What does the term Big Tech refer to, and why has it become a regulatory target?

Usually Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta (GAFAM). The term has become shorthand for corporate surveillance, monopolies and market power, because these firms provide the digital infrastructure our economic, political and social lives depend on.

They shape three spheres at once:

• Economic: they run marketplaces (e.g. Amazon).
• Political: they control information flows through their algorithms.
• Social: they shape how we connect with one another.

Typical accusations (from a US House of Representatives report) are controlling market access, charging exorbitant fees, imposing repressive contract terms and extracting valuable data from people and businesses.

Their size reinforces itself through three dynamics:

• Network effects: a platform becomes more valuable the more people use it.
• Winner-takes-all: the leader's position becomes a barrier to entry for start-ups.
• Financial leverage: falling unit costs at scale and investor expectations.

This is why governments keep looking for new ways to govern the social and market power of these companies.

Go deeper:

• Birch & Bronson (2022): Big Tech, Science as Culture — open-access essay on Big Tech as a concept and a regulatory target.
• Wikipedia: Network effect — why each extra user makes a platform more valuable, and the leader harder to catch.