In 2011, Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt referred to “a gang of four” – Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon – that dominated the consumer technology industry.
Today, the phrase “gang of four” feels a strange and somewhat outdated way of describing some of the world’s most powerful companies. The terms “Silicon Valley” and “Tech Giants” were in vogue for a while, but these, too, have fallen out of fashion, while the abbreviations “FAANG” (including Netflix) and “GAFA” are used mostly by financial media. Instead, “Big Tech” has become the dominant metonym for these now-ubiquitous technology companies.
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