What have the tech giants ever done for us?
What does Jeff Bezos add to my life? And Elon Musk? and Mark Zuckerberg? and Steve Jobs? and Jimmy Wales?
Jeff Bezos gave me the everything store. Almost any book, in print or not, arrives at my door within a day or two, often for less than the high street charges. Kindle put a library in my pocket, and it opened publishing to authors who bypass gatekeepers entirely. Less visible is Amazon Web Services, which hosts a large share of the websites and apps you use daily. Many businesses never had to buy a server because Bezos rented them his. I can buy goods from Amazon without having to trek to shops that might not have them in stock.
Elon Musk made electric cars desirable rather than dutiful. I bought the first Tesla in Cambridge and happily drove electric for seven years. Tesla dragged the whole motor industry towards electric years sooner than it would otherwise have gone. SpaceX did something stranger. It made rockets land and fly again, and cut the cost of reaching orbit dramatically. Satellites behind weather forecasts, navigation and communications now get there more cheaply. Starlink brings broadband to ships, remote farms and war zones where cables never reach. Before all that, his early work helped give us PayPal. Soon he’ll give me driverless cars.
Mark Zuckerberg gave me free tools to keep in touch with almost anyone I’ve ever met. WhatsApp is how much of Britain organizes families, clubs and workplaces, at no charge. Facebook and Instagram let small firms reach customers without buying expensive advertising in newspapers. His company also gave away software that others build on, including the React framework behind countless websites and the open Llama AI models.
Steve Jobs put a powerful computer in my pocket and made it simple enough for a child or a grandparent. The iPhone did not invent the smartphone, but it defined what one should be, and every rival followed. Before that, the Mac popularized the graphical interface I now take for granted. Along the way he turned Pixar into a studio that made computer animation an art form.
Jimmy Wales gave me the largest encyclopedia in history, free, ad-free, and in hundreds of languages. Settling a pub argument used to require a trip to the library. Now it takes ten seconds. I have the world’s knowledge in my pocket.
The striking point is how little of this value the founders keep. The economist William Nordhaus estimated that innovators capture only around two percent of the social value their innovations create. The rest goes to us, as consumer surplus. Studies by Erik Brynjolfsson and colleagues found people would demand substantial sums to give up free services like search, email and maps, services that appear nowhere in GDP because they cost nothing. The fortunes look vast. The benefits are vaster, and spread across billions.
Jimmy Wales is the instructive exception. He is the only one on my list who is not a billionaire. He chose to give it away, which may make him the most generous businessman of them all.
Some people think that these tech giants should be restrained and brought under political control. I don’t.
Madsen Pirie