Why 2016 Was a Watershed Year for Tech
Companies sparred with governments globally as they faced criticism, unprecedented scrutiny
As 2016 nears an end, five of the seven most valuable companies in the world—including the three most valuable—are technology companies. Beyond their worth in the eyes of investors, Apple Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., and Facebook Inc. also are powerful forces in everyday lives. Tech can seem inescapable.
That helps explain why 2016 also was a difficult year for many of these companies. Collectively, they faced sharp criticism and unprecedented levels of scrutiny while clashing with governments around the world—including the future U.S. president.
It’s no coincidence, for example, that digital-ad spending in the U.S. has been projected to eclipse spending on TV ads in 2016, while Facebook battled concerns about its influence over politics and its role in spreading fake and distorted news. Those developments are two sides of the same coin—Facebook’s power.
Our Favorite Gadgets: Best Tech Gifts 2016
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Or take Amazon’s new cashier-free stores, which instantly became symbols for how automation “kills” jobs. Amazon has only a handful of physical stores, and doesn’t plan to open its first Amazon Go store to the public until next year, yet its dominance in online retail made this a source of much public concern.
Google had a banner year for both revenue and profit. One price of that real-world influence is three sets of antitrust charges by European regulators who view the company as a sort of American colonial power. The latest, issued in July alongside additional charges piled onto a previous case, accused Google of “strong-arming” Android handset makers into shipping their devices with Google’s search as the default.
In 2016, tech executives overwhelmingly backed the woman who lost the race for president, while the man who won attacked them publicly and sometimes personally. Many of the parties involved met last week in Trump Tower, apparently reaching an uneasy truce. But many in tech still view the next four years warily, concerned by Donald Trump’s views on issues such as free trade and immigration.