When we talk about the regulation of big technologies, the discussion usually focuses on online privacy and location tracking, but we never seem to discuss the control these companies have over the vast majority of the Internet. We use free apps and services every day, but we fail to mention where all the data is stored – in the cloud. If we want big technology to have less control over our daily lives, maybe we should start to worry about the dominance these few companies have over our data.
According to data collected by Synergy Research Group, four companies own 67% of the $ 130 billion global cloud market. Leading the pack by a large margin is Amazon Web Services, which enjoys a 32% market share compared to the competition. This is followed by the 20% share enjoyed by Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure. Therefore, these two companies alone represent 52% of the market.
Behind the two dominant companies, Google Cloud with 9% and Alibaba Cloud with 6% complete the first four, which have more than half of the general market. After that, IBM Cloud, Salesforce, Tencent Cloud and Oracle Cloud account for 12% of the market.
Between infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service schemes that employers subscribe to and the hosted private cloud services that we use every day, companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba have full control over our data. Google may not be viewing everything you send to Google Drive, for example, but these companies gain access to our personal data through the free services you use.
In the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, cloud infrastructure services generated a total of $ 37 billion, as the world solidified its work from the domestic setting. This was a $ 4 billion jump from the previous quarter, proving that these companies continue to thrive on our data, while many other companies suffer.