23 January, 2018
World must 'wake up to threat from tech giants'
by Ben Marlow, in Davos
Telegraph.co.uk
Silicon Valley billionaire Marc Benioff has compared the current crisis of trust facing the tech giants to the financial crisis of a decade ago, urging regulators to wake up to the threat from Google, Facebook, and the other dominant firms.
The outspoken entrepreneur accused some of the industry's most influential bosses of "abdicating responsibility" and being ignorant to how powerful and sophisticated they had become. Regulators now had "have no choice" but to intervene, he said.
"We are in a new world. A decade ago, you had the banks talking about collaterised debt obligations and credit default swaps, saying they were great for the economy but regulators weren’t paying attention. The government needs to come in and point 'True North'," Mr Benioff said at a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Mr Benioff, founder and boss of cloud computing firm Salesforce, pointed to the way the tobacco industry and food producers had become more highly regulated. "There are a lots of examples from other industries," he said.
The call was backed by Sir Martin Sorrell, who said the "Seven Sisters" - Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and China's Alibaba and Tencent - had become too big. Comparing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to a modern-day John D Rockafeller, the chief executive of WPP, said "we are now in a position where they need to be regulated".
However, Ruth Porat, finance director of Google parent Alphabet, fought back, claiming that the company's recent shake-up, which had resulted in it being carved up into a series of a subsidiaries, "allows us to keep investing and improving the lives of billions of people".
Mr Benioff hit out at Uber, whose new boss Dara Khosrowshahi was also on the panel, claiming it had pursued growth above customer trust. "It was built for speed at any cost", which was "unacceptable in a world of connected products".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/01/23/worlds-tech-giants-abdicating-responsibility-says-salesforce/
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