Big tech’s $2trn bull run
Investors think the techlash is over. That judgment is premature.
In 2018 a new word entered Silicon
Valley’s lexicon: the “techlash”, or the risk of a consumer and regulatory
revolt against big tech. Today that threat seems empty. Even as regulators
discuss new rules and activists fret about the right to privacy, the shares of
the five biggest American tech firms have been on a jaw-dropping bull run over
the past 12 months, rising by 52%. The increase in the firms’ combined value,
of almost $2trn, is hard to get your head round: it is roughly equivalent to
Germany’s entire stock market. Four of the five—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and
Microsoft—are each now worth over $1trn. (Facebook is worth a mere $620bn.) For
all the talk of a techlash, fund managers in Boston, London and Singapore have
shrugged and moved on. Their calculus is that nothing can stop these firms, which
are destined to earn untold riches.
2018年新词techlash“科技冲突”被收入硅谷词汇，及消费者和政府机构对抗大型科技公司的风险。今天这种威胁几乎是不存在的，即使当管理机构讨论新的规则和活动可能危及隐私权时。过去12个月内，美国五家最大的科技公司股票迎来了火箭式上升，涨幅高达52%。也许这很难让你大开眼界，这些科技巨头的总市值几乎增加了2万亿美元，这几乎是德国全国的市值。五家公司中的四家alphabet(伞形公司，谷歌)，亚马逊，苹果，微软市值均超过一万亿美元，（Facebook仅仅价值六千二百亿美元）。尽管到处都在讨论技术冲突，但波士顿，伦敦，新加坡的股票经理人对此不屑一顾，并继续买进。他们的计算表明没有什么可以阻止这些注定会获得无数财富的科技巨头
This surge in tech giants’ share prices raises two worries. One is whether investors have stoked a speculative bubble. The five firms, worth $5.6trn, make up almost a fifth of the value of the s&p 500 index of American shares. The last time the market was so concentrated was 20 years ago, before a crash that triggered a widespread downturn. The other, opposite concern is that investors may be right. The big tech firms’ supersized valuations suggest their profits will double or so in the next decade, causing far greater economic tremors in rich countries and an alarming concentration of economic and political power.
关于这些科技巨头市值的调查显现了2个担忧。其中之一便是投资者是否引发了投机泡沫。这五家科技巨头市值5.6万亿美元，几乎占到了美国标准普尔的五分之一市值。股市上一次出现投资如此集中是在20年前，在一次崩盘引发了迅速而又大范围的下滑之前。另外一种相反的担心是投资者是正确的。科技巨头的巨额市值意味着再未来十年他们的收益可能翻番。从而再富裕国家造成更加剧烈的经济地震和对令人震惊的政治经济集中。
The question of a bubble is a reasonable one. Tech cycles are an integral part of the modern economy. The 1980s saw a
semiconductor boom. Then, in the 1990s, came pcs and the internet. Each cycle
fades or ends in a bust.
泡沫经济的质疑是较为合理的一个，技术周期是现代经济的不可或缺的一个部分。80年代曾出现半导体热，90年代有个人计算机与互联网热。每个周期都会以衰退或萧条收场。
Today’s upswing got going in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone. By 2018 it, too, seemed to be showing its age. Sales of smartphones were stagnating. Data scandals at Facebook crystallized anger about the tech giants’ flippant approach to privacy. Global antitrust regulators were on the alert. And the loss-making antics of flaky tech “unicorns”, such as Uber and WeWork, evoked the kind of speculative froth often seen at the tail end of a long boom.
今天科技巨头们的兴起源于2007年iPhone的分布。到2018年科技巨头似乎也出现了衰退的现象。智能手机的销售曾停滞不前。Facebook的数据丑闻使人们对科技巨头对隐私的轻率态度感到愤怒。全球反托拉斯监管机构对此保持戒备。而“独角兽”类的小科技公司如优步，wework等的滑稽操作让人们联想起长期繁荣末期的投机泡沫。
In fact, at least for the biggest tech giants, today’s valuations are built on more solid foundations. Together, the five biggest firms have cranked out$178bn of cashflow after investment in the past 12 months (see Buttonwood). Their size has yet to slow their expansion: their median sales growth, of 17%in the latest quarter, is still as impressive as it was five years ago.
事实上，至少对最大科技巨头而言，今天的估值是建立在更加坚实的基础上的，在过去12个月里，五家科技巨头在过去12个月的投资活动中消耗了1780亿元的现金流。但是其规模并没有减弱他们的增长，上个季度增速其增速中位数为17%，仍然和5年前一样令人印象深刻。
Consumers say they care about privacy but act as if they care much more about getting stuff, and preferably without having to pay for it in cash. Since the end of2018 the number of people using Facebook’s services (including Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp) has risen by 11%, to 2.3bn. Regulators have punished tech firms for tax, privacy and competition misconduct, but so far their efforts have been like bringing a pea-shooter to a gunfight: the fines and penalties they have imposed amount to less than 1% of the big five’s market value, tolerable cost of doing business. And the agonies of some of the unicorns, and their biggest backer, SoftBank, have only demonstrated how hard it is to replicate the scale and network effects of the big five.
