Bitcoin Forum

The "FAANG" (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) are now near a monopolistic position in their core areas and they are using it to make extra profits. But the are winds of war, e.g. Apple disallowing segmentation for Facebook and Google (https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/01/22/apple-privacy-change-may-cost-facebook-google-25-billion-over-next-12-months/) or charging in in-app purchases to third parties.

Apart from Facebooks try with Libra, is there anyway they could start competing on the blockchain world? My take is that they should.

Them Tech companies buying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as their reserved asset can be a way for them to start competing. They want to get more bitcoin/cryptocurrency than the other Tech company which means that they can grow the company's networth. They can also use blockchain to integrate in their own e-commerce websites.

Probably in terms of advertising, but I'm surely believe that they'll continue with their partnerships since they benefited on each other. Some might ahead to the other in terms of adoption but sooner or later, those company will do the same thing and the other company have no more choice but to accept their new terms and conditions, so for me they'll still be friends.

The article talks about making IDFA opt-in for users. So you can choose for an app to track you and your usage. The scourge of "personalized targeted advertisement" is doing a lot of damage to us as individuals and overall as society. Facebook and Google have become the main benefactors and perpetrators of this trend.

If Apple actually follows this in spirit, I may actually invest to buy an Apple phone rather than letting all of these companies turn us into entertained, consumerist zombies. While this has little relevance to blockchain, this must be made mandatory for all smart devices.

I think the war they show us is just external, internally they all work together to gain data and make as much profits as they can  ;D but, with course of time, and as history tells us, nothing is permanent and all companies will have their decline phases, sooner or later. I don't really think they will all come to blockchain to fight because the system here is very different to that of what they are used to. And the marketplace for crypto is very different to that of fiat at the moment.

They might experiment on blockchain right now and we do not know what happens in their deep labs. Just wait and see how those monopolies do to take over others' positions. The big fours never like each other for many years and now they have to face the biggest competition who might take over their places: Elon Musk. This man with his disruptive technologies have the possibilities to change the world in the most innovative ways while those current BIG FOURS will soon become obsolete and collapse

These 5 companies got different projects as of now. But as time goes by, for sure they will start something new. Just like Facebook, they started Facebook itself as a social media platform, and then they acquired some non-social media-related platform like Whatsapp or Oculus VR.
The future projects or future features on their current product/services will be a threat to each other soon.
Blockchain projects are really possible for these big companies, but I think it will take time as these companies seem likely don't want decentralized, time will come.

I guess that it's just a matter of time until all of them will have their own stablecoin or similar, of course that this will be done for their own profits.
But I'm almost sure they will be completely centralized projects, hence there's a good chance they will not use blockchain at all for this, unless they want maybe to allow 3rd party dApps...

We might see that soon, PayPal's entry into Cryptocurrency is a huge success and so is Elon Musk, I'm sure these big companies are thinking their entry into Cryptocurrency, but they have to do fix their issues with regulators if they cannot address this, it will not happen, Facebook is going all out in their entry for the second time in Cryptocurrency.   

They want to become more powerful than ever, those companies are greedy as well so they might be partners in paper but of course their goal is to be on the top spot. Facebook made a good move in terms of adopting cryptocurrency however, they failed to execute it properly because Libra was being pressured by its own government, only if those companies can depend their purpose well, I'm sure they are on a big war right now.

Big companies that will be entering the crypto market by means of their own stable coin won't be something that is well welcomed by the crypto industry IMO as most investors that are already in the crypto market is looking for new opportunities to grow their money and putting it in something that is "stable" won't make them interest in investing onto it. We have seen how countries have rejected Libra onto their country and we have seen a lot of negative comments against it so this will be the same for others who will try to create their own crypto.

They will be competitors at some point but they will always work together in some areas. As for me, they wouldn't be competitors when it comes to blockchain since most of them are into Bitcoin. Facebook might have Libra yet other platforms would still recognize other coins especially Bitcoin. There will come a time wherein they will adopt more cryptocurrencies in the future.

They are all American companies, all of them are also globally positioned and make huge profits - I don't see why it is important for their relationship to be anything more than professional. Furthermore, the blockchain is open source and anyone can experiment with it, whether FB or Google does it, is completely irrelevant - the key thing is whether these companies see some profit in it.

