What are GAFAMs?
The GAFAMs are the initials of the very famous: Google , Apple , Facebook , Amazon and Microsoft . They are also nicknamed ” Big Five “.
These are the 5 tech giants who dominate the world today thanks to Big data.
They are constantly gaining in influence, making rain and shine in our daily lives where the Web , smartphones and social networks are omnipresent.
These 5 giants are among the 10 highest-rated companies in America and they alone achieve a market cap of $ 4.5 trillion .
The oldest of these five companies is Apple , whose IPO dates from 1980. Next came Microsoft in 1986, Amazon in 1997, Google in 2004 and Facebook in 2012.
The influence of GAFAM in the world
Their influence is major in their sectors of activity of course, but not only… they exert a not insignificant influence on the market as a whole.
Our world is becoming more and more digital , each novelty: product, innovation allows them to continue to grow.
And the Covid-19 crisis has allowed them to explode even more, in a digital world in the midst of a pandemic, social networks , the internet and even online sales are booming fields.
The GAFAMs accumulate several billion users.
And they don’t intend to stop there. Looking to the future, these American giants are competing in several markets such as: mobile operating systems , hardware or even the cloud and Artificial Intelligence .
Recently we have heard about quantum computing.
His goal is to build a quantum computer far surpassing anything a supercomputer can do today. Enough to solve mathematical problems which today require days of calculation on any supercomputer. Some of these problems still do not have a solution and could then be fixed instantly.
To take it a step further, quantum computing is exploiting the bizarre behavior scientists have observed for decades in the smallest particles in nature. Think of atoms, photons or electrons … At this scale, the classical laws of physics cease to apply, and we move on to quantum rules .
Quantum computing has become a real obsession for GAFAM . The business stakes are huge.
G oogle, the 1st of GAFAM
Google is much more than a simple search engine and now has a collection of tools ( Youtube , Maps, Drive, Waze) and operating systems (Android, ChromeOS) that allow it to be ubiquitous.
Google alone concentrates more than 90% of internet queries in the world .
YouTube , the internet video broadcaster, bought by Google in 2006, is viewed much more than any television channel: every day, more than a billion hours of videos are viewed in this way.
A pple, the most famous apple in the world
Apple specializes in technology, more specifically in hardware products. Computers , tablets , smartphones , or software are the devices and services marketed by Apple .
In recent years, the American giant has mainly turned to service provision. By launching multimedia services such as Apple Music streaming music , or Apple TV + .
For professional purposes, we also find the video editing software Final Cut Pro, or even Logic Pro for audio. With hundreds of thousands of employees, and several hundred stores located around the world, the firm’s success is resounding.
Facebook and its community
Facebook is a social network that allows communication between users. This business makes 98% of advertising.
Recently renamed ” Meta “, the company ” Facebook inc . ”Includes other social networks such as Instagram or What’s App and is also developing in other areas such as virtual reality.
In the second quarter of 2020, the American giant had 2.7 billion active user accounts. With the number of Internet users around the world being 4.5 billion, the figures are immense: more than one in two Internet users has a Facebook account.
Amazon, from A to Z
Amazon is an online commerce site that allows you to buy and have all kinds of products delivered.
In 2020, the company employs a million people worldwide and has established, in addition to the original American site, opened in 1995, specific sites in many countries.
At the very beginning it was a site that only sold books, promising to deliver any book to any reader, anywhere.
A month later, the company was sending books to over 40 countries. Amazon is now one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world , accounting for almost half of online sales .
Its online video streaming service: Amazon Prime Video comes in strong competition with Netflix.
Microsoft and Windows
Microsoft , which is one of the world’s largest software vendors with its Office suite , has dominated the consumer operating system market for many years. The Windows operating system, which this company has developed since 1983, has established itself as a standard in IT and made the fortune of its founders.
The company employs some 77,000 people worldwide and powers nearly 90% of personal computers sold worldwide.
GAFAM and Big data
Big Data was not invented, like most past technologies, it has imposed itself among the giants of the web.
Indeed, based on Cloud solutions , we talk about Big Data for many things.
It is obvious that the American giants that are GAFAM could not have imposed their economic model without Big Data .
Combined with the personalization of the user experience and the targeting of Internet users , on Facebook or Amazon for example, Big Data is now an integral part of the value proposition of these two giants.
Recommended stores and products for your online purchases , personalized news feeds and native advertising advertisements … In short, Big Data has offered GAFAMs ways to improve their ability to create value for consumers.
GAFAM, should we be worried?
These companies are at the heart of the new digital economies .
Their numbers are getting dizzying compared to traditional companies, competition is destroyed and the stakes are no longer on a national scale but on a global scale.
- Google concentrates more than 90% of internet user queries
- Facebook has more than 2.7 billion users per month
- Apple Profits 66% of Global Smartphone Market Profits
- Microsoft equips 88% of the world’s computers
- Almost 1 sale / 2 online goes through Amazon
These American giants have a monopoly in their field of activity.
However, monopolies do not allow market price optimization: without a competitor, the company can set a higher selling price for its products.
These companies have the power to wipe out all competition, through acquiring successful startups and newcomers, much like Facebook has acquired Instagram and WhatsApp .
Google and Facebook maintain the illusion that their companies are still providing their services for free. But how do they make tens or even hundreds of billions of sales?
It is through analyzing and reselling your personal data that they can continue to offer a completely free service while earning money through targeted advertising .
Since the Covid-19 crisis , the power of GAFAM has strengthened.
These giants played a key role in the pandemic by offering the delivery of meals and products , it is thanks to them that citizens were able to stay in contact , but also receive information and instructions from the government .
In a few weeks, they thus collected volumes of astronomical data.
GAFAMs hold more information about consumer habits and preferences for content and entertainment than any government …