How many Internet domains own MS, Google, Apple, Amazon? Try tens of millions

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According to the unexpected results of an experiment by the American tech journalist Kashmir Hill, that writes for Gizmodo, as reported online in this article, by a well-know UK newspaper:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/17/almost-impossible-to-function-without-big-five-tech-giants

Ms. Hill found that the reason she could not simply block all sites belonging to Google, Amazon, MS, Apple and Facebook, to disconnect completely from most of the things she was “addicted” to for five weeks, was that most of the remaining things on the Web, the ones necessary for her work, even if those sites she was interested in were about nothing remotely related to the Five Big Ones, nevertheless run in servers owned by one or another of five of those five companies, because, altogether, each of them (except for Facebook, the runt of the pack), according to her article, owns tens of millions of domains:

“Amazon owns 23.22m domains, Microsoft has 21.57m, Apple runs 16.78m and Google 8.72m. Facebook, surprisingly, turns out to have only a measly 122,880.”

So there you have it. Does this put the meaning of the expression ‘Big Tech’ a bit more in perspective?

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HiFlyer, Kirsty

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As a matter of semantics, internet domains don’t own companies, as your title suggests…

How many Internet domains own MS, Google, Apple, Amazon? Try tens of millions

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Barry

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Kirsty: With only 80 characters allowed for the title, we cannot always expect a style of writing that  Strunk & White would have approved of, can we?

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Indeed.

My brain says no the topic title.

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The government organisation I worked for at one time owned between 400 and 500 domains. I think it started when our url was ourname.gov.uk and ourname.co.uk was owned by a ladies’ hairdresser! We were a scientific organisation and it causes confusion.

Didn’t a young lad have googol.com at one time? I think Google bought it off him. In case anyone doesn’t know a googol is 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Google it!

I’m not surprised they all own so many.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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access-mdb wrote:

our url was ourname.gov.uk and ourname.co.uk was owned by a ladies’ hairdresser!

Job Cuts .co.uk? :p

access-mdb wrote:

The government organisation I worked for at one time owned between 400 and 500 domains … I’m not surprised they all own so many.

Last decade I had over 200 domains at one time, so no surprise the big dogs own that amount. Apart from a few personal ones, they were in case we decided to pursue various business lines—eg we were in the widget biz, & had bluewidget.com, greenwidget.com, gardenwidget.com, widgetinspace.com and so on. Dropped ~150 of them once our path clarified.

With all the product lines big companies have in so many countries & cities, plus protecting the main names, it can add up pretty quickly. Then there’s probably a whole defensive slurp going on too, like with patents—ie watching each other’s moves and countering them.

Lugh.
~
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OscarCP

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OscarCP wrote:

According to the unexpected results of an experiment by the American tech journalist Kashmir Hill, that writes for Gizmodo, as reported online in this article, by a well-know UK newspaper: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/17/almost-impossible-to-function-without-big-five-tech-giants              XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX   >> according to her article, owns tens of millions of domains: “Amazon owns 23.22m domains, Microsoft has 21.57m, Apple runs 16.78m and Google 8.72m. Facebook, surprisingly, turns out to have only a measly 122,880.” So there you have it. Does this put the meaning of the expression ‘Big Tech’ a bit more in perspective?

Hardly creditable tech writers if neither seem to know the difference betwixt domains and IP addresses.  Still an interesting eye opener if ones eyes have been shut for a decade

 

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Not knowing the difference between hosting a domain and owning a domain diminishes the effectiveness of the article.

--Joe

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jabeattyauditor

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Thanks. Perhaps you could let the author of the article know? He could pass your view of things to the Gizmodo writer that complained about not being able to get connected to those sites she still needed to access for her own work, because they were hosted by one or another of the Big Ones she was blocking, as an experiment in being less connected all the time, and then he could get you her comments on that. Also that way, the author could correct his article, to increase its effectiveness.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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The original author (Kashmir Hill @ Gizmodo) didn’t write the garbage printed by The Guardian. She specifically mentioned IP addresses, not domains, and generally sounds as if she has a clue. The Guardian was trying to cut several well-written articles into a single soundbite and failed miserably.

Here’s a link to the series.

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