Without everything else Google makes — email, maps, calendar, translation software, photo storage
and the Android mobile operating system, which I’d need after ditching Apple — I’d be relegated to a life of some poor soul from long ago (say, 1992).
So, last week I came up with a fun game: If an evil, tech-phobic monarch forced you to abandon each of the Frightful Five, in which order would you do so,
and how much would your life deteriorate as a result?
When the whole process was over, I realized something incredible: To navigate all of the niggling details surrounding this one commercial transaction — figuring out what to buy, which accessories I needed, how
and where to install it, and whom to hire to do so — I had dealt with only a single ubiquitous corporation: Amazon.
What’s more, with its Echos, Fire TV devices, audiobooks, movies and TV shows, Amazon has become, for my family, more than a mere store.
As I began combing through other recent household decisions, I found
that in 2016, nearly 10 percent of my household’s commercial transactions flowed through the Seattle retailer, more by far than any other company my family dealt with.
I suspect that if you closely examine your own life, there’s a good chance some other technology company
occupies the same role for you as Amazon does for me: as warden of a very comfortable corporate prison.
Every year since, as my life got busier and accreted more responsibility (in other words, as I became more
and more of a stereotypical dad), Amazon took on an ever-greater role in my life.
(Apple reached $800 billion in market capitalization this week, the first of any public company to do so, and the others may not be far behind.)
