Imperial ambitions of tech giants

World domination: The logos of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft displayed on a mobile phone and a laptop screen. The Big Four – Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google – are now seen as too powerful and ‘harmful’. Meanwhile, Microsoft was the subject of an anti­-trust case in the United States in the 1990s. — AFP

IN one of the senate hearings in Washington, DC, in April 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked by Senator Dick Durbin where he stayed the night before. Would Zuckerberg be comfortable to share it with him? Zuckerberg understandably said no after a long pause.

Durbin asked Zuckerberg whether he would like to share the names of people he messaged that week. He answered that he would choose not to do that publicly at the hearing.