The Power of Google, Amazon, and Facebook

Mimi Li
Marketing in the Age of Digital
3 min readJul 27, 2020

The quest for digital marketing in our modern-day societies has grown mainly due to the rapid technological advancements. This growing idea is because of computer evolution, which has been a cornerstone of online commerce strategies. As a result, awareness has accelerated digital marketing ideas. Through effective internet connection in most parts of the world, digital marketing has helped to connect the customers to major institutions and corporations effectively. Therefore, the idea of digital marketing has helped companies both in brand endorsements and in advertisements. However, some argue that large companies, such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, have colonized and dominated the current digital markets, which makes them become more powerful. Therefore, with this inclination, the question of data privacy among its users becomes an issue.

Possession of Massive Amounts of Secret Data

With billions of internet users daily, companies with huge platforms, for instance, Facebook, Google, and Amazon have become effective for online advertising and marketing. However, some of the common users do not understand the importance of data privacy. For instance, a study by Moore and Tambini shows that many people who engaged with these companies did not read the privacy policies before their use. Therefore, companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon sometimes use their search engines to manipulate users during digital marketing. Since these companies have helped in digital marketing over the years, the question of data privacy not only lies on them but to the users. For that reason, all incentives that limit data privacy during digital marketing should be abolished.

Effect of Amazon, Facebook, and Google on Global Democracy

Additionally, the current influence portrayed by these companies has promoted illegal transactions and ideologies through digital marketing. According to the European Commission, companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google have used their digital marketing strategies to limit democracy. For instance, Germany found Facebook guilty of sharing their information with third-party websites, which affects the transparency and reliability of the institution. Moreover, the European Commission found Amazon to have received illegitimate tax remunerations from Luxembourg. This shows how such corporations have gained strength over the years, through controlling strong institutions like the government. Therefore, the current digital marketing strategies used by institutions such as Amazon and Facebook makes them more powerful due to their large control of users’ information. However, despite such controversies surrounding digital marketing, some think that sharing such information to institutions, such as the government is vital in security management.

Global Economic Effects of these Companies

Furthermore, the four greatest institutions, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple, have dominated the world’s greatest sectors, such as education, trade, and even the government. Studies show that these institutions have produced more than two trillion dollars in wealth over the past two decades. This is attributed to the growing number of users on these platforms. For instance, since the inception of internet-based marketing, twenty-eight percent of all products’ searches on several websites were done via google. Therefore, Facebook and Amazon’s dominance in digital marketing has promoted capital monopoly, which has resulted in the overshadowing of other new companies. Despite this, users still entrust their information to these companies, making them more powerful. However, despite data privacy issues, digital marketing platforms have created thousands of job opportunities, which makes Google, Facebook, and Amazon necessary evil corporations.

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