If we take FB as an example, we can conclude that all other companies will go for some centralized solution, and we can bet that all these companies are working on it. What seems less likely to me is that, say, Apple will invest in BTC just because some shareholders would not like it, and one of the biggest is the well-known Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway).

Going into other business is never easy, going into same business is a bit more comfortable. Why? Because if you own facebook and you buy instagram you know what you have to do because you have managed to run facebook greatly before hence you know what you have to do with instagram as well, but when you get VR company suddenly you are not in a situation where you have done before hence that is why there is really nothing you can bring from the main company.

This is why it is always easier to first acquire companies that you know of and then you could end up with doing something much easier with that, then when you grow super big, you could get smaller unrelated companies which would help you a lot as well, that is the type of improvements you should do and not go into something else right away on day one since it would really destroy all of your momentum.

I think big tech companies might compete over it, looks like something likely to happen in the future. But the thing with these companies is that they're being very careful about cryptocurrencies. I remember somewhere in 2019 FB banned crypto-related ads, but then, some time later they revoked this ban.
 
So, as far as I know, not one of these tech companies expressed a strong position, either positive or negative, regarding crypto. Taking into account the latest events, however, it seems like at some point at least one of them will take some actions. The question is, who'll be the first? And when that happens, I think the game will be ON and others will join in as well.

Wasn't Facebook Libra a failed project and if somehow it's still around isn't it a failing project, I think other companies that big will think about that when they try to go into crypto-currency, anyways I don't think the should try crypto-currency, maybe for the future the allow the use of Crypto-currency, but not as far as to create theirs, They are a company with their services, not a FINTECH.

I read the article and even if I do not like apple products this is the way to go, if someone wants to give their data willingly and accept the opt-in that is their choice but at the moment we have no choice, smartphones have become nothing but spy machines that are watching everything you do every single day.

Any change that supports our privacy should be encouraged, I do not really care if this change causes Facebook or Google to lose some money, that is their problem and if they want to get that money back then they need to find a solution that does not require to spy on their customers all the time.

What's "blockchain world'? Should they all start creating their own cryptocurrency? No, there's already thousands of crypto coins, a few more won't change anything. Bitcoin is the leader of crypto anyway, it literally has the best engineers in this field working on it, they shouldn't even try to compete with it. And having a separate currency for each platform will not work, users don't want that, they want one payment method for everything.

It's always about profits making, even if new innovative technology gets launched those who build it up did it to make money, as a matter of fact there is nothing that's completely free in this world, about libra and other I don't think it's necessary because we already have too many crypto coins right now, instead of building coins it's better to make use of the old credible crypto coins

I am sure that these tech companies are now interested in this blockchain technology maybe they also bought some bitcoins but they didn't announce it in the media it will be added in their networth because there will always be a chance that bitcoin might go higher and hugher in the future, they can also use this asset to buy other stocks maybe their competitor stock so they can be a major share holder in that company , I hope we can use crypto to purchase some products.

Events such as these have occurred for awhile now.


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A motive behind these aggressive measures may sometimes be identified.

Microsoft owns and runs Direct X which is a direct competitor to OpenGL. Which was their motive for dumping OpenGL support.

Apple owned internet video and audio codecs which were competitors to adobe flash. Which could explain their motivation for dumping flash support.

It may be too early to identify apple's motive for these moves. Perhaps in the days to come things will become clearer.

The reality is that we have reached to a level where we are doing much better thanks to competition, the world is nowhere near where we are in the past but we are definitely not anywhere impossible neither. These huge tech companies have done whatever they want without any interruption and made money from our data as well, they really have been doing worse and worse, so right now at this point we are looking at something else because people hate those big ones.

It means competition is wide open, they can come in an swoop to take their place. Look at how tiktok created a huge buzz all around the world, why was it so successful? Because, it is obvious that people were bored of the evil methods others made money, not like tiktok is any different but they still liked it anyway, which is why I believe we are doing not that well, but not doing that bad neither for new startups to arise.

Apple is the number tech company which such a myopic sentiment of an average person. They think because they are unique means they are overvalue.
Sometimes, when I look at their products and the users, I pity them because I wonder if in the next 10 years, an iphone will be competing with price of an average car.
To the main topic, in business, there is better option when you fail, this is what you should expect and blockchain too, I think most of the tech companies see great potential in blockchain but at the same time they are afraid that they can not longer controls users data and information.
They sell this information and data as revenue, so I doubt if they would want something decentralized.

