Scott Galloway

In his highly provocative first book, Scott Galloway pulls back the curtain on exactly how Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google built their massive empires. While the media spins tales about superior products and designs, and the power of technological innovation, Galloway exposes the truth: none of these four are first movers technologically - they've either copied, stolen, or acquired their ideas. Readers will come away with fresh, game -changing insights about what it takes to win in today's economy. Print run 125,000.

The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

The Four

Lewis Ngugi

Quite something in this book. Totally spoke to me especially on the personal career section but the main message the author is putting across is 'Strategy'. How the Four have a stealing strategy to, how the Four have appealled to the human body, also to what a successful career strategy looks and other strategies. 

His belief that "Airbnb will surpass Uber's value by end of 2018" didn't come to pass sadly. 

In a nutshell, I was experiencing Abibliophobia when with this book.

Colleen

3 Stars
 
*An interesting but disordered look at some of the top companies in the world*
 

The Four was on the list of recommended reading at my work. Since I try to keep up on reading related to my field, and in hope of having something other than the weather to discuss at company events, I am working my way through that list.
 
This book provides a brief background on each company, their current business areas, and the ways in which they are growing and what that means for consumers and the economy. It is informative, but it also lacks focus and effectiveness.
 
One problem is that Galloway doesn’t stick to one metaphor. He has the whole horsemen of the apocalypse thing. Then there is his overly reductive view about all purchases being driven by subconscious primal urges for survival and sex. There were other metaphors thrown in higgledy-piggledy. It all became too muddled. Mixed metaphors do not make a strong message. The author goes for sensationalism.
 
The book also isn’t balanced. Some sections were dry bombardments of facts. Other sections dissolved into tangential rants. Galloway includes anecdotal experiences. He also has no qualms about piling on the self-promotion.
 
Another problem is that Galloway doesn’t have much of a likeability factor. And he is upfront about that. When people start throwing around words like “irreverent” to describe someone that is usually code for “rude.” Galloway seems smart, but he also seems like a total jerk. And he was trying so hard to be cool and shocking. But really, it takes more than swear words to impress me.
 
Galloway did remind me a bit of a professor I had in college. That professor also liked to swear a lot to shock people and was known for going off on tangential rants. His lectures were always entertaining. I learned about the proper use of Yiddish swearwords and the origin of the middle finger hand gesture. I did not, however, learn much about the actual intended coursework: The History of American Slavery. Like that course, I’m not sure how much I actually learned from this book. I would have gotten more out of a calmer and more rational book rather than the sensationalism and self-promotion featured in this book.
 
I’m glad I read the book, but I can’t point to any particular epiphany or live-changing words of wisdom. I think everyone, regardless of their field, should be aware of just how much market share (of multiple markets) that these companies are controlling. Because what these companies do has a HUGE impact on global economy. And that impact is only going to grow as “The Four” continue to cannibalize markets. This is a decent book if you want an overview of these companies and how they are changing all commerce. But The Four seems more impactful as a consumer guild than as the advertised business/career guide book.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 3 Stars
Writing Style: 3 Stars
Level of Captivation: 4 Stars
Attention to Details: 3 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 3 Stars
Objectivity: 2 Stars

Gavin

Not the book I thought it was: I wanted searching political / macroeconomic expose of the costs of monopoly, but this is shallow and glib work on a topic of great importance. Galloway's a marketing professor / entrepreneur, and so this is a weird mix of polemical and fawning. (OK, I should've guessed its genre from the thoughtless use of institutional "DNA" in the subtitle.) There's basically no politics in this: it's a primer for worried and pious businessmen more than consumers or citizens or engineers. It also uses "relevant" unironically as a quantity of ultimate importance ("Google had a market cap that topped $200 billion. But the Times was enormously relevant".

I enjoyed this 

 [education], the cartel that masquerades as a social good but is really a caste system


and this (though his counterproposal wouldn't change much either):

It is conventional wisdom that Steve Jobs put 'a dent in the universe.' No, he didn’t. Steve Jobs, in my view, spat on the universe. People who get up every morning, get their kids dressed, get them to school, and have an irrational passion for their kids’ well-being, dent the universe. The world needs more homes with engaged parents, not a better fucking phone.


He presents himself as a critical outsider, and a moralist, but in between his rants he is scarcely less fawning about a set of overpriced electronics: 

In those ten years, Apple introduced one earth-shaking, 100-billion-dollar, categorycreating new product or service after another. The iPod, iTunes/Apple Store, iPhone, and iPad ... there has never been anything like it.

The iPod's introduction, in late 2001 after the twin shocks of the bursting of the dot-com bubble and 9/11, played the same role as the Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan just months after the Kennedy assassination: it was a bright light in the darkness that signaled hope and optimism. 


And often his barbs are just glib. His full argument against Bezos' support for basic income:

What's clear is that we need business leaders who envision and enact a future with more jobs — not billionaires who want the government to fund, with taxes they avoid, social programs for people to sit on their couches and watch Netflix all day. Jeff, show some real fucking vision.



