Tech Giants Seem Invincible. That Worries Lawmakers.

Nearly a year ago, I argued that we were witnessing a new era in the tech business, one that is typified less by the storied start-up in a garage than by a posse I like to call the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Together the Five compose a new superclass of American corporate might. For much of last year, their further rise and domination over the rest of the global economy looked not just plausible, but also maybe even probable. In 2017, much the same story remains, but there is a new wrinkle: The world’s governments are newly motivated to take on the tech giants.

In the United States, Europe, Asia and South America, the Five find themselves increasingly arrayed against legal and regulatory powers, and often even against popular will. The precise nature of the fights varies by company and region, including the tax and antitrust investigations of Apple and Google in Europe and Donald J. Trump’s broad and often incoherent criticism of the Five for various alleged misdeeds. This is the story that will shape the contours of the next great era in tech: Five huge companies that can only get bigger are set against governments that increasingly see them as a clear threat to governing authority. So, happy New Year.