It's just that when technology companies become too big, they become more clumsy and less receptive to new things, and the same applies to other areas of the economy. Of course, everything is not hopeless and some new stars still necessarily appear in the business, but in the conditions of monopolization, this happens not because of the novelty or effectiveness of a young player, but because of an oversight of the giants. Therefore, I believe that something should be done, but with a miscalculation of the consequences for the functioning of the economy.

One of my main concerns with the typical Personalized Targeted Advertisement is how it can be abused by companies/people who wish to track & understand large numbers of people in detail without necessarily breaking the law.
I will probably allow things like that if they are decentralized, if nothing else apart from the owner knows/understands his own interest/activities, should be safe, not accessible to people without my permission, it should anonymity-friendly/privacy-friendly, etc....

You mean they should start making their own crypto currencies or coins? Well they can, but do we need them? We may if they provide better use cases. But one thing, they starting to develop their own crypto currencies will help spread more knowledge about the "existence" of current coins like Bitcoin and ETH among general people. People are curious. Once they see that Apple and Google are looking at making their own crypto currencies, naturally (at least most of the people) will try to learn more about crypto currencies. This way, they will get to know about bitcoin and other well known currencies.
So yeah, they should start competing and aggressively promote blockchain techonology.

I remember Telegram had their own token Gram and even set up some ICO project to gather money to create Telegram Open Network Blockchain. But as far as I know everything ends up with a big drop (lots of investors lost their money). So maybe it's really easier for social networks to use currently existing cryptocoins either to create their own blockchain.

in the next few years, they will be left behind if they do not take advantage of blockchain technology...
Blockchain technology can not only be implemented in cryptocurrencies but can also be applied in many ways and it will help a company. Blockchain is the newest technology and they have to try it, make it sound like a company keeping up with the changing times.

They will adopt this as demands will push them to do so. Incoming years more and more business will step inside and use the system, those known companies that being mentioned will have no other options but to accept.
Moving forward, for now existing coins are good enough if those known businesses will start to use crypto for thier payment transactions,
unless they'll venture deeper like what FB intend to do with Libra.

On a similar topic, there are always discussion why Apple does not use it's platform to build a search engine to compete with Google. Some think that Apple clients actually do want google to be their default engine, some people argue that Google is technologically dominant. My take is that for now, there is enough open market to grow for all the giants, but when that shrinks it may be open war.

I like this abbreviation ;D

About the OP title, I don't think they were our friends. They get our wallet, time, and personal data. Truly a shitty friend.

They are too late. Many companies, including IBM, Alibaba, nChain, etc., already have lots of patents. They (FAANG) should explore and do more research if they want to be relevant in the future.

No, because their crypto currencies would be centralized ones. They couldn't compete with bitcoin, ethereum and so many other decentralized altcoins.
Libra (now called Diem) is a good example of how this competition isn't going to happen. It will be a stable coin like many others which already exist and are even more trustful in my opinion, moreover investors are looking for speculative crypto currencies which they can make profit by holding and trading. It's not the case of these big corporations' crypto currencies.

Actually if I wanted to associate myself to any of these corporations you mentioned I would buy their stocks rather than their crypto currencies.

Yes, that would be a way forward. With your own chain you are all the sudden a bank and a transfer system. Just imagine the economic energy of Apple or Facebook customer base captured by "Applecoin". All the sudden you have millions adopting the coin and Appel grows into a immense Fintech that might someday be larger than the current company.
 
Is just like starting a bank, but you already have millions of clients from day 0, some of them unable to access the traditional banking system and all linked to a platform that is known for growing virally.

https://1z1euk35x7oy36s8we4dr6lo-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/facebook-mau-vs-other-platforms.jpg

Sooner or later they would really be possibly be on that way where these companies will really consider on competing in the blockchain world but lets not expect for those things for now
because they do all have the control on what they should gonna do since these are big companies where capable on doing things on what they do have in mind.When it comes to competition
they dont really care about friends or connections because this is a market on where only the fittest will survive and this is where changes and innovation would really be needed
no matter whey do came from and what form would it be.

