The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway. Scott is a Professor of Marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business. He led startups at Prophet, Red Envelope and L2, which was acquired by Gartner.
Scott has also served on the boards of media companies including The New York Times, Dex Media, Advanstar, Gateway, Urban Outfitters and Eddie Bauer. He joined the faculty of NYU’s Stern School of Business in 2014.
So Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are deemed by Scott as the Four Horsemen. The data Scott provides is rich at the time of publication. It would be well worth hit time to release a second edition: The Four Horsemen of the Pandemic, as their metrics will be even more amazing to understand how they have grown from 2017. This is amazingly, just four years from the release as well.
Throughout the book Scott addresses his move from private business to teaching at NYU, where the cost of education is $500 per minute.
While reading Scott’s book at the close of 2021, the omicron variant is surging and according to Scott in 2017 their reach (and profits) should be soaring to new gigantic heights.
Surprisingly, Scott not only portions each company in the marketplace they dominate, but also how they are now digging in to complete with one another.
On the surface it may not seem very clear, however the metrics are displaying in fact how a clash is now well underway to retain control of markets (search) that drive billions in downstream revenues:
This should be a great example of looking deeper at Scott’s lessons. And make no mistake, these companies are data mining to a level not fully addressed.
Apple’s sex appeal
Scott writes about Apple is not from the perspective of aggressive tactics like the other three, but rather from a luxury brand, sex appeal position.
Amazon moves remain unpunished
For example, Amazon will only continue to dominate retail while also stealing search from Google (above) but also paying no tax and yet is engaging robots and autonomous driving. However, Scott missed the opportunity to explore in data the impact of local retail, the collapse of small business, and the downstream impact upon cities and towns of various sizes….again not paying federal taxes.
Facebook is your creepy drunk uncle
Similarly, the Facebook chapter should really awaken readers to the Zuckerburg exploitation franchise. On the other hand, this is best expressed in An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang.
How Google destroyed news media
Another missed opportunity was how Google used search to inject itself into the websites of all newspapers and indexed every news article for search, but omitted the downstream impact of only placing Google’s own ads into all of those millions and millions of page results. Very sneaky indeed:
Meanwhile, as we relished in the importance of, and sacrifices made for, journalism, Google crawlers entered our basement and scraped all our content from our servers as New York Times directors dined seventeen floors above in the seventh tallest building in America.
Google not only was crawling our content for free, it also was slicing and dicing that content for its users. When people were looking for a hotel in Paris, for example, Google would link to a New York Times travel article on Paris. But at the top of the page it would place Google’s own ad for the Four Seasons Hotel. The argument was that this arrangement brought traffic to the Times. It could sell these eyeballs to advertisers, who would buy banner ads. It sounded good, but it was whistling through the graveyard.
Here’s the rub: as it was handling those searches, Google also was learning—better than the Times itself—exactly what the paper’s readers wanted and were likely to want in the future. And that meant Google could target those Times readers with far greater precision and make more money from each ad. As much as ten times more. That meant we were exchanging dollars for dimes. We should be running our own ads on our sites. What idiots we were.
pgs. 261-262
Who will be the next Horseman?
Finally, Chapter Nine: The Fifth Horseman speculates (pre pandemic) which company will be able to join this rat pack: Alibaba, Tesla, Uber, Walmart, Microsoft, Airbnb IBM, or a merger/combination of ISPs Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and TimeWarner.
Although mentioned throughout the book, I was surprised to see Netflix missing from this list. So, how will any one of these companies modify existing business operations to join this group? Cheap capital and product differentiation, dodging taxes and yet the most powerful element moving forward: AI.
In conclusion, Scott is making a strong case for Google, Amazon and Facebook including their abuses. However the link to Apple is weakest as he focuses on their product’s sex appeal. Overall a well written book and certainly one that would benefit from a post COVID second edition.
TED | How Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google manipulate our emotions
DLDconference | The Four Horsemen
Business Insider | Scott Galloway Says Amazon, Apple, Facebook, And Google should be broken up
Gartner for Marketers | The Most Overlooked Tech Giant
Gartner for Marketers | Scott Galloway – The Four – What To Do
Berkeley Haas Alumni Network | Scott Galloway – The Four
The Brainwaves Video Anthology | Scott Galloway – The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google