America's biggest tech firms seem unstoppable. Is the techlash over? Not so fast. Our cover this week
new word entered Silicon Valley’s lexicon: the “techlash”, or the risk of a consumer and regulatory revolt against big tech. Today that threat seems empty. Even as regulators discuss new rules and activists fret about the right to privacy, the shares of the five biggest American tech firms have been on a jaw-dropping bull run over the past 12 months, rising by 52%.
The question of a bubble is a reasonable one. Tech cycles are an integral part of the modern economy. The 1980s saw a semiconductor boom. Then, in the 1990s, cameToday’s upswing got going in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone. By 2018 it, too, seemed to be showing its age. Sales of smartphones were stagnating. Data scandals at Facebook crystallised anger about the tech giants’ flippant approach to privacy. Global antitrust regulators were on the alert.
Consumers say they care about privacy but act as if they care much more about getting stuff, and preferably without having to pay for it in cash. Since the end of 2018 the number of people using Facebook’s services has risen by 11%, to 2.3bn.
The trouble is that if you think that tech firms will get much bigger and diversify into more industries, from health care to agriculture, it is logical to assume that the backlash against them will not fade away but, eventually, get bigger.
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