Amazon and Apple Have Never Been Less Scared
Even with mounting rumors of regulation, the FAANG giants continue to brazenly throw their weight around
Practically everyone agrees that the biggest and most familiar tech companies — the so-called FAANG gang: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google — are overdue for a regulatory comeuppance. Experts maintain it could be arriving soon: After all, many of these firms’ CEOs have been hauled before congressional committees repeatedly, and rumors of potential antitrust action abound. So how are those threatened giants behaving under that heat?
Well, one popular target of regulatory rumors, Amazon, just announced that it’s using its supersized market power to muscle its way into yet another consumer category: prescription drugs, which it is now promising to make available on a two-day delivery scheme for members of its Amazon Prime service. The news instantly whacked a combined $10 billion off the valuations of Walgreens and CVS, demonstrating the market’s appraisal of Amazon’s muscle.
Meanwhile, fellow FAANG Netflix, which has enjoyed an influx of new customers thanks to everyone being trapped at home, seems to have realized that we’ll be stuck binge-watching for a while longer, and raised its prices. (Rival streamer Hulu is charging more, too.)…
