Financially? Sure. Politically? Not a chance, they'll get bailed out or partially nationalized.
Frontier labs will be considered essential to national security, Microsoft is basically a public utility at this point, Facebook is too important for the spread of propaganda (although this one has less of a case/justification for a government bailout), Amazon (via AWS) runs massive parts of the federal gov (along with Azure), Google dying would cause almost an immediate global depression (73% of mobiles run android, the massive ad network).
These companies are so entrenched in day to day operations and into the economy that they cannot fail without ushering in whats effectively dark ages 2.0
Yes, because of play services. Eventually the world would adapt, but the immediate effect is that nearly every major commercial app that is increasingly requiring play integrity, play services will stop working. Push notifications will also break, as will the payment network. Google Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay etc are essentially shadow banks now.
The real impact of Google going dark though is less Android and more ads. Google fails, the revenue pipeline for 2 million + websites goes to zero overnight, and millions of digial businesses and agencies will go bankrupt within weeks. It would completely collapse the business model of the modern internet.
And you did not notice how many things require Google Apps/Play Integrity? Heck, most people don't even know how to install apps without the Play Store.
Indeed. People forget how quickly and easily companies become too big too fail. The US government bailed out, took over, privatized (not just once) Iridium, just because they had satellites and Global Crossing, just because of fiber ownership.
After the bailouts of 2008, I think the only thing to fear is that the US government will fail first. As long as they can afford to keep big businesses going, they will. Whether things will get bad enough that the government can't afford to do that is an exercise to the reader.
I mean, we are approaching the point where the government can't afford to do that. Debt is near $40 trillion, and debt held by the public has recently just slightly tipped over 100% of the US GDP, so we are long past affordability.
Interest payments on US Debt are already $1T annually. If GDP stops growing faster than the interest rate on the debt, we're "cooked" as the kids say.
If we lose reserve currency status, we are equally screwed.
A big tech bailout isn't going to look like a big cash injection. It would look more like total asset seizure and nationalization of those companies.
If we didn't have food, you'd have a point. If factories weren't churning out more stuff than anyone knows what to do with - you'd have a point.
All this is is a bunch of incompetent, spoiled idiots in positions of power that will sooner or later have to make room for people who know what they're doing.
Nobody in this globalized economy is interested in things no longer working - even the incompetent idiots. All that has to happen is 60+ year old retards who thought they were going to move up the power ladder because 'seniority' will need to go fuck off and play golf and their children will need to go fuck off and work in lower middle management.
That's all.
Of course they spend billions every year telling you otherwise. Their other big lie is that we can't tax anyone or do anything because 'they will just leave' or 'China' or 'USSR' or 'terrorism' or some other bullshit. It's all bullshit, it's been bullshit and it will continue to be bullshit until you turn your brain on for 2 minutes and realize it's either retards in charge or not - the rest is talk.
US Government won’t fail. They can certainly just default on all debt and keep on going like many other countries. It will be a shitty country going forward, but not a failed one.
The best thing you can do is diversify assets to be prepared for that scenario, so you do not fall into the hell of a permanent underclass, in perpetual servitude.
I don't think the big companies will fail, but their stock prices could dramatically drop. I think newer smaller companies like OpenAI and Anthropic could easily fail, as well as a bunch of other AI start ups. Altogether it could make for some difficult financial times like in 2000 and 2008
Frontier labs will be considered essential to national security, Microsoft is basically a public utility at this point, Facebook is too important for the spread of propaganda (although this one has less of a case/justification for a government bailout), Amazon (via AWS) runs massive parts of the federal gov (along with Azure), Google dying would cause almost an immediate global depression (73% of mobiles run android, the massive ad network).
These companies are so entrenched in day to day operations and into the economy that they cannot fail without ushering in whats effectively dark ages 2.0