---
product_id: 59508466
title: "The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Paperback – Large Print, October 3, 2017"
brand: "scott galloway"
price: "18644 Ft"
currency: HUF
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.hu/products/59508466-the-four-the-hidden-dna-of-amazon-apple-facebook-google
store_origin: HU
region: Hungary
---

# The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Paperback – Large Print, October 3, 2017

**Brand:** scott galloway
**Price:** 18644 Ft
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Paperback – Large Print, October 3, 2017 by scott galloway
- **How much does it cost?** 18644 Ft with free shipping
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- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.hu](https://www.desertcart.hu/products/59508466-the-four-the-hidden-dna-of-amazon-apple-facebook-google)

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Spectacular Read--Fascinating, even for a layperson (English teacher)
  

*by R***N on Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2024*

Rarely have I read a book in which the writer's speaking style is so apparent and consistent.  His *voice* is uncanny.  I've seen him interviewed multiple times in a variety of settings, and this book reads exactly the way he speaks (or vice versa, I guess), and I could listen to him talk all day.  I know nothing about business, really, but his take on how these four companies function was fascinating to me.  [I'm reading this in 2024, so I don't know exactly how his predictions or views have held up--an updated version would be equally fascinating.]  His real-life perspective and common sense approach to life, as well as business, are worth anybody reading, regardless of age, profession, or politics.Detractors complained in reviews that he sounds unprofessional or not like a college professor because of his occasionally rough language....  EXACTLY!!  He sounds like a real guy talking about real stuff in a real style with real vocabulary.  He's not the nerd professor talking down to me like I'm an 18-year-old idiot--he's the cool professor talking to me like I'm also an adult (since, as the reader, I am), as we're having a drink after work or on a Saturday afternoon.  He's not super-animated in person, either, which makes him sound even more sincere and credible--it's not a show, full of fake hystrionics.  The numbers and data are all there, so he's not just blowing smoke, but the numbers don't read like mindless data or business-geek-talk.  He is extremely insightful about human behavior and the psychology of young people entering the workplace.Again, I'd love some kind of ten-year update/revision/analysis, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it highly to any young person or college student with an eye toward a successful business career.  I'm going to read Chapter 10, "The Four and You," with all of my seniors this upcoming year, as well, regardless of their career goals, because some of that advice applies to everybody!Very highly recommended!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    The four horsemen of technology's impact on how we work and live
  

