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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Mature industries generally come to be dominated by a few big players, and the Internet is no exception. The big players define the environment and the platforms that everyone else has to deal with; resistance is generally futile, until the next era comes along, usually many years later.

On the heels of third quarter earnings announcements, the WSJ has a piece reflecting on how much of commercial Internet activity is dominated by five companies:

• Amazon [nytimes.com] (e-commerce, cloud services)
• Apple [cnn.com] (mobile, music/TV services)
• Google/Alphabet [amigobulls.com] (search, mobile, online video)
• Facebook [marketwatch.com] (social networking)
• Microsoft [techreport.com] (consumer/enterprise desktop platform, cloud services)

This dominance didn't occur overnight [techcrunch.com].

Not coincidentally, all five companies beat analysts' earnings estimates for Q3. Microsoft, dealing with the continued decline of PC software, managed to make up for it through the impressive growth of its Azure cloud business [bloomberg.com].

Business Insider has a related piece on Amazon's dominance of the cloud segment [businessinsider.com]; Microsoft is in second place, IBM and Google are struggling to keep up, and everyone else is basically tied for last.

- Alec Baldwin, Glengarry Glen Ross [imdb.com]

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