Silicon Valley's Big Three vs. Detroit's Golden-Age Big Three
Today’s tech giants dominate the U.S. economy like automotive companies did before them, but what that dominance means has changed.
Over the last 20 years, the technology industry has become the most powerful industry in the world, boasting seven of the 20 most profitable companies. Last year, Apple literally doubled the profits ($53.4 billion) of the second-most profitable company, J.P. Morgan Chase ($24.4 billion). And when it comes to market value, tech companies sweep the top five: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. These companies are not only huge and profitable; they’re also growing.
By most measures,, this power is concentrated in one specific region, the Pacific Coast, and even more tightly centralized in the San Francisco Bay Area. Incredibly, three of those five most valuable companies
