More than two years into the
pandemic, technology is more popular, stronger,
and richer than it was before. Or is it?
اضافة اعلان
This year — and particularly the past few weeks —
have complicated what was a fairly straightforward understanding of how most of
the tech industry and America’s superstar digital companies were faring.
Repeatedly over the past year or so, the New York
Times shared what tech was the unquestioned winner of the oddball pandemic
economy. People and businesses needed what tech companies were selling, and
that increased reliance made tech stars grow faster and become far more
profitable than
Silicon Valley nerds could have imagined. Bonkers dollars. A+.
Now I think that grade should be revised to an
incomplete. Some of the trends of 2020 and 2021 — including more work,
shopping, product marketing, entertainment, and socializing shifting online —
have started to backslide. With hindsight, it is unclear now how much of the
digital surge of those years was a blip and how much was an acceleration of
lasting tech transformations.
That uncertainty, along with inflation and weakening
economies, make it tough to figure out what is happening in tech today or even
assess the past couple of years. We may be on the cusp of a great time for tech
or the beginning of a rough patch for its products and finances. Let me repeat
what should be the mantra of 2022: No one knows anything.
Some tech executives are mostly exuding confidence
about their futures, while others are oozing anxiety sweat. It’s almost as if
they live in two separate realities. And maybe they do.
In one realm is the land of
Big Tech, with emperors
like Microsoft, Google, Amazon (maybe), Apple (maybe), and a few others in
fortresses looking down on us pipsqueaks.
Revenue at Google and
Microsoft continued to go up
from what seemed to be their unsustainably huge sales of digital advertising
and software in 2021. Both companies this week said they felt good about their
prospects but also warned of troubles ahead.
On Tuesday, Google executives said the word
“uncertainty” or a variation of it 13 times in a conference call with
investors. The company said it would start to be obvious in 2023 that Google is
slowing hiring. Planning a spending diet so many months in advance is a sign
that the company doesn’t expect to breeze past what might be a recession in the
US and other global problems.
Several winners of the pandemic’s scariest phase are
also struggling, calling into question whether their heady days of 2020 were
partly a mirage.
Netflix has lost subscribers in the
US and
Canada for two quarters. That has made some experts doubt whether online streaming
overall can grow as large, as fast, and as lucrative as optimists believed.
Snap, which owns the Snapchat app, saw its fortunes and usage soar in 2020
before reverting to what it was before: a not-very-successful company with an
uncertain future.
Shopify, whose software helps in-person businesses set
up online storefronts, said this week that it believed the pandemic had no
lasting effect on people shifting from in-person shopping to the internet. If
Shopify is right, the whole idea that the pandemic turbocharged a change in
shopping habits will implode. It will have been a temporary sugar high.
Amazon has not been quite so direct, but the company
has acknowledged that it overestimated how quickly e-commerce sales would grow
and is slashing some spending. (Amazon and Apple disclose quarterly financial
results later Thursday.)
And
Meta — phew. I’m not sure I have ever seen a
company switch so quickly from swagger to a bumbling Mr Magoo.
The company’s revenue has fallen for the first time,
and its Instagram app is having an identity crisis. But I can’t say if this is
the beginning of the end of Meta as a dominant digital power or a temporary
lull owing to a combination of inflation, privacy changes made by Apple, and
ugliness compared with the pandemic-related upswings in ad sales and profits it
once reported. Meta’s yearly revenue is nearly double what it was at this point
in 2019. That is not a sign (yet) of a company in permanent decline.
With the US and other big economies growing weaker,
it’s possible that digital superstars will use this moment of uncertainty to
muscle into new areas and extend their dominance. It’s also possible that even
giants cannot stay strong if their lucrative markets, which include premium
smartphones, online advertising, e-commerce, and corporate software, grow more
slowly in the next few years or shrink.
Is tech winning or not? Can we take a long vacation and
revisit this question in 2023?
Read more Odd and Bizarre
Jordan News
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