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  • Professor Scott Galloway: Amazon May Spin Off AWS

    Professor Scott Galloway: Amazon May Spin Off AWS

    Amid increased antitrust scrutiny, at least one expert is predicting Jeff Bezos and Amazon may spin off AWS.

    AWS is currently the dominant cloud provider, with 31% of the cloud computing market. At the same time, Amazon is a major force in the e-commerce market, and several of its acquisitions have helped it became a significant player in other industries. Whole Foods, Ring and Twitch are just a few of the acquisitions that have made Amazon a powerhouse far beyond its original form.

    The company’s expansion into other markets has drawn the attention of the government, as it looks closely at Big Tech in general. While the current scrutiny has come under a Republican administration, Democrats traditionally come down even harder on big business, raising the stakes with an incoming Biden/Harris administration.

    Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern School of Business, spoke with CNN’s Michael Smerconish about the antitrust challenges facing tech companies.

    “It’s a real concern for all of them. There’s already a case against Google, which I think the Biden/Harris administration will pick up. The shadow of the Biden/Harris administration has already resulted in more change at Facebook and Twitter than we’ve seen in a long time. [They’ve] made huge efforts to try and stop the spread of misinformation around the COVID-19. And I would argue that it’s tantamount to teens who have held a great party and their parents are coming home, and they’re trying to clean up their act.”

    Professor Galloway then spoke specifically about the lengths Amazon may go to avoid antitrust issues.

    “As it relates to Amazon, it will be Google, then likely Facebook for antitrust action. I do think it will happen to Amazon, but not until those two are done. I personally think Jeff Bezos, who’s the smartest businessperson in the world, will likely spin AWS prophylactically. And my prediction, Michael, is that in the year 2025, the most valuable company in the world will be a recently spun, independent AWS. The largest, most profitable cloud company in the world would be a stock that everyone would own.”

  • Google Most Reputable in Harris’ Annual RQ Poll

    Harris Interactive has just released its annual Reputation Quotient Report, the survey that ranks top “visible” companies based on the U.S. general public’s impressions of the company’s reputation.  This year, we have a new most reputable company in America – Google.

    This year marks the 12th consecutive year that Harris has released the RQ poll.  This years’ poll looked at 60 top companies.  The poll took an online format and involved 30,104 people.  The “Reputation Quotient” is a number score out of 100 that is based on six categories of review – social responsibility, emotional appeal, products & services, workplace environment, financial performance and vision & leadership.  Scores are broken into rankings – 80+ being excellent, 75-80 very good, 70-75 good and 65-70 fair.

    Google topped the poll with a combined score of 84.05, which is excellent.  Google ranked in the top 5 on all but one of the previously named categories of review.  The one from which they fell out of the top 5? Emotional appeal.  Johnson & Johnson placed second for the second year in a row with a score of 83.13.  3M rounded out the top 3 with a score of 82.56.

    Last year’s winner Berkshire Hathaway fell to fourth place and with recent location tracking issues not a factor in the survey, Apple made a big move from 12th to 5th.

    The bottom three on the list of 60 are Goldman Sachs, BP, and AIG – three companies who have had their share of bad press in the past few years.  AIG’s score was a meager 47.77, almost 20 points away from just a fair rating.

    Here are the rankings for each category:

    An interesting find within the survey is that overall reputation rankings of all industry are up from last year.  Is it possible that people are at least attempting to restore trust for some maligned sectors?  Financial services sector positive rankings jumped up 6 percent from 2010.  No industry declined.  Even the Tobacco Industry held firm at 11% positive ratings.

    The most positively viewed sector is Tech, with a 75% positive rating.  The biggest jump in approval ratings was within the automotive sector, improving 15 points over the course of the year.

    So what characteristics makes a company fall into that good-excellent reputation rating?  Here is Harris’ observation:

    Companies that receive good-excellent reputation ratings are those that can be characterized as companies that “support the infrastructure” of the lives of the American public, both personally and professionally.  These infrastructure companies fall into two camps.
    –    Those that are so solidly reliable that they let me perform my personal and work tasks without having to think about them
    •    This is particularly true of those that are part of the long-term elite reputation companies

    –    Those that delight me or enrich my life
    •    With minor exception, this is true of those companies that are on the path to join the long-term reputation elite

    What is the long term reputation elite that they refer to?  It describes companies that have received a 75+ rating for the past 10 years.  These companies include Johnson & Johnson, Sony, 3M, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, UPS and FedEx.

    Wonder if Google can become one of these long term elite companies?