[samstave]

I wonder, who in our day is Rockefeller - as it would seem that it might be musk but without being an asshole.

Zuck is just a manipulator and as he is so young, I don't expect his actually legacy to take hold for at least 40 years. But musk is much more a Titan than zuck. Zuck isn't really doing anything outside his comfort zone - but that doesn't mean that oculus won't be a thing in 20 years - but I wouldn't credit that to zuck.

[arzt]

Bezos - hands down, similar degree of ruthlessness in controlling all markets he touches. An anecdote from the "The Everything Store" which sheds more light below:

“Bezos kept pushing for more. He asked Blake to exact better terms from the smallest publishers, who would go out of business if it weren't for the steady sales of their back catalogs on Amazon. Within the books group, the resulting program was dubbed the Gazelle Project because Bezos suggested to Blake in a meeting that Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.

As part of the Gazelle Project, Blake's group categorized publishers in terms of their dependency n Amazon and then opened negotiations with the most vulnerable companies. Three book buyers at the time recall this effort. Blake herself said that Bezos meant the cheetah-and-gazelle analogy as a joke and it was carried too far. Yet the program clearly represented something real--an emerging realpolitik approach toward book publishers, an attitude whose ruthlessness startled even some Amazon employees. Soon after the Gazelle Project began, Amazon's lawyers heard about the name and insisted it be changed to the less incendiary Small Publisher Negotiation Program.” ― Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

[joshvm]

There's also the natural, if a bit disturbing, business tactic of examining which products sell best on Amazon and then leveraging economy of scale to produce their own copies (Amazon Basics).

Although Apple is also famous for ruthless negotiation with publishers, they're proud enough that an Apple copy (e.g. the U-turn on styluses) will rarely be cheaper than what they've taken inspiration from.

[adventured]

Bill Gates probably already took that title. He'll have generated a likely $150 billion in total wealth by the time he's done (stands at around $115 billion now; $87 billion per Bloomberg's rankings plus around $30b+ given to the foundation so far). He built a monopoly at the core of the most lucrative boom industry of his day (computing and software). Similar reputations, similar drive and ambition, similar behaviors under anti-trust questioning, similar response to give his wealth away after stepping away from the business, and so on. Interestingly however, Gates was far more prone at emotional outbursts and getting upset, Rockefeller was extremely contained by comparison.

As someone else noted, Bezos might follow along with Gates, but it appears Bezos is more like Sam Walton than a Rockefeller. Walmart sprawled into numerous other categories, attempting to perpetually find new ways to make money at the edges of its empire; Walmart is a hyper low margin business, built on low prices and high efficiency; both Sam Walton and Bezos retained very large stakes in their businesses despite the size; both kept fundamental control. Amazon has no serious monopoly category however, and they have a comparatively weak cash generation capability (AWS is spitting off some nice operating income, but it pales in comparison to the very high margin cash spigot that Windows was).

[travmatt]

Hands down it would be Peter Thiel. After I read that book I heard so much of Rockefeller in his worldview, I really thought it was uncanny. Specifically, Thiel's view on monopolies had some hints of Rockefeller.