It’s not the “Magnificent 7.” It never was.
This era is defined by the companies I called “Cloud Czars” in the last decade.
Apple. Microsoft. Amazon. Google. Meta.
They invested the $1 billion/quarter needed for the Cloud game when bigger companies stood on the sidelines and watched. Those companies are now in (relative) ruins because the Clouds drive the global economy. I’ve been covering this story since before it started. I know what I’m talking about.
Google went first, helping to define the cloud in terms of parallel processing, virtual operating systems, and open source software. They did it, of course, to scale their search engine. Other companies, including Yahoo, worked on it, but Google brought it to glory.
Amazon came second. Their innovation was to re-sell this computing capacity as Amazon Web Services. This was no different to Jeff Bezos than re-selling his warehouses, delivery network or transaction processing to third parties. They went hand in hand, and Amazon’s cloud created efficiency for every business who used it.
Meta, then called Facebook, came in third, and they may be the most important. Mark Zuckerberg put in his ante before he had the cash flow. He risked his whole company in a way none of the other Czars did. He had a similar motivation to that of Google. He wanted to run his business. But his desperation also brought cooperation that let any company of any size build a cloud.
Cloud Was a Choice
IBM could have done this. AT&T could have done this. General Electric could have done this. A half-dozen European companies, starting with SAP, could have done this. None of them did. They were left behind. This may be the most important part of the story. Building clouds meant taking on risk, and a failure to take risk is fatal in the tech business.
Microsoft and Apple are almost after thoughts in this story. Microsoft committed to cloud when replacing Steve Ballmer with Satya Nadella, who had been running that part of the business and who saw its potential. Apple built clouds to control delivery of its services, and still lags within the cloud market.
AI gave Nvidia a chance to join its customers. AI is the cloud upgrade of this decade, requiring the purchase of advanced, high-priced chips and (most important) new software. Nvidia offers that, and so long as they lead in GPUs and training architecture, they’re golden. But once the Czars can overcome Nvidia’s advantages – and they have the cash and incentive to do so – Nvidia will fall away, like the first stage of a rocket going into space.
Tesla? WTF? No. Make that hell, no. They were never part of the cloud. They never deserved to be in the same discussion. They’re in a different business. Even putting them on the list shows how stupid reporters and analysts remain about technology.
So, no Magnificent 7, OK? This is the era of the Cloud Czars.