Since they are starting to hoard cryptocurrencies and bitcoins as their backup asset, I believe the war between these companies have already begun. Facebook is on the lead with them pioneering Libra, and if the timing is right, they can literally win this war on their own, since we all know here in the cryptocurrency industry, whoever goes in first wins.

Competition is the engine of progress, and high-tech companies by their status seem to be obliged to be progressive, and because of the magic power of competition, and even at the forefront of progress. However, in a very large number of cases, this is expressed in the giant buying a small competitor with giblets, which on the one hand makes the company "more progressive", and on the other hand removes another source of potential competition from the market ;) The topic of corporate cryptocurrencies is slowly beginning to capture the minds of their management, but you need to understand that government regulators are not asleep and can regard this as an option for corporations to escape from the restrictions and controls that are inevitable in the case of loans and the issue of shares.

There is no telling what percentage of those numbers are actually just bots and useless bought-and-sold accounts. There are already plenty of them and they will continue to increase.
With algorithms giving targeted advertisements and content to people, these social media companies are killing the very reason that they exist, as a platform for human interactions. They are becoming these soul-less stages with repetitive, addictive content that is a net negative in the lives of anyone who uses these platforms. As more and more people realize the harmful effects, their market will, hopefully, keep shrinking.
There are no easy solutions. What is clear is that these platform are doing a big disservice to humanity by zombifying our thought processes. If you are not inherently creative, it is really difficult to net get lost and waste hours of time and mind-share on watching all the stupidity circulating in the name of user generated content.

The moment that they were built is the moment they become rivals in the industry, you will not survive the tech industry if you consider other companies as a friend just saying. If Libra can be successful in their launch then I can just safely assume that Facebook will be ahead of its competition.

This is the main problem with that data, it is bad enough that they track everything you do online to try to give you targeted advertisement, but the issue is that they can extrapolate a lot of things about you thanks to that.

There are some very impressive algorithms out there that allow companies to do that which is why Facebook and Google are always looking for more data to mine as the more data they have the more precise the predictions of their algorithms, I like the fact that Apple is now asking their customers and offering them the chance to opt-out of such an aggressive tracking.

Expect governments to fight back and reclaim some of the profits.

Australia has led the way in terms of having a media bargaining code to mandate FB and Google to pay for the content they host on their site. Other governments will follow suit most likely.

FAANG will fight back for sure, but at the end of the day they'll reach a state of compromise at the very least. Perfect competition is out of the question though, we are too deep into their monopolies for that to occur.

Knowing how strong their grip on consumer media is in general, it's no wonder that they will be pushing for stablecoins in order to further expand their reach and grip on the market that they are the leaders of. Facebook already started with Libra, and we're not far off from having Amazon and Google try out a similar thing knowing that their market and industry complements perfectly with stablecoins.

Netflix and Apple are not in monopolistic position, but the recent move of Apple is a really huge help for privacy of its users that could mean lose for facebook and google advertising policy.

If these companies will jump to blockchain tech that only mean a lot for bitcoin and for the tech, but they can't do anything regarding of being a monopoly in this industry. They could ask help to Binance as Binance is one of the leading company/project that aims to be.

If it works like any other cryptocurrencies then I wouldn't mind that they are going to create their own, I don't have anything to hide anyway and the only thing that these tech companies want is my data to bombard with ads. After all, tech companies are going to be the spear head in the advancement of human civilization, with how big they are now, I think we are going to live in a dystopian society where companies are the ones that really pulls the string.

no not near but there are already there . the companies above are at the top and it is their right to make any changes and any charges to other company even if its their friend because a business is a business and this happens in our place too .

google has its playstore and other services that they sell so why wont they ask for payments . theres no free anymore in this world .

havent heard that some of the companies above have their own coin except from facebook that has a libra coin but they may consider it soon if they want to compete with facebook and to the company that they hate

I do not know, to me that seems a position that is too naive to take, to me what we're seeing is a Trojan horse, they are offering to you all of this software that slightly improves your life in exchange for something that is way more valuable which is your privacy and personal information about yourself, now you may think that is not valuable because no one wants to buy it but it is.

