Will today’s tech giants reach a century? It’s all about the quality of the product

theguardian.com:

A question: what’s the average lifespan of an American company? Not any old company, mind, but one big enough to figure in Standard and Poor’s index of the 500 largest. The answer is surprising: the seven-year rolling average stands at 19.9 years. Way back in 1965 it was 32 years and the projections are that the downward trend will continue.

Remember that we’re talking averages here. The trend doesn’t mean that no companies currently extant will get to their first century. Some almost certainly will, as some have in the past: AT&T, for example, is 137 years old; General Electric is 130; Ford is 119; IBM is 111; and General Motors is 106. But most companies wither or are gobbled up long before they qualify for a telegram from the president.

With that thought in mind, let us examine the giant tech corporations that now straddle the globe and overawe our legislators. Apple is 46 years old; Amazon is 28; Microsoft is 47; Google is 24; Meta (née Facebook) just 18.

Which of these, if any, is most likely to make it into three figures? The answer depends on two things: which ones are providing goods or services that the world really needs and which are most vulnerable to shifts in public opinion and political attitudes towards their activities and business models.

Viewed through that lens, Microsoft and Amazon look like sure bets. In the western world at least, every big organisation – public or private – runs on Microsoft software and operating systems. (In the NHS alone, there are probably more than a million PCs and laptops running Windows.) For its part, Amazon has already established itself as part of the logistical infrastructure of western societies. And between them, Amazon and Microsoft cloud-computing services host an