Cable wars, mobile wars and cloud wars--the tech space is rarely, if ever, free from jousting; but these three have become so banal: There's new war being waged in the tech space, and everybody seems eager for a piece of the action.
Considered a monolith of performance by investors, FAANG stocks are about to become even more potent as they look to protect their turfs and earn new stripes in the catch-all of everything crypto--blockchain technology.
Keen not to let anyone steal their lunch money, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google are scrambling to develop their own blockchain ecosystems and associated services. Here's a brief primer of their respective initiatives:
Facebook Inc.(NASDAQ:FB)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is ever-vigilant to any threats that his company faces. He clearly showed his willingness to nip the competition in the bud (in a good way) when he doled out a cool $20 billion for Instagram and WhatsApp--because millennials find them cool.
Just a few days ago, Zuckerberg demonstrated that he's not about to let his guard down when he announced that he was setting up a blockchain team to be headed by an erstwhile Messenger executive.
And maybe not a day too soon. Blockchain technology's distributed ledger technology is an antithesis of Facebook's massive centrally-controlled infrastructure. A rival could one day create a vast FB-like network that's powered by blockchain where people hang out, chat and buy things. People would intuitively trust it knowing nobody's going to sell their private data to a third-party. That would spell disaster for FB.
Amazon Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Amazon is not only the world's largest online retailer but also owns the largest public cloud service, AWS. In April, Amazon launched AWS Blockchain Templates that can be used to create and deploy Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric frameworks. Amazon is aiming to become the go-to blockchain framework vendor and does not charge extra for using its blockchain resources. Related: Crypto Hedge Funds Post Best Gains In Years
Further, the company has entered into a partnership with blockchain startup, Kaleido. The partnership will help everyday AWS users an easy button to get into blockchain tech.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Apple is known for being a highly secretive company, choosing to remain silent about many rumored projects including a driverless car, a new spaceship HQ, and potential blockchain projects.
But just because it's been keeping schtum does not mean it's not doing it …
In December 2017, CoinDesk reported about Apple's patent filing that hints at blockchain-powered timestamps. The patent describes how blockchain's immutable ledger technology would be used to store timestamps in an incorruptible format while a multi-check architecture would allow another system to confirm blocks that are generated before they are added to the blockchain.
Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX)
NFLX stock has been FAANG's best performer by a mile, racking up an impressive 69-percent gain in the year-to-date and more than double second-placed AMZN stock's 34.3 percent.
It's a bit puzzling though that the giant video-streaming company has made no blockchain announcements yet, though of course like Apple it could be busy working under the radar.
Netflix is by no means immune to blockchain disruption, as this VentureBeat post aptly makes clear. Investors can therefore only hope that the company will soon come up with something concrete.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Alphabet's main subsidiary, Google, is the third-largest public cloud services vendor. It's therefore, probably not very surprising that just like Amazon, Google is keen to bring blockchain tech to its cloud.
Google plans to use blockchain to secure customer data on Google Cloud by developing a white label version that companies can use in their servers. Additionally, and again just like Amazon, Google has entered into partnerships with several blockchain startups including crypto wallet provider LedgerX.
By Alex Kimani for Safehaven.com
More Top Reads From Safehaven.com:
