Brad Stone

We see Google experimenting in so many places outside of its core search and advertising business, whether that's bringing broadband Internet to the world or funding an entirely separate company to pursue solutions to disease and mortality. Amazon's one of the few other companies that thinks as big as Google does.

Uber's issue, I think the biggest one is driverless cars. That could be a complete reset to the business.

Executives are rarely comfortable speaking on the record, particularly in secretive Silicon Valley companies.

Amazon may be the most beguiling company that ever existed, and it is just getting started. It is both missionary and mercenary... That has always been a potent combination.

Airbnb is a company with values around hospitality.

I don't think value to the customer is achieved at the expense of employees' welfare.

Certainly some hosts on Airbnb are opening up their spare bedrooms to meet new people; and some drivers use Uber to carpool with strangers for the companionship. But the most productive members of each community are professional operators, making available their homes or cars as a way to earn or supplement a living.

Amazon is famously run by studying and responding to its own data; yet when it comes to promotions, decisions are often subjective and guided by human emotions and petty political dynamics.

I spend a little bit of time exploring why the companies that were doing smartphone ride-hailing before Uber, why they failed.

On Sept. 12, 2016, there was a momentary realignment in the constellation of global business. For the first time, the five largest public corporations in the world by market capitalization were all technology companies: Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon.com, and Facebook.

I think it's a competitive advantage that both Amazon and Google and other tech companies have over a lot of their counterparts. They take big risks and are pioneering new markets with the promise of big rewards. It's why Amazon is kind of reliably starting new businesses and opening kind of new frontiers.

I think Facebook has a lot of work to do to make sure people are seeing meaningful things and not garbage.