Top five companies in the world: Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google.
If those five to disappear tomorrow I would not even notice. I do not have anything on AWS anymore, I rarely and reluctantly shop on Amazon. I do not use anything at all from other 4 companies. My search engine is DDG, my OS is Linux, my smartphone is powered by Tizen, I use Garmin device for in-car navigation and Nokia maps on the phone. I do not watch YouTube videos. The productivity suite is LibreOffice, mail client is Thunderbird and personal finance KMyMoney.
I do have a gmail address, which collects all the spam in the world, but anything important is arriving to one of my other 3 email addresses.
And I am writing this post on my own blog, not on Facebook. Though I am going to share a link to it there just for fun. It would not matter anyway, because Facebook would rank this content insanely low. It has nothing but text and the page has no trackers on it. It is useless to Facebook.
If Samsung to disappear I would notice. The moment Nokia went down I was sad and to this day struggle to find anything matching its tablets. There is a big list of companies and projects I follow, from Java Platform to BitFury. They are important to me.
Even if Oracle to die, I would have some complex emotions about it, but at least I would not be as indifferent.
And yet, the five AAFMG companies are the most valued companies in the world. Not even just tech companies, they are top among all the companies in all sectors.
I am very puzzled at what drives this valuation. Am I really an outlier, who, spending most of the day online, somehow manages to not touch anything from the five companies, that supposedly dominate the online space?
It is not even a question of if there is bubble or not. I am struggling to understand what it is investors see in them at all.
How did this happen? Do we need to go back and read Atlas Shrugged again? I do not think Ayn Rand would've approved of the world we live in today. Money has certainly lost its "Measure of value" function. Which is a dangerous place to be. What else do we have?