{"id":1163,"date":"2019-11-01T06:58:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T12:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/?p=1163"},"modified":"2019-10-07T12:04:07","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T18:04:07","slug":"book-review-the-dark-shadows-of-the-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/book-review-the-dark-shadows-of-the-four\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The dark shadows of &#8220;The Four&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>According to serial entrepreneur and NYU business professor Scott Galloway, they&#8217;re The Four Horsemen of technology and digital media. <br>\nIn his best-selling &#8220;The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,&#8221; Galloway casts a harsh light on the dark features of their business models and impact on society.<br>\nHe calls out Apple for its eagerness to become a luxury brand that maintains high prices for its devices.<br>\nGoogle, he writes, seeks the image of a public utility.<br>\nAmazon continues to devour the retail marketplace while leaving local shopping mails deserted if not already closed.<br>\nFacebook? According to Galloway&#8217;s book, it&#8217;s now &#8220;the world&#8217;s biggest seller of display advertising &#8211; an extraordinary achievement, given Google&#8217;s brilliant takeover of advertising revenues from traditional media just a few years ago.&#8221;<br>\nIndeed, Galloway foresees Google and Facebook ultimately in command of more advertising media spending than any two firms in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Less taxes<br>\nAccording to the book, from 2007 to 2015&#8211;when the average tax rate for the S&amp;P 500 was 27 percent, The Four Horsemen paid much less.<br>\nApple paid 17 percent of its profits in taxes, Google 16 percent, Amazon 13 percent, and Facebook 4 percent.<br>\nMeanwhile, the overall impact of The Big Four continues to alter the economy, impede the growth of innovation, and stifle competition. They don&#8217;t have many employees, but they do have millions to spend on D.C. lobbyists.<br>\nNevertheless, Galloway believes the breakup of Big Tech will occur because &#8220;We&#8217;re capitalists.&#8221;<br>\nThis book is a worthy read, especially for those in or starting a new business competing with even a segment of The Four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to serial entrepreneur and NYU business professor Scott Galloway, they&#8217;re The Four Horsemen of technology and digital media. In his best-selling &#8220;The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,&#8221; Galloway casts a harsh light on the dark features of their business models and impact on society. He calls out Apple for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insure-us.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}