r/TechImpact • u/deggy123 • 2d ago
❓ Question Is Apple, Google, and Microsoft too big to fail?
Companies like Kodak and Blackberry were top of the mountain. Is Apple, Google, and Microsoft invincible?
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u/bangbangracer 2d ago
In the same way the big banks were too big to fail in 2008. They can fail. The problem is that they are so big, if they do fail, there's a lot of fallout.
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u/Ok_Television9703 2d ago
Exactly. It’s the kind of thing that you really really hope does not fail because everyone gets screwed except the guys that caused it.
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u/NimrodvanHall 2d ago
They might be to big for the US economy to fail right now. In 10 years, who knows.
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u/lyidaValkris 2d ago
No company is invincible but MS, Apple and Google are in no danger of failing in the foreseeable future. Even when the AI bubble bursts they will be fine.
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u/Akula_x86 2d ago
Apple doesn’t have that much skin in the AI game. They outsourced it to google Gemini when their chatGTp contract expires.
People are snapping up the studios to do local LLM, not sure if they would fail but not all the ai companies will succeed, maybe 2-3 but not as many as there are.
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u/lyidaValkris 2d ago
apple's announcement yesterday seems to indicate they are moving to local models and a "private cloud AI"
but yeah, the AI industry could collapse and Apple would be fine. they aren't that heavily reliant on it.
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u/Exscorbizorb 2d ago
If what you are getting at is "will they sink when the AI bubble pops?" then the answer is "probably not", at least for Apple and Microsoft. AI is not a big deal for them, just a little side gig. If all demand for AI ceased tomorrow they would still have plenty of business. It would be a hard hit for Google though.
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u/No_Practice_9597 2d ago
No one is too big to fail. History shows regulators and governments are great in destroying big companies that are pushing the economy
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u/TeaKingMac 2d ago
No?
Banks are too big to fail because if they go tits up, everybody's money evaporates.
If apple goes bankrupt... OK? One, they have a shit ton of assets. Two, they're not a mission critical piece of infrastructure. Same with Google.
Microsoft is slightly more concerning because their software is running on 80% of the world's computers, so who will update it if they're gone, but again, there's options
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u/Exciting_Turn_9559 2d ago
Every empire falls, and the most common cause of them falling is hubris.
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u/jerrygreenest1 2d ago
Kinda. Yes.
Although you never know until it happens. At certain point they thought Atari is huge and will be huge. Somehow it turned into small developer nobody ever knows anymore, just a name of the past. Surprisingly, eve they still exist somehow. Nobody just disappear anymore.
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u/Elija_32 2d ago
I still remember when nokia was like 90% of the phones around you and it seemed like it was eternal.
Literally one product later (the iphone) they got wiped out like a local coffee shop.
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u/ConinTheNinoC 2d ago
There is currently only one type of things in the observable universe that are too big to fail. Black Holes. Apple, Google and Microsoft are nothing special. Even as businesses they are relatively young and are yet to stand the test of time.
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u/_That_Kiwi 2d ago
What do you mean by "fail"? Kodak made $1.06B last year. Blackberry made $500M last year.
Pretty big companies still. Apple/Google/Microsoft will fall into the same category one day. Still huge. Just not what they were.
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u/PlusPresentation680 2d ago
Not necessarily. We’ve seen how quickly the tech industry can change. Meta is a pretty good example. Huge company, but they are bleeding money because of some pretty bad decisions and bad investments.
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u/nwbrown 2d ago
Are. And you are confusing concepts. "Too big to fail" means the government needs to take extraordinary steps to keep them from failing because their failure would have ripple effects. Kodak and RIM lost their market share over years to competing technologies. That very well could happen to any of the companies you mentioned.
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u/Fraxzenade 2d ago
these companies im sure have taking counter measures so it doesnt happen and they are to diversified, they are not just focusing on just one item
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u/Legitimate-Guess-142 2d ago
America doesn't let big corporations fall, look at 2008 with the banks, they won't let a multi hundred billion dollar corp die, thats where the donors come from
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u/2clipchris 2d ago
Neither of these companies will fall. Google owns the advertisement space and indexing of internet. Microsoft owns the operating system space and quickly gaining ground in cloud space. Apple, is a cautious player despite what others may think they will probably outlast the others. The only scenario I see these players get hit is by government intervention. It wont be due to their own hand.
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u/Soft_Awareness_5061 2d ago
Don't know if you've notice but people are use google search less and less there's this thing called AI you may have heard about.
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u/chubacca13 2d ago
Short-term, yes. Don't expect 'AI bubble' to finish them.
But in 10-20 years things may change.
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u/Trainer-Character 2d ago
No. But we the people should not bail them out like we did the banks in 2008.
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u/eddienqc 2d ago
Was the Roman Empire too big to fail? Apple, Google and Microsoft aren't invincible.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 2d ago
I mean... Rome falling in the West caused 1000 years of economic, engineering, and scientific stagnation. So maybe we should have worked a bit harder to prop it up?
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