Although, Big Tech got bigger in 2021, the empires also appeared more vulnerable to the forces of regulation, competition, a complicated public mood and perhaps hubris. First -- a glimpse at Big Tech which reached the stratosphere in 2021. Apple, is close to an unimaginable market value of $3 trillion. That’s about eight Walmarts, or more than the value of the entire German stock market. Amazon is so consequential in the U.S. job market that the company’s hourly pay has nudged local businesses to increase their rates, which has pushed up the paychecks of many Americans who don’t work for Amazon. When Facebook and its other apps blinked off briefly this fall, the outage showed how much of our lives and commerce rely on a single company. But at the same time that Big Tech grew richer and even more consequential, there are more stresses on their empires "
At www.nytimes.com
