Big Tech Got Its Pivot in 2024
When reviewing 2024 from a technology perspective, it’s tempting to assume something related to AI must have been the story of the year. After 18 months of talk, we began to see the first wave of consumer-facing AI features built in response to generative AI mania. However, such developments felt measured relative to a much larger event that took place in November. The U.S. presidential election, resulting in President Trump returning to the White House, was the event of the year for Big Tech. The election gave Big Tech a pivot that companies are now leveraging, some more publicly than others, to re-balance scales that had tilted against the world’s largest companies.
In 2023, the Digital Markets Act went into effect in the EU. It was as if a black hole had formed in the sense that rationality evaporated from the marketplace. I have been
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