂購流音樂服務是如何設法在運營的前六個月里吸引到了1000萬訂戶，或Facebook是如何利用自己的主要應用廣受歡迎這一點，推動用戶下載其獨立應用Messenger的吧。

還有蘊藏於這些平台之中的數據。對於新業務來說，這也是一個豐富的數據來源。這種數據的提取可能是直接的——比如谷歌可以利用它從我們的電話使用方式中了解到的一切信息，來開發一款可以改善我們的電話的人工智能引擎——也可能是更間接的。通過觀察應用商店裡的受歡迎產品，蘋果便能獲悉應該在iPhone上添加什麼功能。

「在某種程度上，很多研發成本是由這五個公司之外的其他公司承擔的，這讓它們能夠更好地進行產品研發，」帕克說。

這就解釋了這些公司的願景為何如此廣闊。「五惡人」正在通過大大小小的各種方式進軍新聞和娛樂行業；攪動醫療保健和金融領域；建造汽車、無人機、機械人和沉浸式擬真世界。為什麼要這麼做？因為它們的平台——用戶、數據和它們帶來的收入——讓這些距離遙遠的領域看上去像是近在咫尺。

但並不是說這些公司不會滅亡。不久前，人們以為國際商業機器公司(IBM)、思科系統(Cisco Systems)、英特爾(Intel)和甲骨文(Oracle)在科技領域是不可打敗的。現在，雖然它們依然是大公司，但其影響力遠不及從前。

持懷疑態度的人可能會認為五巨頭面臨著重大威脅。其中一個或許是來自海外的競爭日益激烈，特別是正在積累同等重要的平台的中國硬件和軟件公司。然後還有監管威脅和其他形式的政府干預。歐洲監管機構已經在以反壟斷和隱私為由追查「五惡人」中的多家公司了。

即便存在這些困難，我們還是不清楚整體格局是否可能大變。比如說中國電商企業阿里巴巴超越亞馬遜在印度的零售業務——這是有可能的——然後再用世界其他市場來滿足自己的胃口。

政府干預通常會支持一方，限制另一方：如果歐盟委員會(European Commission)決定以反壟斷的理由打擊Android，那麼蘋果和微軟便可能受益。司法部控告蘋果密謀提高電子書價格時，贏家是誰？亞馬遜。

因此，習慣這五家巨頭吧。從本月的股價來看，不管怎麼分類，美國市值最高的十大公司榜單中始終有五巨頭的身影。蘋果、Alphabet和微軟包攬了前三甲，Facebook名列第七位，亞馬遜則位居第九。在管理方面，五巨頭均獲得了華爾街的好評。其中三家，即Alphabet、亞馬遜和Facebook，由創始人掌控。這些創始人不用屈從於潛在的激進投資者心血來潮的意見。

那麼，誰在走下坡路呢？它們中誰都沒有，近期誰都不會。Who’s really losing? In the larger picture, none of them — not in comparison with the rest of the tech industry, the rest of the economy and certainly not in the influence each of them holds over our lives.

Tech people like to picture their industry as a roiling sea of disruption, in which every winner is vulnerable to surprise attack from some novel, as-yet-unimagined foe. “Someone, somewhere in a garage is gunning for us,” Eric Schmidt, Alphabet’s executive chairman, is fond of saying.

But for much of the last half-decade, most of these five giants have enjoyed a remarkable reprieve from the boogeymen in the garage. And you can bet on them continuing to win. So I’m coining them the Frightful Five.

It’s not just because I’m a Tarantino fan. By just about every measure worth collecting, these five American consumer technology companies are getting larger, more entrenched in their own sectors, more powerful in new sectors and better insulated against surprising competition from upstarts.

Though competition between the five remains fierce — and each year, a few of them seem up and a few down — it’s becoming harder to picture how any one of them, let alone two or three, may cede their growing clout in every aspect of American business and society.

“The Big Five came along at a perfect time to roll up the user base,” said Geoffrey G. Parker, a business professor at Tulane University and the co-author of “Platform Revolution,” a forthcoming book that explains some of the reasons these businesses may continue their dominance. “These five rode that perfect wave of technological change — an incredible decrease in the cost of I.T., much more network connectivity and the rise of mobile phones. Those three things came together, and there they were, perfectly poised to grow and take advantage of the change.”

