How the "big tech" colossus is splitting

For several years it has made sense, in some quarters, to lump together the tech giants — chiefly Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, sometimes also including Netflix or Microsoft. But talking about "big tech" is beginning to offer diminishing returns. Many of these companies banded together in 2012 for lobbying purposes as the Internet Association, and they have long shared a set of common regulatory interests in managing their platforms and services with little government oversight. But as privacy regulation of some kind looks more inevitable, their interests are more likely to diverge. And other social media brands like Twitter and Snapchat aren't interested in being lumped into the "big tech" nomenclature. As different pressures come to bear on each of these companies, they are likely to end up taking roads that differentiate them from their competitors — and make "big tech" less useful as an idea or a category.