Apple, Google, Amazon, and the Advantages of Bigness

At some point in a big, successful company’s life, it comes up against the problem of the law of large numbers. In the simplest terms, a fast-growing company can’t keep growing at the same fast rate forever. It eventually has to slow down. For years, people have been looking for signs that Apple is finally hitting its growth limits. And this year Apple revenue fell for the first time since 2003. The same concerns face other giants in the tech economy: Google (now part of the parent company Alphabet), Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook.