The Four
Scott Galloway builds a portrait of the four dominant American technology companies and argues that they succeed by hijacking human instincts he calls the brain, the heart, the genitals, and the gut. He tracks how Amazon exploits our craving for security, Google our need for answers, Facebook our hunger for connection, and Apple our search for meaning through consumption, and how each has used that grip to accumulate market power previously reserved for nation-states. The chapters mix strategic analysis with pointed reporting on how these companies avoid tax, hollow out competitors, and reshape work. Galloway is not neutral, and he closes with a call for antitrust action and career advice for young readers who will spend their lives working around these platforms. The book made his reputation as a business commentator and set the frame for the podcasts, courses, and books that followed.
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What you might want to know about The Four
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Scott Galloway dissects Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google as the four horsemen of the modern economy, and asks what they cost the society they run.
Galloway wrote The Four and describes it as the book that establishes the framework he uses in nearly all of his later work on big tech and market power.
The company profiles date to 2017 and some details have shifted, but the underlying analysis of platform dominance has become more relevant, not less, since publication.
The Four was written by Scott Galloway, published in 2017 by Portfolio.
The Four is 320 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Four takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Four is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.