Oh Look, Even More Tech Monsters to Fear
One of the hottest technology topics this year is the growing financial firepower, social influence and sheer ubiquity of America's five tech superpower companies. It's so typically American, though, to only see as far as the country's borders.
It's time for a less myopic gathering of technology's muscular monsters. Let's get cozy with the Enormous Eight.
That would be the five U.S. giants -- Amazon, Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., Google parent company Alphabet and Microsoft Corp. -- plus three superstars from Asia: Alibaba and Tencent of China, and South Korea's Samsung. The three are all-powerful in their home countries, and increasingly ambitious elsewhere in the world -- arguably even more so than their U.S. counterparts.
And they've been climbing the ranks of the world's biggest companies. The five American tech superpowers plus the Asian giants grab eight of the 13 top spots of the world's most valuable public companies. Two years ago, only one of these Asian tech titans squeaked into the top 30, Bloomberg data show. Right now, Alibaba is potentially one good market day away from passing Amazon.com Inc. as the world's biggest e-commerce company by market capitalization....MORE
