Silicon Valley billionaire Marc Benioff has compared the current crisis of trust facing the tech giants to the financial crisis of a decade ago, urging regulators to wake up to the threat from Google, Facebook, and the other dominant firms.
The outspoken entrepreneur accused some of the industry’s most influential bosses of “abdicating responsibility” and being ignorant to how powerful and sophisticated they had become. Regulators now had “have no choice” but to intervene, he said.
To translate: “Regulate my competitors, but not me.”
The call was backed by Sir Martin Sorrell, who said the “Seven Sisters” – Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and China’s Alibaba and Tencent – had become too big. Comparing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to a modern-day John D Rockafeller, the chief executive of WPP, said “we are now in a position where they need to be regulated”.
I buy my adspace from these people. Regulate them!
Also: “Regulate my entire industry, thereby erecting formidable barriers to new entrants.”
It has worked out rather well for finance.
Marc Beniff owns Salesforce.com who run their European operations out of Switzerland (Invoicing) and Ireland (Customer Service), despite having a huge ‘Ivory Tower’ by London Bridge.
They are the largest CRM SaaS vendor in the world. A bit rich for him to suggest other tech giants should be regulated. He started his career at Oracle under Larry Ellison before founding Salesforce. Pot, kettle, black.
John D. Rockefeller not Rockafeller!
Rockefeller saved the whale.
The whaling industry was, what, the 4th biggest industry sector prior to Standard Oil consolidating and improving refining processes?
Monopolies are not intrinsically bad, perhaps. Monopolies protected by violence (or threatened violence by government) are though.
It would be simpler just to shoot some of the sods. After all, they (usually) strongly disapprove of gun ownership so we can be confident that they haven’t hired armed security men. Eh?
“Mr Benioff hit out at Uber, whose new boss Dara Khosrowshahi was also on the panel, claiming it had pursued growth above customer trust.”
Anyone know anyone who has removed Uber from their phones?
Me.
Where we live, it’s pointless.
‘The outspoken entrepreneur accused some of the industry’s most influential bosses of “abdicating responsibility”‘
No he didn’t. Marlow made that up.