Liberals and libertarians must confront the unpalatable thought that oppressive [political] power flourishes by enlisting our impulse to freedom rather than by brutally extinguishing it. Terry Eagleton LRB 30 april 09

Daniel Soar
You can’t get away from Google
This spring, the billionaire Eric Schmidt announced that there were only four really significant technology companies: Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, the company he had until recently been running. People believed him. What distinguished his new ‘gang of four’ from the generation it had superseded – companies like Intel, Microsoft, Dell and Cisco, which mostly exist to sell gizmos and gadgets and innumerable hours of expensive support services to corporate clients – was that the newcomers sold their products and services to ordinary people. Since there are more ordinary people in the world than there are businesses, and since there’s nothing that ordinary people don’t want or need, or can’t be persuaded they want or need when it flashes up alluringly on their screens, the money to be made from them is virtually limitless. Together, Schmidt’s four companies are worth more than half a trillion dollars

London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 19 · 6 October 2011
pages 3-6 | 3885 words