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Some time soon, the CEOs of four tech companies worth a combined $4 trillion will testify virtually before Congress on the question of whether their various empires have too much concentrated power. The numbers tell the story: The market capitalizations of Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple constitute about 15% of the S&P 500.
The testimony on Wednesday will be more memorable for its Kabuki-like nature than its substance. Members of Congress are more adept at scoring points than questioning; powerful CEOs—in this case a couple of polymath multi-billionaires (Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg) and a duo of business-trained engineers (Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai)—are masters of saying nothing when the situation calls for it.
Only a fool would suggest that any of this is anywhere near the top of the list of pressing things going on in the world right now. Nevertheless, these four companies have amassed awesome power—my mother detested the misuse of the word awesome, and I assure you it applies here—and there will be a reckoning for that. It may not happen in July in Washington, D.C. The reckoning likelier will begin in Brussels. But it will happen.
On the subject of tech wealth and power, I highly recommend the rollicking profile Maureen Dowd published last week of Elon Musk. From a journalistic perspective, Dowd is a master craftswoman at the height of her powers, converting a 60-minute interview into a revealing gem of a story. Her portrait reminds me of an observation I’ve made about the billionaires I’ve known: Musk transitions smoothly from batshit crazy to totally rational and back again in the span of a single sentence. This surely is a source of part of his genius.
For a different take on power, I also urge you to read this important article by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker about the chicken poultry magnate and Trump contributor Ronnie Cameron and his company Mountaire. This is a good example of what journalism is supposed to do: Speak truth to power.
Lastly, a reminder that power fades. I smiled at this ode to Midtown Manhattan centered on what once was called the Time & Life Building, the home for decades of Fortune Magazine. I never had an office there, but I visited many, many times before Fortune left 1271 Avenue of the Americas in 2015. I have fond memories of Cite, the restaurant that preceded the anodyne Capital Grille steakhouse that’s in the building now, including of the time the great Carol Loomis took me to lunch there when I was a newbie.
Adam Lashinsky
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
It’s chockers in here. Speaking of Big Tech's problems, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on Monday accused Google of failing to get permission for combining users' personal information with their browsing history on non-Google sites. A fine "in the millions" will be forthcoming. Google denied any wrongdoing. In other matters, Google also says its workers will be staying home until July 2021, instead of coming back in January as previously planned.
Riding in circles. Among smaller tech companies, Garmin is having a problem. A cyberattack last week took down some of the company's systems such that its smartwatches couldn't record GPS data, its aviation devices didn't work, and many other features went offline. Functionality is slowly being restored. In more "taste of what's to come" hacking news, thousands of election officials across the country are using email programs with known vulnerabilities, cybersecurity firm Area 1 concluded after surveying the field.
Screeching the brakes. It’s been less than two years since SAP acquired Qualtrics, the Utah-based maker of “experience management” software. Now SAP's newly solo CEO Christian Klein is making a bit of a switch. SAP said Sunday night that it will take Qualtrics public via an IPO while retaining a majority ownership stake. In other IPO news, online betting site Rush Street Interactive plans to go public by merging with special-purpose acquisition company dMY Technology Group. And Rackspace, the online hosting company that has rubber-banded between public and private markets multiple times, set the terms of its latest IPO in a range valuing the operation at around $5 billion.
Go ahead and pick up all the cash. If you live in Illinois and have used Facebook or owned an Apple iPhone 6 or 7, or both, you may be eligible for a cash prize. Well, a cash class-action settlement award payment. Fortune's own Jeff John Roberts explains how to file if you qualify.
Undo. Like saying my house is 7 kilometers wide when I mean 7 meters, the metric system (at a smaller scale) confused me in Friday's newsletter. The 7-nanometer microprocessor manufacturing scale bedeviling Intel is more like 1/10,000th the width of a human hair.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Like Intel doesn't have enough to worry about, what with its manufacturing problems at 1/10,000 the width of a human hair, James Wang, an analyst at Ark Investment Management, warns of another risk: Now that Apple and Amazon are making chips on the competing ARM platform, app developers could be swayed away from Intel, too.
Amazon’s Graviton 2 ARM CPU became generally available in May 2020. AnandTech, a technology website not known for hyperbole, found that it offered almost twice the price-performance of Intel’s and AMD’s x86 CPUs, as shown below, and called the results “an x86 Massacre.”
We believe that Intel should be worried, perhaps mortally, that Amazon is building its own ARM CPU. While it does rent servers, AWS increasingly is an operating system and a developer platform. Intel’s Developer Forum drew 6,000 attendees before it shut down in 2017, while Amazon’s AWS Reinvent Conference now attracts more than 60,000 people each year. CPU platforms have given way to the cloud, a much larger opportunity.
After decades of spectacular success in winning over developers, Intel’s x86 platform now risks losing them. Apple and Amazon control roughly a third of PC and cloud developers, respectively. Both are re-platforming to ARM, potentially signaling the beginning of the end for x86.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
‘This is not a time to be silent’: The sweater that became a platform for social good By Rachel King
As stir-crazy Americans take refuge on the water, the boat industry is booming By Shawn Tully
The PPE supply chain is a black box—that needs to change By Ge Bai, Tinglong Dai, and Shivaram Rajgopa
Photo essay: What unemployment looks like in pandemic America By Alex Scimecca and Lee Clifford
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
We juuust barely managed to see Comet NEOWISE over the weekend. But if you missed it, House Beautiful has curated a gallery of some of the best pictures of the comet streaking across the night sky from around the world. Then, get your head out of the clouds and start your week strong.
Aaron Pressman