In our world of increasingly virtual interactions, companies mastering the information technologies and networks are quickly gaining power at several levels. Here is a table to keep an eye on those folks. I use colors to show the now traditional groups: GAFAM in blue, their Chinese twin rivals BATX in red, their US good-guys rivals NATU (Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla, Uber) in green, big media in orange.

A healthy rule is to split our personal information and dependencies across different firms, or none of them if you can afford!

 

 

Influence

Monitoring

Hardware, physical world

News

Inspiration

Messenger

Activity

Google-Alphabet

Google News, Analytics

Search, Ads, Youtube

Gmail, hangout

Android, Apps, Calendar, Map, Translate, Drive, ChromeOS, Now IPA

ChromeBook, Car, CheckOut pay (till 2013), Calico (bio-engineering)

Apple

News

iTune, Apple TV

iPhone

iOS, Safari, iLife, Logic, Final Cut, iCloud, Shazam, Siri IPA

Apple store, Apple Energy, ApplePay

Facebook-Meta

 

Ads

WhatsApp, Messenger

Facebook Instagram

(headset for Metaverse, soon)

Amazon

Alexa

Amazon.com, Amazon studios

 

Cloud computing, Echo, Alexa IPA, Evi IPA

Physical sales, Pay, GoPago payment, AmazonGo (store)

Microsoft

 

Xbox games, Bing seach

Skype, MSN, Outlook, ex-hotmail

Windows, MSOffice, O365, Teams, Sharepoint, Linkedin, Cortana IPA

Nokia, Windows phone

Baidu
百度

Tongji web analytics, Hexun finance

Baidu search, Knows, Encyclopedia, Music, Image

 

NetDisk, Map, Browser, Yi OS, Space

外卖 Waimai food, Qunar travel

Alibaba
阿里巴巴

 

Alibaba movies

 

Alibaba, Sesame credit

Alibaba.com, Taobao.com, Tmall.com, AliPay, Meituan, cloud

Tencent
腾讯

   

QQ, WeChat

CRF credit, WeiYun, WeiBo

TenPay

Xiao Mi
小米

     

MiCloud

Phone, laptops, TV, connected objects

Hua Wei
华为

     

EMUI OS

Phones, data centers, network

 Netflix

 

VoD, TV and film production

     

 AirBnB

     

AirBnB

House rental

 Tesla

       

(PayPal sold to Ebay) Elec cars, solar PV panel, SpaceX

 Uber

     

Uber app

Taxi service

Comcast

NBC, 26 US TV stations

Universal pictures, Focus

   

Movies and goodies

News Corp.

Fox News, National geographic, WallStreet journal

20th Century Fox, Blue Sky, Searchlight

   

Movies and goodies

Disney

 

Disney, Marvel, LucasFilm, Pixar, Touchstone

   

Movies and goodies, theme parks

Time Warner

CNN

HBO, Cinemax, Warner bros, Cartoon Network, DC Comics

AIM, ICQ  

Movies and goodies

Samsung
三星
  Everland theme park   S Voice, Gear VR, Viv IPA Phones, electronic, Heavy industry (ships), construction, Life insurance
Twitter     Twitter Twitter networks  

eBay

Corrigon visual search

First Look media, The Intercept, Field of Vision

(Skype sold to Microsoft)

eBay

eBay, PayPal

Rakuten
乐天

 

Kobo, Wuaki.tv, Pinterest, FC Barcelona

Viber

 

Rakuten, Play.com, Buy.com, PriceMinister

Yahoo-Verizon News, Finance, Geoplanet, Answers Yahoo search, Music, Movies Yahoo mails Flickr, Tumblr, Delicious PayDirect (till 2004), Yahoo Travel
           
           

 

For more details about media conglomerates, Korean Chaebol 財閥 , Japanese Keiretsu 系列,  and the (short) French Wikipedia article on GAFAM, BATX, and NATU.

Meanwhile in China, the wondrous Social Credit System looms quietly. Here is the full text outline document in English and Chinese. The keyword to justify it is 诚信  ("honesty", translated here as "sincerity"), a word that Alibaba's champion Jack Ma has been emphasizing a lot in his speeches. I introduced further about this system in this earlier post.

And to attack another weak spot, Alibaba's Ant Finance is starting a cooperation with the UN Environmental Program UNEP to build a platform for individual monitoring of greenhouse gas. A green pretext to monitor the people!