Communications of the ACM
Big Tech Is Getting Clobbered on Wall Street. It's a Good Time for Them
As people return to work and travel, they are making fewer Amazon purchases, leaving the company with more space and staff than it needs.
Credit: Roger Kisby/The New York Times
Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and the parent companies of Facebook and Google have lost $2.7 trillion in value so far this year, about the annual gross domestic product of Britain.
So what have the companies done about this thrashing on Wall Street? Microsoft has doubled its employees' bonus pool, Google has committed to hiring more engineers, and Apple has showered its top hardware talent with $200,000 bonuses.
The dissonance between the stock market's relative panic and the business-as-usual calm among tech giants foreshadows a period when analysts, investors and economists predict that the world's largest companies will widen their lead in their respective markets.
The bullishness about their prospects reflects an understanding that the companies have tight control of some of the world's most lucrative businesses: social media, premium smartphones, e-commerce, cloud computing and search. Their dominance in those arenas and toeholds in other businesses should blunt the pains of inflation, even as those challenges hammer big companies such as Walmart and Target and the stock market nears bear market territory.
From The New York Times
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