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Member Reviews
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Sadly this book didn't give any new or different views into "The Four" big ones that makes this book worth reading or talking about.
I also didn't love the writing style of this author, who quite often seems to lack focus to just talk about one specific thing at a time instead of criss-crossing almost constantly between different things, from strategy to history and to something else yet again.
The idea was well meaning and a good one, but sadly the actual book itself isn't that well done and could have been something fantastic, but sadly ends up being a bit of a sad shadow of what it could be.
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Scott Galloway equates the Big Four - Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon - to the Four Horseman of god, love, sex and consumption respectively.
The author proceeds to examine and deconstruct the strategies that the Four employed in becoming the present giants of industry, the exploitation of their own mythologies and consumer habits as well as their overt and covert anti-competitive techniques to stifle their competition.
This is all extremely illuminating, but there isn't much new here that you aren't able to read elsewhere. The prominence of these ubiquitous companies in our daily lives means that they are already subject to extensive research and analysis in many books, publications, research papers and articles.
Scott Galloway does make a concerted effort to draw business lessons from the Four, but I find this part unconvincing as you cannot extrapolate success from the unique circumstances and individuals that birthed the Four. Great success requires ingenuity, not imitation.
However, it is seldom that you have the convenience of all Four being the subject matter of one singular book. It is further interesting how these four divergent companies are slowly, but inexorably encroaching upon each other's special areas of expertise in the race to become the first trillion dollar company.