*by E***R on Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2017*

In "The Four: the Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google" NYU Stern professor and entrepreneur Scott Galloway hails and indicts arguably the four most dominant tech platforms on the planet. The French branded them the GAFAs, from fear, resentment, and awe.Jeff Bezos’s uber-retailer and logistics platform Amazon is Galloway’s favorite to be the first to reach a trillion-dollar valuation. It stands apart, relentlessly pursuing growth rather than profits. Thanks to its masterful storytelling – the ongoing pitch to retail investors – it has plenty of cheap capital and license to go whole-hog for growth.He applauds Amazon’s culture of relentless experimentation and can-do attitude as distinctively “red, white and blue.”  Amazon is an exemplar of American entrepreneurial culture, and has a willingness to try new ideas, and a tolerance for failure as part of the process. In contrast, European businesses are more likely to prefer the sins of omission to the sins of commission.The Stern professor believes Amazon’s burgeoning and costly physical infrastructure is a defensive moat. While the marginal cost of delivering bits planet-wide is close to zero, we live in the physical world where infrastructure and capital to build it matter. Bezos has stores, warehouses, drones, trucks, and planes and delivery systems.Amazon’s AI and robotics boost productivity. Yet Galloway bemoans the destruction of less efficient retailers and jobs. Would the world be better off if Amazon employed legions of laborers to guide customers, pack and ship, and had higher prices?Apple’s cut from a different cloth. It’s a fabulous mobile platform but its defining difference is it’s “cool.”Economist Thorstein Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption holds some products have negative elasticity of demand. Up to a point, the more they cost, the greater demand. Demand for Rolex watches, Gucci bags, and iPhones is higher because everybody knows they’re pricier. Galloway contends “Apple’s business today is to sell to people goods, services, and emotions – being closer to God and being more attractive.” Apple products signal status.Galloway worries because Apple is cool it’s held to different standard. For example, it refused to help the FBI break into a San Bernardino jihadist shooter’s iPhone. Palo Alto and Manhattan gentry were four-square with Apple. If, however, it had been Smith & Wesson not cooperating with law enforcement, the din of outrage from the same quarters would have been deafening.The Stern professor lambastes legendary Steve Jobs as a decidedly unpleasant man, which by all counts he was, and for “stealing” Xerox Park’s GUI. Jobs commercialized something lots of people had seen. Hurrah for him, in this instance.The wizards of Cupertino control 14.5% of the smartphone market, but capture a whopping 79% of the profits (2016). Not surprisingly highly-profitable Apple, not Amazon, is the most valuable company on the planet.Galloway detours, railing against the caste system of prestigious universities, among which his NYU Stern numbers, and suggests Apple could upend it. But why would it want to? Galloway himself makes the case Brahmins signal others they’re Brahmins by using Apple. The hoi polloi use Samsung, Life’s Good and feature phones.Amazon and Apple sell goods and services. Facebook and Google are two-sided markets with consumers and businesses using generally free services on one side, and advertisers on the other, paying.  Galloway worries Facebook and Google are a news duopoly, a duopoly that vigorously resists being held to the same standards as traditional news organizations. A Gresham’s law of news is at work, where sensationalist blurbs and stories too-good-to-be-fact-checked drive out objective news.Galloway implies they should police news disseminated over their platforms. Maybe, but their impartiality would be a concern. Neither Facebook’s nor Google’s founders and management are politically neutral. They lean left.For Facebook the greater the number of and more engaged the users, the more valuable the platform is to other users and to advertisers. Given to hyperbole, Galloway declares Facebook may be the most successful thing in the history of mankind. To be sure, it’s a phenomenally successful social network and advertising platform. Yet has it been more successful than agriculture, industrialization, free-market capitalism, Christianity, banking, electricity, antibiotics and payment-card networks?Google search, maps, video, email, browsers, and mobile OS have enormous utility.  Hyperbolically Galloway describes Google as “a modern man’s god,” and “a religion,” and accurately as a public utility.Its advertising platform has been voraciously monetizing content created by others. Galloway and Harbinger Capital tried ultimately unsuccessfully to persuade old-media dowager the NYT to more vigorously defend its content.Amazon, Facebook and Google are marketing nirvanas which early evangelists of one-on-one marketing and authors of "Enterprise One to One" Peppers and Rogers could only dream of.Galloway graphically revels in body metaphors to capture each of the four’s appeal, contending Amazon and Google appeal to the brain, Facebook to the heart, and Apple to the genitals.He’s provocative and edgy, making him more quote-worthy and, presumably, boosting book sales. His more outrageous comments, however, are of a piece with what he criticizes Facebook and Google for doing, rewarding more incendiary and polarizing articles because people are more likely to click on them, generating ad revenue.And, Galloway laces the book with gratuitous profanity, detracting from otherwise interesting and insightful commentary.He’s simultaneously awestruck by and hypercritical of the four tech horsemen. He worries about their enormous market caps, relatively small number of employees, and implied job destruction. Facebook employs 17,000 whereas GM and IBM employed hundreds of thousands. Farming used to employ more than 90% of the workforce. Surely Galloway wouldn’t suggest society was therefore more prosperous.The Stern professor conjures a straw man of the four tech horsemen creating a world with a few million lords and hundreds of millions of serfs.  Yet technological progress is about delivering more with fewer people, thereby, improving their standard of living. Was agriculture using hand ploughs better because it employed more people? People migrate to new jobs and industries. That’s called progress. Galloway would do well to sip from futurologist Herman Kahn’s cup of boundless optimism about the proven capacity of free-market capitalism and technology to deliver mass prosperity.Galloway decries the GAFAs organizing their businesses to minimize corporate taxes.  Representing shareholders it is management’s job to do just that, legally. Perhaps Galloway should pen an op-ed for Bezos’s Washington Post urging reducing America’s corporate taxes from the highest in the developed world to zero, thereby eliminating the incentive to move business activities to more favorable tax climes offshore.Do America’s tech oligarchs feel guilty? Forbes scores Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg as the third and fifth richest men respectively on the planet. Both call for a minimum income, penance to be paid by Joe and Sally taxpayer.Galloway seems to believe the GAFAs’ powerful platforms are eternal and that they’re vulnerable to each other, noting a majority of product searches are originated on Amazon not Google.He takes a peculiarly static view. In their day, AT&T, IBM and Microsoft all were viewed as enjoying market power and invincibility. The US government brought antitrust actions against them, yet only AT&T enjoyed a state-sanctioned monopoly.IBM lost its place because mainframes became relatively less important and it fumbled PC OS and desktop applications. In 1981 Big Blue launched PCs using MS-DOS, an operating system to which Microsoft retained the rights. It’s also worth recalling IBM and BellSouth in 1994 birthed the first smartphone: Simon. It sold 50,000 units. Simon was too early. The first iPhone wasn’t introduced until 2007.Microsoft was indomitable until it wasn’t. First it was first beaten by Intuit in personal-finance software. Then Apple and Google crushed Mister Softie in the mobile OS space, and Google thrashed it in search.Nobody knows what might displace any one of the four or when, but assuredly something will. None of the potential fifth horsemen Galloway analyzes however seem plausible.There will be government challenges.Brussels is viscerally hostile to US tech titans. It’s likely Facebook’s and Google’s data-drive-advertising business model will come under assault from the European Commission.Of the four only Apple has survived its founders passing the baton.Lastly, Galloway offers the reader career advice, provocatively as is his wont.  If one is not aware of the tradeoffs pursuing a career as an investment banker versus saving the rain forest, pay attention. The Stern professor urges the ambitious to seek their fortunes in major cities. For those pursuing careers in the fours’ ecosystem that’s sensible. But neither NYC nor London is the best place to start a career in fracking, cattle or winemaking.The four horsemen of technology have had a huge impact on commerce, social intercourse, and the news industry. Galloway’s "The Four" provides a framework for thinking about them, and is an eminently topical and worthwhile read.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Wonderful, funny and thought provoking.
  

*by D***E on Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2017*

I met the author on a plane a week ago.  I had just purchased the book on Amazon and was about to start reading it when he sat down in front of me, so I asked him to sign it:)  I had seen him on CNBC a number of times, so I immediately recognized him.  (I am also an author, but nobody would ever recognize me!)This book is an incredibly easy read.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Although I don't agree with a tad bit of what he has to say, for the most part, I think Mr. Galloway is dead-on regarding his comments.  His writing style is honest, thought-provoking and at times, incredibly funny.  His quips are off the charts.  This book will make you think hard about The Four, and their impact on society globally.In Chapter 10, I think the author goes off course a bit, in order to discuss how people can attempt to pursue their careers.  Maybe he felt it fit fine within the context of the book.  I didn't see the logical progression.  That said, I loved the chapter since it offered great substance to any young individual figuring out how to get ahead in this world, or simply find job satisfaction...and it also made me think about my career path and steps/mis-steps.No matter your age, I think you'll enjoy this book as both an informative discussion on The Four and a (albeit brief) instructive career manual.  And if you have a sense of humor, you'll burst out laughing a few times.

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