Besides the hollowness, there are dozens of minor errors or infelicities:

 Luxury is not an externality; it's in our genes. It combines our instinctive need to transcend the human condition and feel closer to divine perfection, with our desire to be more attractive to potential mates. 

(That's not what "externality" means.)


Because media companies only get a mildly insane valuation, and the Four are addicted to iconospheric valuations — hundreds of billions. 

("Ionospheric" rather)

 When Nietzsche proclaimed God is dead, it wasn't a victory cry but a lamentation on the loss of moral compass.

(1) "compass" makes for a really poor adjective, please don't do that; 2) that's a ludicrous reading, though less silly than the usual macho triumph one.)

 The effectiveness of prayer, the additional scrutiny determined, remains a matter of opinion.

(Sure, for a pejorative sense of "opinion".)


 [big data] signals the end of sampling and statistics - now you can just track the shopping pattern of every customer in every one of your stores

(1) this is the "n=all" dogma and, though very popular among people with bridges to sell, it is just not true - because no one ever has the full data set, because even if they did have a synchronous snapshot then we'd still need predictions to future data; 2) even if that were so, it certainly would not be the end of statistics, since sampling theory is a tiny subset of statistics.)


The genius of Google was there from day one, in September 1998, when Stanford students Sergey Brin and Larry Page designed a new web tool, called a search engine, that could skip across the internet in search of keywords.


Search was not a new tool: Knowbot (1989), Archie (1990), Wandex (1993), Mosaic...


 We saw the world differently and approached it from entirely different angles. My whole life has been a quest to gain relevance and fear of never achieving it, whereas Arthur's biggest fear (I believe) was losing it.

In what way are those two angles entirely different?

This was unintentionally revealing:

 Attractive things work better... When you wash and wax a car, it drives better, doesn't it? Or at least feels like it does.


And this:

 Malcolm Gladwell, the Jesus of business books...


There's the rub, I think. This is a business book, and since I haven't read any "business books" in years I was unprepared for its fawning, glibness, and applause lights. Galloway is no doubt in the right lane; it was I that drifted.

Skip it. The subject - this tiny set of untouchable, market-breaking corporations with large fanbases and financial carte blanche - is important to understand, too important to leave it to Galloway. Read Gibney, Levy, Stone, Mezrich, or Taplin instead.

Albert Dong

Great read. Scott makes well-supported comparisons of each one of the four largest tech firms (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google) with a primal human need that is both shocking and scary. His honesty and candor make it a great leisure read, even as the topics he addresses are not those that should be thought of leisurely. Would highly recommend to anyone looking to go into the tech world or to anyone looking to understand how our world became as it is

Felipe Saldarriaga 

Me gusta mucho la manera de escribir de Scott Galloway y hace muy entendible las cifras técnicas de cada empresa para posicionarlas como las Cuatro a las que hace mención desde la entrada del libro, quizás somos expectativas estaban más altas esperando profundizar mucho más en cada empresa pero me encontré con la sorpresa que los siguientes capítulos no me resultaron significativamente conectados con el propósito inicial.

Ivan Zarea

Four-star content. Easy to read, relevant, timely, somewhere even inspiring.

Two-star delivery. Irrelevant swearing, a disregard for empathy and a completely America first worldview.

So that's three stars. If you plan to read this, I suggest you do it soon - the book ages just as quickly as the internet it tries so hard to describe.

A few interesting facts and statistics. Good book for tech novices and people who'd like to know: what the f*ck ist going on with these tech giants. 
The author is mentioning a lot of different topics, from morality to coaching-style advices and do not deepen any of them.
A bit disappointed after really good recommendations.

Andrew Marti

Galloway reviews "The Four" and discusses their secret sauce and challenges ahead. The most surprising, and interesting, part of the book, is in the last few chapters. Galloway provides very frank and specific ideas for succeeding in this digital world, dominated by The Four. Instead of this book being a disconnected analysis of these behemoths, it becomes a roadmap for navigating this new world. Also surprising is Galloway's writing: never boring, often irreverent and very funny.

Luca Conti

Ryan Smith 

For all that’s been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway. Instead of buying the myths these companies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions. How did the Four infiltrate our lives so completely that they’re almost impossible to avoid (or boycott)? Why does the stock market forgive them for sins that would destroy other firms? And as they race to become the world’s first trillion-dollar company, can anyone challenge them? In the same irreverent style that has made him one of the world’s most celebrated business professors, Galloway deconstructs the strategies of the Four that lurk beneath their shiny veneers. He shows how they manipulate the fundamental emotional needs that have driven us since our ancestors lived in caves, at a speed and scope others can’t match. And he reveals how you can apply the lessons of their ascent to your own business or career. Whether you want to compete with them, do business with them, or simply live in the world they dominate, you need to understand the Four.

The Four The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

Reviews