THE FOUR, even though it's just three years old, is slightly outdated but still trenchant

THE FOUR: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
SCOTT GALLOWAY
Portfolio
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The acclaimed NYU business professor's tour-de-force on the true nature of technology's titans, and what happens next in their struggle to dominate our lives.

Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook are in an unprecedented race towards a $1 trillion valuation—and whoever gets there first will exert untold influence over our economy, public policy, and consumer behavior. How did these four become so successful? How high can they continue to rise? Does any other company stand a chance of competing?

To these questions and more, acclaimed NYU / Stern professor Scott Galloway brings bracing answers. In his highly provocative first book, he pulls back the curtain on exactly how Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google built their massive empires. While the media spins tales about superior products and designs, and the power of technological innovation, Galloway exposes the truth about these "Four Horsemen":

- None of these four are first movers technologically; they've either copied, stolen, or acquired their ideas.
- Each company uses evolutionary psychology to appeal to our basest instincts: Amazon, our need to hunt and gather; Apple, our need to procreate; Facebook, our need for love; and Google, our need for a God.
- These companies are uniquely successful at leveraging competitive advantage built by digital and then protected by analog moats, from an empire of retail stores (Apple) to the world's most efficient physical distribution network (Amazon.)

Through analysis that's both rigorous and entertaining, Galloway outlines the path for the next trillion-dollar company (the Fifth Horseman) and points to which companies are in the running. (Uber, sure; less obvious, Microsoft and Starbucks.) As with Peter Thiel's Zero to One, readers will come away with fresh, game-changing insights about what it takes to win in today's economy.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: There is no spectacle more repugnant, even repulsive, than naked greed being slaked without shame or even modesty. That is where we are now, as a society, in large part because these four corporations have enabled this behavior in their minions as well as demonstrated it in themselves. A trillion-dollar valuation as a business? It's the avowed goal of all four of these metastatic money pits.

Go watch this explainer on the difference between a million somethings and a billion somethings. It's sobering. Even chilling. And a trillion is yet another order of magnitude greater!

Now think about what this represents...what staggering greed it represents to pursue this goal of creating that much excess at the expense of any and all other goals or principles. Author Galloway has done that thinking. He does not like the principles The Four have utterly abandoned, flouted, or subverted. It is incredible to me that this naked greed, this pathology of psychological orientation, is so celebrated. To the point that the business news cycles are dominated by the horse-race between these bloated-bank-account barons of bad business practice.

I confess that Author Galloway isn't a cicerone I enjoyed being led by. I suspect I'd deeply dislike him if we met in person because he is, while intelligent and savvy, nowhere near as witty or insightful as he seems to think he is. He's boastful and he's arrogant. What he isn't is wrong. He is quite clear that the way these corporate scum (my term, not his) are in fact harming the very economy that they rely on for their income. In the end, that will be their challenge and he (like me) is dubious about their ability to change their course: Change, or die in a welter of your own hemorrhaging money.

Schadenfreude leads me to laugh a hearty bray of triumph. Except I won't fail to suffer in their gargantuan collapse.

On Wednesday, 29 July 2020, and days forward, the four horse-manuremen of the datapocalypse testified before Congress about their insane, untrammeled greed and its deleterious effect on Society. I presupposed a more condign end result of the hearing here because I am under no obligation to hide my own opinion of these nauseating monopolists...but now, in May 2022, Congress is looking beadily at them again with an eye to figuring out how much their greed has fueled our present 8%-plus annual rate of inflation.