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They and Google were initially funded by the CIA. There is a quite a bit of data collection for mass surveillance that these and other tech companies are being compensated for by the government as revealed by Snowden. Facebook stores the links between individuals and other entities which you would have to build from scratch on other sites.
FAANG - A bunch of excellent EXECUTING companies. We love them for it. Will they make US money...that's a different question.
Facebook - They execute well in getting interest and hitting earnings. They probably got a little too aggressive in realizing publications like the National Enquirer are still around when so many respected publications are long gone. However, the kids use SNAP and other things to hide from their folks. The old people like me feel a bit suckered and have dropped a lot of activity. The ads are crazy. Mostly people using it as a free messenger.
Apple - Apple executes so well in making the best of product X, Y and Z. They've got a stockpile of cash because of it...somewhich they haven't even borrowed against yet. It's sad that they never learned from the Apple ii vs the PC. Perfect is a limiting factor. Good enough and cheap are winning the engineers, and the market share. If you make each product beautiful, you risk getting overrun. As China goes, so likely will the US. We're seeing the first favortism in cheaper smartphones from Samsung in service offerings. I really don't think augmented reality or watch wear is going to fill that gap. Like the products. Haven't held the stock for awhile.
Amazon - Bezos executes in operations and top line growth. He is the master of putting up big growth numbers in scale even while losing money the whole time. In determining the requirements for such scale he hit a goldmine with AWS. I don't like Amazon because it isn't good at capturing markets, it's good at obliterating them. The same resentment that Wal-Mart used to get is now shifting to Amazon, but even Wal-Mart had to show it was making money. Bezos will play politics better than Walton, and he'll get away with it a lot longer. I'm just happy I won't be old when this guy goes for the medical industry. True Wal-Mart hires pharmacists and whatnot....but how long would quality of people wanting to do that stay if all the jobs were to work at Wal-Mart? Round 2...Amazon coming soon.
Netflix - They've got great moats and entrenchments. Their defensive measures are amazing. Now the question becomes...do they want to live in the territory they've carved out for themselves. Content is getting more expensive and the race is on. People are consuming entire series on binges. They have to keep up. Can they do it profitable without turning into the 4000 bogus cable channels people just got away from? Apparently Wall Street thinks so. Great company...I hope they make money.
Google - The amazing middle of it all. This company is into so many things....a recession will good to see what they keep and what they toss. Sometimes I even forget that GOOG has no voting power at all and GOOGL only has a tiny portion. It's become obvious that despite profits, they're never going to pay dividends. They'd rather pay for plans to operate on Mars than to give a dime back to their shareholders. Company's totally strong though. Strong enough to try to slay Microsoft with a free office, or give out free hosting for individuals.... So their growth is slowing. They are the King...they get the talent...they're connected to everything. I've held this before.
All of them great and very powerful companies. Not so sure if they're great ways for ME to make money, but none of them are going away anytime soon.
FB going down... soon it will be buy one get one free
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