Controlling Everything

It’s the fantasy of each member of GAFA to control everything of the user:

• Email/Calendar/Contacts
• WiFi
• Hardware
• Social network
• Purchases

Of controlling the above, Google, Apple, and Amazon seem to be more along the path to have their own closed system. You can have a Google Home, connected to Google WiFi, accessing your Google info, and making purchases through Google Express (on that thought… a weird thing is ordering on Google Express from Whole Foods, owned by Amazon); Using an iPhone accessing Airport to send photos to iCloud; Using the Echo with an Amazon Prime Account.

This is why it’s interesting that there are rumours Facebook is working on its own hardware. Hardware opens up a wealth of information on user behaviour. While this information still needs to be interpreted to be useful (e.g. user presence, number of people in a household, sleep patterns, etc), it ultimately can be used to inform advertising or sales opportunities to consumers. We have to always remember that when we bring in new devices into the home.