The Four

I devoured this book. Galloway has a wonderful style. He’s funny, insightful, and he provides the sort of statistics that leave you gasping, stuttering, “OMG, WTF, really?”

You won’t ever look at the big 4 in the same way again – amazon, apple, facebook, google. In fact, the next time you walk into an apple store, type a query into google, post a cute photo of your dog on facebook, or order something from amazon, you’ll remember this book. You may hesitate, you may wrestle with your conscience, but in the end you’ll do what you were going to do , and Galloway explains why.

I would love to take a course from this guy at NYU, where he teaches business. But since I live in Florida, I’m delighted to have found his book.

There are a few negative reviews of this book that don’t make sense to me. It’s easy to write a negative review of anything. But with these reviews, I really feel compelled to grab these people by their collective collars and demand, “Hey, can you write something better? Do you have anything more to say than your negative review?”

The thing about Amazon, which Galloway notes, is that user reviews equalize the playing field. I agree, unless you have reviewers with a personal or professional grudge about whatever it is they’re reviewing. This happened a few years ago to Rob, when he offered a free book to readers in exchange for a review on Amazon for a particular book he’d written. One of the women who reviewed the book had a personal grudge against us and wrote an awful review of the book. Amazon doesn’t have a mathematical algorithm for that.

Galloway is clever, informed, and has a solid grasp on his topics. And honestly, even though I’m an Apple fan, I won’t be rushing to pay more than a thousands bucks for an iPhoneX. What I want to know is what happened to the iPhone9? Was it murdered in some dark alley in the Apple empire? And if so, why? Was it a clever marketing ploy? And these geniuses at the Apple store – are they really geniuses?

And then there’s Google with their mantra of Do No Harm, who has subsumed all of the competition – Yahoo, Microsoft, you name it and it’s gone. Google is the information king who probably knows more about us than our families do. Creepy.

So here we are, folks, with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as Galloway refers to them. Amazon now owns Whole Foods. Google owns the world. Facebook owns your heart. And Apple owns how you communicate and stay in touch with the larger world.

So, are we screwed?

 

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6 Responses to The Four

  1. Laurence Zankowski says:

    Been following Scott on YouTube for about 4 years now may be 3, been awhile. His partner has not been seen much, but when she shows up on the L2 channel I stop everything to listen to her. The insights from both are amazing. Look for scott’s Interview on Business insider channel. He is so right about zuckerberg.

    As to trip advisor, they have a world of hurt coming if the do not do the right thing and allow the bad reviews, rape allegations, robberies to stay on the sight. People need to be aware of the good and the bad.

    Look at what happened to Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes crew as they got robbed in Brazil after the Grand Prix. These are billion dollar racing campaigns and they can not protect their own. Sad state of affairs …. oh get off Facebook.

    Laurence Zankowski

  2. DJan says:

    I just went to my library website and put a hold on the book. I’m number 3 in line, so it will be awhile. Thanks for the review! 🙂

  3. Darren B says:

    My son was an Apple genius when he worked for them a few years back, he still loves Apple, but I found them a bit cult-like and was kind of glad when he left the company.
    I have an iPhone, iPad and iPod, but use a HP computer with a Google browser.
    My personal theory with the iPhone X is that it is Apple’s tenth anniversary since the iPhone came out in 2007, hence the X (ten), plus it looks like the word Phoenix, as in “rise from the ashes”…and it is the 20 anniversary this year of the Phoenix lights flap that happened in 1997, not that Apple would care too much about that though.
    And as far as reviews go here is a story in our news today about a big motel chain rigging reviews in their favour –
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-10/meriton-manipulated-tripadvisor-reviews-federal-court-finds/9138148
    “Meriton Serviced Apartments faces multi-million-dollar fines after the Federal Court found the chain prevented unfavourable reviews on TripAdvisor by stopping emails being sent to unhappy customers.
    Meriton prevented guests it suspected would leave negative reviews from using TripAdvisor’s “Review Express” service, court finds
    ACCC accused hotel chain of deceptive or misleading conduct between November 2014 to October 2015
    Meriton faces a maximum fine of $1.1 million for each breach
    The hotel chain blocked people it believed would write negative reviews, such as complaints about no hot water or broken lifts, from using the travel website’s “Review Express” service.”

    I actually stayed in Meriton Serviced Apartments in Sydney last year and loved my stay there, so there is one review that they will let go through I guess 😉

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