I've never understood why Netflix was equated with the bigger companies. It's market cap is $300B the others (excluding Facebook) are all above $1T, and Facebook/Meta has a chance of breaking the $1T in the next year.
You mention market caps, but I don't think that is really the reason why certain companies enter the mindshare of people.
I think the reason that Netflix became a part of the acronym is because, like its counterparts, all of them are leaders in a big space that others have a hard time competing with, with products that seem innovative (also explains why the giants of FinTech don't have much mindshare). This kind of industry leader at enormous scale results in high compensation for individual emoloyees and it becomes convenient to lump these companies together because everyone is going for it regardless of whether they care about any individual workplace.
Netflix essentially bootstrapped and proved the market for streaming. For a really long time, people weren't sold by the idea of streaming their shows instead of getting millions of commercials on cable TV.
Don't get me wrong, Microsoft is a great company that operates at a massive scale, winning many enterprise hearts like Microsoft Office (slowly losing relevance), but if I think about it harder, I just don't think there's much for Microsoft to claim as a leader.
It has the largest gaming and PC markets, but those markets don't have the same nearly infinitely scalable potential profit that Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, or Google do. They don't quite lead hardware, software, or "platforms". Windows is pretty good, but really more just a data platform at this point and hasn't done much movement compared to macOS. Azure, GitHub, LinkedIn—they exist, for sure, but we tend to talk about them as separate entities than "Microsoff" a lot of the time.
I'm sure many people can raise counterpoints, but keep in mind we're already talking about ambiguous notions of "feeling" how a company should be perceived, and why many people would "feel" like Microsoft doesn't lump with the rest.
I'm reminded by a quote by Steve Jobs talking about Microsoft's "lack of culture" in the products.
FANG was created by the stocks analyst guys, i.e Jim Cramer, to reflect high growth tech stocks. Apple wasn't even in it originally and got added later and became FAANG. So it has almost nothing to with your reasons. Check Microsoft's growth since 2017 and its on par with or exceeds others.
PIGOU
Paypal Intel Google Oracle Uber
SUP
Square Uber Paypal
PAIN
Palantir AirBnB IBM Nvidia
SAURON
Square Apple Uber Roku Oracle Netflix
FAM
Facebook Apple Microsoft
Honestly I always assumed Netflix was added because "fang" sounds nice and apropos, but if you remove the N then it's a very different word that's not nice at all.
But there's a million acronyms that could be made by popping some good tech companies in and pushing out less nice-looking initials out. Why did FAANG catch on and not GAMMA, SLAAP, STINT, etc.?
I think it's partially your reason, partially something else.
Google is still a separate company, owned by Alphabet, the holding company. Facebook is changing their name entirely as a company. Facebook will only exist as a product that Meta owns after this.
The M is already Microsoft. I'm partial to calling the Netflix-less tech industry "MAGA", because they're the ones actually making America great again.
Also Google is actually Alphabet, so it'd really be like MAMA or something.
Tangential: why not? Microsoft is a huge, enormously influential tech company that everyone has heard of, with a revenue of $160 billion (more than 10x that of Netflix) and nearly 200,000 employees (more than any FAANG except Amazon, if Wikipedia is to be believed.) Why isn't it included in the standard list of prominent tech companies?
Note also that the original FANGs (minus Amazon and Microsoft) are all Silicon Valley companies. Particularly when talking about local Silicon Valley issues (employment or housing or recruitment or whatever), it still sometimes makes sense to speak of them without adding in Microsoft and Amazon.
In purely financial/economic terms I'm still partial to MAGA, because Facebook and Netflix are a tier below in revenue, market cap, and diversity of their product portfolio.
Due to the history of the term (originating in financial markets) Microsoft was considered to be in decline/not appreciating in value as quickly as FAANG and was thus excluded. I would say these days it belongs there much more than say NFLX especially considering NFLX having nestled into a content creation/media company rather than a primarily tech play that was purchasing content.
I feel like the last bit isn't exactly right. Their compensation is still more competitive compared to Microsoft. On the tech side, they are also innovating as a breakout new producer compared to the incumbents.
You’re absolutely right, as myowz pointed out, it was ignored with G/Alphabet, but it would funnily confusing to say “He works for a MANGA (or MAAAN) company” to someone…
Google did not rebrand itself though, it's still Google. It's the holding company that owns Google (the company) that's called Alphabet. In contrast, Facebook does an actual name change now - there'll be no company named Facebook anymore, just a product.
I have no idea why FAANG is still a thing. Of the trillion dollars companies, Meta/FB is no longer one of them. Netflix no idea how they even got part of the league.
Should be ATAMA - Apple, Tesla, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet.
But really, it will be BTS - Bitcoin, Tesla and SpaceX. The $10T club.
Netflix has a reputation for providing high up front compensation packages instead of equity and other compensation models. For this reason it gets lumped into the larger technology companies with vastly higher head counts. FANNG is largely a descriptor of compensation levels.
I figured it was something like Facebook|Netflix > Google > Amazon > Microsoft. With them all being in an A- tier of compensation. (Most companies are C - B, A is extremely rare).
"I work for the MAAAN"