Are the ‘Big Four’ facing a perfect storm?

In recent days, Apple, Facebook, Google and email marketing platforms have faced accusations of enabling hate, invading privacy and behaving as a monopoly. Accusations that could have a fundamental impact in how they conduct their business.

(On the other hand, the fourth of the Big Four, Amazon, seem to be doing rather well out of this pandemic….).

Is there time up?

Maybe not yet, but I think attitudes are changing and if they want to maintain their industry dominance, they will have to accept change (as Microsoft did after their battles with the EU in the noughties).

It’s the oldest story in the world.

Start-up business offers something unique, challenges the Goliath-like incumbents and then grows to become the dominant player in the market. Their initial principles are watered down (think Google’s “don’t be evil” quietly dropped in 2018) as they seek to maintain their monolith. Customers begin to complain. Then politicians begin to take notice. Investigations are launched. The monolith fights tooth and claw until their business starts to decline. They then have two options. Adapt and survive (see Microsoft and Fuji), or fight it and fail (see Kodak and Napster).

I have had first-hand experience… I was working at Kodak when they went from the fourth best Super-brand in the world to a subject on an MBA course about how the mighty fall.

Here is a summary of the four events that have happened in the last couple of weeks…

1, Facebook advertising boycott

As part of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign Unilever, Patagonia, North Face, Ben and Jerry, Viber, Verizon and others have announced that they will stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram until at least the end of July.

Patagonia tweeted earlier this week:

An open letter from ADL explains the background to the boycotts

“When it comes to dealing with rampant hate and harassment, the platform continues to come up short. What are they doing with $70 billion in revenue and $17 billion in profit? Their hate speech, incitement, and misinformation policies are inequitable. Their harassment victim services are inadequate. Their advertising placement’s proximity to hateful content is haphazard. And their ‘civil rights’ audit transparency reports aren’t helpful to the civil rights community.”

Strong words…

Since I started writing this post earlier this week Unlilever, Ben and Jerry, Viber and Verizon have also joined the campaign. I’m sure more will have been added by the time you read this.

However, I suspect most businesses will return - the Facebook audience is far too big to ignore. But I do think they will need to tackle this issue of hate speech (and privacy) and take responsibility for what is posted on their platforms. If not, the boycott will gradually grow over time and they will become increasingly irrelevant.

This isn’t a new campaign. Basecamp (more on them later) launched a campaign for businesses to become free of Facebook back in 2018.

Is your business considering doing the same?

2, Google Analytics and website tracking

Earlier this week Apple held their Worldwide Developer Conference. To me, their most significant announcement was lost amongst the many ‘exciting’ new features - it was the introduction of their Spy Privacy Report on their web browser, Safari.

This report has the ability to stop Google Analytics tracking website behaviour. In the UK, Safari market share is 34% (for the last 12 months to May 2020), so this could have a big impact on how web managers and digital marketeers analyse their website’s performance.

It’s important to note that this has not been officially confirmed by Apple yet - but if nothing else, this is an indication of where things could be heading.

Apple Insider and Search Engine Journal have written good backgrounds to this story.

If you’re concerned about the future accuracy of Google Analytics data, there are privacy focused alternatives (which also don’t need one of those annoying pop-up cookie warnings). I can help you fathom this out.

3, Email marketing and spy pixels

HEY claims to be a completely new approach to emails. Created by those perennial geniuses at 37 Signals / Basecamp. Launched earlier this month, it certainly has some interesting approaches to gaining control of your email.

One (of many) innovations is a privacy feature which block email marketing companies tracking what you do with their emails.

With HEY, you receive a warning when an email has a spy pixel tracking your opens and clicks (interestingly it also tells you which platform each business uses - mostly Mail Chimp or Campaign Monitor if you’d like to know).

This is great for protecting the privacy of us individuals, but not so great for digital marketers who like to know which campaigns worked and why.

I suspect this feature will be rolled out to other email platforms. The spy pixel gives marketeers a lot of personal and identifiable data (a minimum of your email address, location and device. In some cases, maybe your name and address too). It gives marketing departments far greater access to your individual privacy than Facebook pixels or Google Analytics cookies (who share anonymous data).

4, The Apple App Store

Finally, we come to Apple. Earlier in this article they were the good guys - meeting our privacy concerns by potentially stopping Google Analytics and ad services tracking our every online movement

The EU have just launched two Antitrust investigations into their App Store and Apple Pay. The complaint was initiated by Spotify who have to pay 15-30% to Apple for every subscription that is sold via the App Store, while at the same time Apple promote their own music services.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief said:

“Apple sets the rules for the distribution of apps to users of iPhones and iPads…. it appears that Apple obtained a ‘gatekeeper’ role when it comes to the distribution of apps and content to users of Apple’s popular devices.”

Wrap up

We are all more aware of how our privacy is compromised on the internet. Most of us accept it because we get ‘free’ access to all the benefits of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google in exchange for giving away our data.

But unless these businesses change their approach and accept some responsibility for how they curate content or how they track us, I think more and more people will start to question if the exchange is worth it. There are alternatives and people may be more prepared to pay for them.

Do you remember the previous darlings of the internet MySpace, Friendster or Yahoo? Whatever happened to them?