October - December 2017 •
The Lion King
• 11
BY AUSTIN ABOLUSORO
THE BATTLE OF
DISRUPTORS
BUSINESS
GAFA: GOOGLE, APPLE, FACEBOOK AND AMAZON
beyond limits with new A11 Bionic processor on iPhone 8
and X, making then the fastest Mobile phone in the world.
Facebook is investing in Virtual Reality and Amazon is creat-
ing automated warehouses having over 45k robots in place.
Strategically, this means a major shift must happen in the
minds of business leaders and Startups: build a resilient com-
pany that can sustain direct competition from one of the
Big 4, or identify the best path to partnering and/or being
acquired.
But what is more interesting about this “Gang of Four”
internet-based business leaders is each competed, cooper-
ated and worked to take advantage of their own unique
strengths: Google in search; Facebook in social networking;
Amazon in e-commerce; and Apple in devices. These four
very different businesses are together valued now worth
more than US$2.6 trillion.
Today, Amazon primarily is an electronic commerce and
cloud computing company, Apple and Google sell phones,
consumer electronics, computer software, and online ser-
vices AND, Facebook is now an American for-profit corpo-
ration and an online social media and social networking
service.
In 2017 we have all seen GAFA rapidly gravitating to deeper
customer experiences besides, into the media business, TV,
movies, books, the banking industry, politics, becoming part
of the communications infrastructure and being the ‘con-
duit’ in all other parts of any transaction (online or offline).
Comparing the Gang of Four
Scott Galloway gave a classic illustration of these amazing
companies in his new book: “The Four”. They may all be
platforms, but each of GAFA has risen to fame and market
valuation a different way.
I
f we can learn anything from the activities of digital giants
Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, it is that no indus-
try is safe from the possibility and reality, of disruption. As
the Big 4 —Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon — fight
to become the first trillion-dollar company, they are rapidly
expanding into unexpected new markets and increasingly
competing against the rest of us.
The GAFA are no longer lean, disruptive companies — they
are monopolies that fundamentally control most of the tech
spaces. Google is investing heavily in Artificial Intelligence
and autonomous cars. Apple continue to push the iPhone