消费者们嘴上说着他们在乎隐私，实际却表现的更加在意如何获取消费品，而且最好是不用现金的云支付。从2018年末至今Facebook（包括Instagram，messager,和WhatsApp）的用户数量增长了11%，达到了23亿人。监管机构已经对科技巨头的税收，隐私以及竞争不当行为进行了惩处，但是他们的努力就像是用豌豆射手来进行枪战。他们对五家科技公司开出的罚单不到其产值的1%,是一个可以承受的商业代价。
Meanwhile, the size of the opportunity is vast. As our special report in this issue explains, many parts of the economy have yet to digitize. In the West the only a tenth of retail sales are online, and perhaps a fifth of computing workloads sit in the cloud with the likes of Amazon and Microsoft. Big tech operates globally, giving it more space to expand, especially in emerging economies where spending on digital technology is still relatively low.
同时机会是十分多的。正如我们在本期特别报告中所解释的那样，金融领域的许多方面都没有实现数字化。在西方只有百分之十的零售业是进行网络销售的，而只有大约百分之十五的电脑计算是在云端进行的比如亚马逊和微软。科技巨头的全球化给了他们更多的发展空间，尤其是在新兴经济体中，数字化程度很低。
The trouble is that if you think that tech firms will get much bigger and diversify into more industries, from health care to agriculture, it is logical to assume that the backlash against them will not fade away but, eventually, get bigger.
麻烦在于如果你认为这些科技公司将会变的越来越大并进入越来越多的行业中，从医疗健康到农业，对他们的反对不会消散反而会变得更大。
As big tech’s scope expands, more non-tech firms will find their profits dented and more workers will see their livelihoods disrupted, creating angry constituencies. One crude measure of scale is to look at global profit relative to American GDP. By this yardstick, Apple, which is expanding into services, is already roughly as big as Standard Oil and us Steel were in 1910, at the height of their powers. Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft are set to reach the threshold within the next ten years.
随着大型科技公司不断扩大，越来越多的非科技公司发现他们的利润被侵蚀，越来越多的工人发现他们的工作被摧毁，从而产生了愤怒的支持者。一种粗略的规模确定方法是将其全球利润与美国GDP做比较。以此为基准，正在向服务业扩展的苹果公司达到了与标准石油公司和美国钢铁公司1910鼎盛时期的规模。谷歌，亚马逊，微软将在10年内达到该限值。
When recession strikes it will fuel new resentments. Big tech could face a storm that few have yet paid much attention to (see Business section). The big five firms employ 1.2m people and are now by far the biggest investors in corporate America, spending almost $200bn a year. Their decisions about whether to squeeze suppliers, slash investment or attack weaker rivals will prove as controversial as those of carmakers when Detroitstill ruled in the 1970s, or even of Wall Street in 2007-08. Big tech’s role in politics is already toxic; social media and videos influence elections from Minnesota to Myanmar.
当经济衰退来临时，这将引发新的怨恨。大科技公司可能面对着那些至今没有被重视的风暴。(见商业部分)。今天，五家大公司有着120万雇员，是美国公司最大的投资者，每年投资2千亿美元。在70年代的底特律规则下和华尔街的07至08年下，这些公司关于是否压制供应商，减少投资，打击弱的竞争者的决定将会和汽车制造商的决定一样引起争论。如今大型公司已经毒害了政治领域。社交媒体和视频影响了从明尼苏达州到缅因州的选举。
All this means that, far from having peaked, anger may be in the foothills. Executives hope that slick lobbying will protect them. But even today, the picture outside America is not of inaction but a tumult of regulatory experiments. China keeps its internet giants under tacit state control and wants to rely less on Silicon Valley, including Apple, which is already dealing with the cover-19 virus and other headwinds there. At least 27 countries have or are considering digital taxes. India has cracked down on e-commerce and online speech. The European Union (EU) wants individuals to own and control their own data, an approach this newspaper favors, although it may take years of innovation to create a system that is easy for consumers to use and profit from. This week the EU proposed curbs on artificial intelligence. Even in America, trustbusters may limit big tech’s ability to gobble up startups, a strategy that has been instrumental to the success of Alphabet and Facebook in particular.
所有这些都意味着愤怒远未到达顶峰。高管寄希望于政治掮客可以保护他们。美国以外的情况也不是无所作为，而是管理经验的混乱。。至少27个国家已经在考虑数字税，印度对电子商务和在线会议等进行了打压。欧盟希望个人可以拥有并控制自己的数据，这也是本报支持的观点。虽然这将花费数年时间来研发一个方便用户使用并从中获利的系统。这周欧盟表示将遏制人工智能的发展。即使在美国，怀疑论者们也希望可以限制大型企业收购初创企业的能力，收购初创企业对谷歌和Facebook的成功的至关重要。
Just when you thought platforms were back in fashion The $5.6trn market value of tech's formidable five is a testament to some of the most commercially successful companies ever created. But it also assumes that they will get a lot bigger even as the world stands by and watches placidly. Until today, big tech has been largely unscathed. The bigger it becomes, the more reason there is to doubt this can continue.
就在你以为线下平台将重新流行起来的时候，五家强大科技公司价值5.6万亿美元的市值证明了某些有史以来最成功的商业公司。但是可以假设的是即使世界发展缓慢，这些大公司也会变得越来越庞大。直到今天这些大公司都没有遭受损失，这些公司规模越大，越有理由相信这种增长会毫无疑问的持续下去。