Without everything else Google makes — email, maps, calendar, translation software, photo storage<br />and the Android mobile operating system, which I’d need after ditching Apple — I’d be relegated to a life of some poor soul from long ago (say, 1992).<br />So, last week I came up with a fun game: If an evil, tech-phobic monarch forced you to abandon each of the Frightful Five, in which order would you do so,<br />and how much would your life deteriorate as a result?<br />When the whole process was over, I realized something incredible: To navigate all of the niggling details surrounding this one commercial transaction — figuring out what to buy, which accessories I needed, how<br />and where to install it, and whom to hire to do so — I had dealt with only a single ubiquitous corporation: Amazon.<br />What’s more, with its Echos, Fire TV devices, audiobooks, movies and TV shows, Amazon has become, for my family, more than a mere store.<br />As I began combing through other recent household decisions, I found<br />that in 2016, nearly 10 percent of my household’s commercial transactions flowed through the Seattle retailer, more by far than any other company my family dealt with.<br />I suspect that if you closely examine your own life, there’s a good chance some other technology company<br />occupies the same role for you as Amazon does for me: as warden of a very comfortable corporate prison.<br />Every year since, as my life got busier and accreted more responsibility (in other words, as I became more<br />and more of a stereotypical dad), Amazon took on an ever-greater role in my life.<br />(Apple reached $800 billion in market capitalization this week, the first of any public company to do so, and the others may not be far behind.)
