When we talk about regulating big technology, the discussion is mostly about online privacy and location tracking, but we never seem to talk about the control these companies have over the vast majority of the internet. We use free apps and services every day, but don’t mention where all that data is stored: in the cloud. If we want big tech to have less control over our daily lives, maybe we should start worrying about the stranglehold these few companies have over our data.
According to data collected by the Synergy Research Group, four companies own 67% of the $ 130 billion global cloud market. By a large margin, Amazon leads Web Services, which has a whopping 32% market share over the competition. This is followed by the 20% share of Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure. These two companies alone make up 52% of the market.
Behind the two dominant companies, Google Cloud with 9% and Alibaba Cloud with 6% complete the top four, which owns more than half of the total market. Thereafter, IBM Cloud, Salesforce, Tencent Cloud and Oracle Cloud make up 12% of the combined market.
Between the infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service schemes that employers subscribe to and the hosted private cloud services we use every day, companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba have ultimate control over our data. Google may not view everything you upload to Google Drive, but these companies can access our personal information through the free services you use.
In the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, cloud infrastructure services brought in a total of $ 37 billion as the world was able to strengthen its work from home. This was a $ 4 billion jump from the previous quarter, proving that these companies continue to thrive on our data, while many other companies are suffering.