Mr. Parker notes the Big Five’s power does not necessarily prevent newer tech companies from becoming huge. Uber might upend the transportation industry, Airbnb could rule hospitality, and as I argued last week, Netflix is bent on consuming the entertainment business. But if such new giants do come along, they’re likely to stand alongside today’s Big Five, not replace them.

Indeed, the Frightful Five are so well-protected against start-ups that in most scenarios, the rise of new companies only solidifies their lead.

Consider that Netflix hosts its movies on Amazon’s cloud, and Google’s venture capital arm has a huge investment in Uber. Or consider all the in-app payments that Apple and Google get from their app stores, and all the marketing dollars that Google and Facebook reap from start-ups looking to get you to download their stuff.

This gets to the core of the Frightful Five’s indomitability. They have each built several enormous technologies that are central to just about everything we do with computers. In tech jargon, they own many of the world’s most valuable “platforms” — the basic building blocks on which every other business, even would-be competitors, depend.

These platforms are inescapable; you may opt out of one or two of them, but together, they form a gilded mesh blanketing the entire economy.

The Big Five’s platforms span so-called old tech — Windows is still the king of desktops, Google rules web search — and new tech, with Google and Apple controlling mobile phone operating systems and the apps that run on them; Facebook and Google controlling the Internet advertising business; and Amazon, Microsoft and Google controlling the cloud infrastructure on which many start-ups run.

Amazon has a shopping and shipping infrastructure that is becoming central toretailing, while Facebook keeps amassing greater power in that most fundamental of platforms: human social relationships.

Many of these platforms generate what economists call “network effects” — as more people use them, they keep getting more indispensable. Why do you chat using Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, also owned by Facebook? Because that’s where everyone else is.

Their platforms also give each of the five an enormous advantage when pursuing new markets. Look how Apple’s late-to-market subscription streaming music servicemanaged to attract 10 million subscribers in its first six months of operation, or how Facebook leveraged the popularity of its main app to push users to download its stand-alone Messenger app.

Then there’s the data buried in the platforms, also a rich source for new business. This can happen directly — for instance, Google can tap everything it learns about how we use our phones to create an artificial intelligence engine that improves our phones — and in more circuitous ways. By watching what’s popular in its app store, Apple can get insight into what features to add to the iPhone.

“In a way, a lot of the research and development costs are being borne by companies out of their four walls, which allows them to do better product development,” Mr. Parker said.

This explains why these companies’ visions are so expansive. In various small and large ways, the Frightful Five are pushing into the news and entertainment industries; they’re making waves in health care and finance; they’re building cars, drones, robots and immersive virtual-reality worlds. Why do all this? Because their platforms — the users, the data, and all the money they generate — make these far-flung realms seem within their grasp.

Which isn’t to say these companies can’t die. Not long ago people thought IBM, Cisco Systems, Intel and Oracle were unbeatable in tech; they’re all still large companies, but they’re far less influential than they once were.

And a skeptic might come up with significant threats to the five giants. One possibility might be growing competition from abroad, especially Chinese hardware and software companies that are amassing equally important platforms. Then there’s the threat of regulation or other forms of government intervention. European regulators are already pursuing several of the Frightful Five on antitrust and privacy grounds.

Even with these difficulties, it’s unclear if the larger dynamic may change much. Let’s say that Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, eclipses Amazon’s retail business in India — well, O.K., so then it satisfies itself with the rest of the world.

Government intervention often limits one giant in favor of another: If the European Commission decides to fight Android on antitrust grounds, Apple and Microsoft could be the beneficiaries. When the Justice Department charged Apple with orchestrating a conspiracy to raise e-book prices, who won? Amazon.

So get used to these five. Based on their stock prices this month, the giants are among the top 10 most valuable American companies of any kind. Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft are the top three; Facebook is No. 7, and Amazon is No. 9. Wall Street gives each high marks for management; and three of them — Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook — are controlled by founders who don’t have to bow to the whims of potential activist investors.

So who’s losing? Not one of them, not anytime soon.