Many information communication technologies are the products of mostly American digital technology companies. These companies are largely responsible for the majority of the most popular and widely used digital devices, infrastructures, systems, apps, platforms, and programs used across the world. They determine, direct, and control much of what happens with digital technologies and, by extension, much of what happens in the digital world.

This digital technology dominance means that, because many people, businesses, governments, and all kinds of entities, depend upon these products and services, they consequently depend upon these companies.

This digital technology dominance is largely monopolised by five main American digital technology companies: Alphabet (parent company of Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. These, in fact, are among the top 10 most valuable American companies of any kind: Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft are the top three; Facebook is number seven; and Amazon is number nine.

Although they are only a small handful of companies, they wield significant influence over the American and global economies and exercise great power and reach over the global digital technology industry. Because of this apparent economic and digital technology hegemony, these few companies also exercise considerable control and direction over our digital lives and world.

There is growing concern, however, over the economic and technological dominance by these few powerful companies. In The New York Times, technology analyst Farhad Manjoo, inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s 2015 Western film The Hateful Eight, coined the term “the Frightful Five” to refer to these five companies. He states that the Frightful Five are currently the undisputed rulers of the digital technology industry, especially insofar as their consumer divisions are concerned. They have become seemingly indomitable forces through their digital technological properties, projects, and ventures.

The Frightful Five therefore enjoy significant influence over the global digital technology industry and exercise considerable reach into what happens, or what can or cannot happen, in digital technology research, development, and use. In many respects, the Frightful Five, and their ilk, are the contemporary version of empire.

Manjoo examines how the Frightful Five have become seemingly inescapable in the digital world. He states that “You may opt out of one or two of them, but together, they form a gilded mesh blanketing the entire economy”.

He explains that, first, each company has built successful digital devices, infrastructures, systems, platforms, programs, services and other offerings that have become essential components of the work and output of many public institutions, private organisations, professional practices, and personal activities.

Second, each company owns many of the most important digital devices, platforms and services required by many people, governments, and businesses, including other digital technology companies and competitors.

Third, many of these digital devices, platforms and services collect vast amounts of data about their users – by virtue of them using the devices, navigating the platforms, or accessing and employing the services – which can be bought and sold, used as sources for revenue, and employed for current, future, or new business needs.

And, fourth, these companies have expansionist agendas, attempting to establish themselves in diverse industries including the media, healthcare, finance, agriculture, transportation, security and surveillance, robotics and artificial intelligence.

Currently, the Frightful Five are arguably major pillars of the American and global economies. Manjoo states that they “are getting larger, more entrenched in their own sectors, more powerful in new sectors and better insulated against surprising competition from upstarts. Though competition between the five remains fierce – and each year, a few of them seem up and a few down – it’s becoming harder to picture how any one of them, let alone two or three, may cede their growing clout in every aspect of American business and society.” Their dominance appears insurmountable.

These companies have expansionist agendas, attempting to establish themselves in diverse industries

But there is growing international reservations about, and pushbacks against, their dominance. Outside of the US, there is growing alarm over the Frightful Five’s expansion and importance. First, there is concern that as these companies become even more entrenched, they may be diminishing and destroying local competition. Second, there is worry that these companies serve as Washington’s spies, surveillance tools, and data collectors. Third, there is weariness over perceived American hegemony over the digital world.

There is also fear of these companies seeming usurpation of governments’ exclusive political jurisdictions. As Manjoo of The New York Times explains, “Rules imposed by the Apple and Google app stores (could) become a kind of law for developers around the world. YouTube’s guidelines (could) become a cultural arbiter anywhere it operates. And Facebook’s news feed algorithm may matter more to journalists in some countries than any particular legal limit on their operations.”

This fear, in other words, is that these companies will become so powerful, and economically and technologically necessary, that they could establish their own rules and regulations, trumping those of actual governments, and, thus, unaccountable to anyone but their shareholders or profit margins.

But this dominance is not going unchallenged. Around the world there are various legal and political challenges underway, including in China, India, and the European Union, attempting to curtail the influence and limit the reach of members of the Frightful Five. In China, for example, the government is intensifying efforts scrutinising products sold by the Frightful Five, especially Apple, as well as other foreign digital technology companies. The Chinese government is subjecting these products to strict reviews, especially of their encryption and data storage, in addition to each company’s other technological and policy activities. In India, meanwhile, the government recently halted Apple’s plan to sell refurbished, cheap iPhones. It also rejected Facebook’s plan to provide free internet service across the country, fearing this plan would eventually take over its national digital infrastructure.

In the European Union, various regulators are pursuing antitrust, privacy, and taxation cases against the Frightful Five presumably in order to better protect their citizens’ personal, privacy, and consumer rights as well as strengthen the interests of their own industries.

Nevertheless, this dominance poses some important questions regarding the kind of digital world that we need and want. Presently, there seems to be no other digital technology company, whether in the United States or elsewhere, able to challenge, let alone undermine, the Frightful Five’s status and significance. Further, despite the mounting legal and political challenges confronting them, their overall power remains undiminished.

Many people, meanwhile, use their products and services on a daily basis for their personal and professional lives; moreover, many businesses and governments around the world also rely on them for their digital technology needs and purposes. And because of their power, reach, and ubiquity, these digital technology companies are actively pursuing expansionist agendas into many diverse areas, seemingly unrelated to the digital world, thereby entrenching themselves even deeper into our lives, economies, and societies.

Indeed, the dominance of American digital technology companies, especially the Frightful Five, appears solid for the foreseeable future.

Marc Kosciejew is a lecturer in library, information and archive sciences at the University of Malta.

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