Tech’s ruling class casts a big shadow
After reading the article I tried to think of all of the ways which I interact with the &quot;gang of five&quot; and quantify their importance in my life.<p>Apple - I&#x27;m writing this on a brand new Macbook Pro, and my iPhone is sitting right next to me.  I have a $5&#x2F;month subscription to Apple Music.  It would be painful, but with a gun to my head I could easily switch to Windows, Android, and Spotify.<p>Google - I&#x27;m browsing HN in Chrome, by far my favorite browser.  I use google search dozens of times throughout the day to figure things out, it&#x27;s truly an extension of my brain.  I could switch to a new browser, but I haven&#x27;t tried Bing enough recently to know if it would compare to Google.<p>Amazon - I have a Prime membership, but I&#x27;m only a sporadic online shopper.  That said, the Amazon shopping experience has provided me with a lot of value.  No real alternatives here.<p>Facebook - I don&#x27;t use Instagram, I don&#x27;t use WhatsApp, I do have a Facebook but I don&#x27;t use my real name and I have very few friends.  I use the News Feed Eradicator extension to get rid of the Trending section and the News Feed.  Of all of the companies, I consider Facebook the most dispensable from a personal perspective . The only features I regularly use are Chat, which is functionality that existed long before Facebook, and sometimes stalking people that I just met to see more pictures and get a &quot;life resume&quot; on them, which is a habit that I would rather not be able to indulge in to be quite honest.<p>Microsoft - My work computer runs on Windows, I use Office 365 at work, and of course tons of companies that I rely on in my consumption supply chain and infrastructure are dependent on Microsoft in some form or the other.<p>I&#x27;m truly shocked at Facebook&#x27;s ascendance to the tech stratosphere.  Obviously the numbers don&#x27;t lie, but Facebook just seems like it has so much lower utility than all of the other companies mentioned here.  Yes, it&#x27;s younger and in a newer category, but all of the other companies provide fundamental building blocks to the modern technological experience.  Social media seems so much more superfluous by comparison.