A year ago I had published a post about the tech giants, entitled Nothing changes but their names ! Here is just a short update one year later.
Tech giants : nothing changes but their names ! A new analysis in 2025
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Tech giants : nothing changes but their names !
I love data and I love analyzing them at the micro (cap tables) and macro level (revenues, income, employees). But I am surprised to discover that I had not posted about this since 2021:
– Tesla, Google and Facebook do not suffer from the crisis showed the growth of these giants as of February 2021,
– The largest technology companies in Europe and the USA in 2020 compared about 30 American and 15 European public firms as of January 2021.
What I have updated below does not see much change, except may be Google is Alphabet and Facebook is Meta. Tesla has not changed its name but Twitter is X! So with not much comment, here are first the largest technology companies in Europe and the USA in 2024 :
The conclusion is similar, US companies are about 10 times bigger in market cap. and sales, 5 times in employees number. I even fear the gap is bigger. I also love the following three charts which illustrate similarites in firm growth.
Maybe all this is not that good and has contributed to the planet destruction with being aware of it. Maybe innovation is not solving much and destroying a lot. These are just numbers as food for thought.
GAFAM do not suffer from the crisis (part II)
Yesterday I published data in Tesla, Google and Facebook do not suffer from the crisis. and after linking my post to the usual Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, one of my readers (thanks Manuel!) told me it would be fun to add Uber as a comparison. I said I would if/when I find the time and then thought why not AirBnB, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft?
I could only compile data about revenues of these firms and I think it is striking enough:
I wrote yerterday the growth rate was above 100% (doubling every year) in the early years declining to around 40% (doubling every other year) then to 15% (doubling evry five-year). Here are the growth rates of these old and new Titans. It begins again with 100+% for all of them. Too early to say about the future of Uber and AirBnB.
The three others of the GAFAM.
– Microsoft even had a 50% growth in its second decade, Amazon was closer to 30% and Apple struggled with 20%.
– In their 4th decade, Microsoft had an average grwoth of 10% and Apple 30%.
OK Manuel?
Tesla, Google and Facebook do not suffer from the crisis.
This may not be surprising and it has been said in the media. The GAFAs have generally benefited from the Covid crisis. So, as I was independantly doing in the recent years, I looked again at the growth of Google and Facebook as well as Tesla.
[As a reference here are past articles:
– Are GAFAs threatened? Their growth is still steady: www.startup-book.com/2019/12/28/are-gafas-threatened-their-growth-is-still-steady/
– Facebook Finally Files For $5B: www.startup-book.com/2012/02/02/facebook-finally-files-for-5b/
– Google vs. Facebook: www.startup-book.com/2010/11/12/google-vs-facebook/]
And here are my udpates abour revenue, income and employee growth of Google, Facebook and Tesla:
Revenues and profits are in millions of $. What is undoubtedly the most striking is the similarity of the growths of the three actors and of course the fact that all these numbers are considerable, not to say extraordinary.
Typical of Silicon Valley startups, the growth is often above 100% in the early years decreasing to about 40% after a few years and still above 15% after 20 years. This means respectively doubling the numbers every year, every two years and every five years.
The largest technology companies in Europe and the USA in 2020
I regularly look at the largest technology companies in the USA and Europe and obviously this year, I had the impact of Covid in mind. Here are the tables I build once a year (and that you could compare to the ones published in January 2020 here or in 2017 here.
I am adding below their PS (price to sales, ratio of market cap to revenues) and PE (price to earnings, ratio of market cap to profits when positive) as well as the growth of the market cap. and revenues. There are 3 new companies I had not studied last year (Airbnb, Paypal and AMD) for which the growth is therefore not mentioned.
There would be many comments to give btu I will be fast:
– The GAFAs are the clear leaders, 4 of them are trillion dollar companies. Facebook is a little surprinsingly not as impressive and Tesla is appearing on top.
– The COVID did not have a big impact, not to say it had a positive impact on technology companies (in financial more than in economic terms)
– Again, looking at averages we see Europe is lagging in market caps, employement, sales and profits by factors close to 10…
Are GAFAs threatened? Their growth is still steady
It’s by reading Nicolas Colin’s always interesting newsletter, European Straits #149, 10 Tech Giants That Are (Almost All) in Bad Shape that I decided to revisit quickly the growth of 3 tech giants that I have been following for many years now: Google, Facebook and Tesla. And here are their numbers in terms of thousands of employees, revenue and profit in $M.
If you really love numbers, here is a little more: their average growth of 5 years is about 20% for Google, 40% for Facebook and about the same for Tesla (except that they never made a profit). Google is older so it is not a fair comparison. here is a more precise analysis.
So are the three tech giants threatened? I am not sure given this steady growth.