And we cannot allow these companies to keep getting their way without any opposition, it is said that information is power and this is even more true in the information age, if we don't do anything to stop them now them by the time people realize their mistake it could be too late.

I agree, all of the big tech companies will try and push their own crypto coin into the market. I really hope that there is no market manipulation between them. If the would all work together on one coin it would be terrible. They have such a far reach and control the consumer on almost every aspect of life. The crypto community needs to fight back.

Adopting blockchain in their payment modes or in the usage itself? But they already became the monopoly and they will never allow the new companies to grow or if they started to grow significantly then those big companies will purchase them for millions or even in billions like what happened with whatsapp. So don't expect the privacy anymore.

I really think there is almost no chance of that ever happening, so far everything has been kind of calm as they just concentrated on eliminating and absorbing other companies while ignoring and cooperating with each other so they could get to this particular point in time.

But now they are realizing that if they want to keep growing they cannot hope to do it by more people adopting their platforms as most people are already there and the few that are not, like me, are not going to use them so they have no option but going at each other in order to grow.

That's right, because in the business world, anyone will become a competitor. this is knowing that Apple has already planned the implementation of the blockchain system, we just need to see how Google and Apple can compete in creating new innovations that will be offered to their respective loyal users. This year will be the year of war between using the blockchain system or not. the lag will be more obvious.

Tech companies have saturated their businesses and are looking for both revenue and profit. It is very unlikely that they have made products with enough products for everyone and need to expand their business into other areas.
While tech companies are entering each other's businesses, crypto projects are actively working together to provide the best user experience. Let's look at cross-chain, Subchain, DEFI, Oracle, multi-coin wallet ... the projects are systematically supporting each other and creating a vast blockchain ecosystem.

We are living in the most surveilled era in human history. The amount of information which is captured, recorded and analysed about each of us on a daily basis surpasses even the wildest dreams of the Nazi Secret Police or the Soviet KGB.Instead, we are willing collaborators with a host of corporations and tech companies in constructing a society in which almost all of us are being watched, almost all of the time, not for political control but for private profit. We are voluntarily turning ourselves into objects of constant surveillance, and we are doing it all for the sake of a little extra convenience.

We are living in the most surveilled era in human history. The amount of information which is captured, recorded and analysed about each of us on a daily basis surpasses even the wildest dreams of the Nazi Secret Police or the Soviet KGB.We are voluntarily turning ourselves into objects of constant surveillance, and we are doing it all for the sake of a little extra convenience.

The original Blockchain is decentralized, and if it’s all about decentralization, then there is no way that they can be competing with each, unless they are going to be creating their own Blockchain, that’s where the competition starts. Take for example: Facebook creates their own Blockchain for other companies to make use of and it becomes big, they might start playing the same game like Apple is doing now.

Or maybe Google and Microsoft creates their own Blockchains, it’s going to also be a competition just as their search engines are a competition between the two. That’s the only way I know they will compete when it comes to Blockchain.

This is important, many people think the decentralization of bitcoin is something that is not really that important but all what happened with the cryptocurrency that Facebook wanted to create proves that decentralization is key, despite how powerful Facebook really is at the end of the day it is a centralized company that can be easily destroyed by governments if they go too far, with that currency Facebook was about to become a bank and a direct competitor for fiat currencies and governments were not about to let that happen.

So why I think all of those technological giants could create their own coins most likely those coins are not going to be able to be used outside of their environments making them useless as bitcoin can be used for everything and by everyone.

Honestly, people does really have different approach when it comes to that word Blockchain without even thinking on what it is and once it had been mentioned out and then making out those non relevant sentiments
without being able to compare on whats the truth about the difference among those things.Competition would really be there and its up to those companies neither they would be accepting existing blockchain technology
or would simply create their own so that they would make some integration and would be totally independent and as mentioned where this could really be the start of the competition.
Blockchain is indeed decentralized or simply anything can be seen on a public ledger and that what makes great.

I don't think so. Atleast not through organic means. I think all these companies are definitely closely looking at this space and most probably will enter the space through an inorganic acquisition of some entity which already has some set of business. I say this because of the huge cash reserves lying with these companies because it's too early for them to go mainstream into blockchain when most countries Haven't even finalized on legalization moreover these company mostly form the centralized union of technology they won't really advocate a lot of decentralisation in technology.