Key takeaways from Scott Galloway's "The Four" (Amazon, FB, Apple, Google)

• Decline of brands:
• The importance of brand is declining in an era where fewer and fewer searches start with brands. Consumers are not seeing end of aisle displays, product specs, etc, before making purchase. When purchases are made by voice (i.e., through Alexa, etc) consumers won't know price, product design, etc. 
• Product search is done on Amazon, not Google
• Most "product" searches start on Amazon, not Google (55% of product searches start on Amazon, whereas 28% percent start on Google - remainder is mainly brand websites).
• "Searches for product are lucrative - they get healthy bids, as tehre may be a purchase at the end of it, vs. stalking your high-school crush. Amazon's search franchise may rival Google's in value someday, as the people looking to spend start their search at Amazon." -Pg 60
• Patient capital
• Amazon's success can largely be attributed to the very patient capital they get from issuing stock to investors who they have trained not to expect profits in return. They get cheap capital from investors then plunge it into expensive capital projects or consumer offerings that build a moat around them (e.g., their distribution network, or free two day delivery).
• And by not turning a profit, they don't pay taxes.
• A future without jobs
• Retail is the country's biggest employer
• "Entrepreneurs create jobs, right? No, they don't. Most entrepreneurs, at least in tech, leverage processing power and bandwidth to destroy jobs by offering more for less... The guy [Bezos] who has the greatest insight and influence into the future of the world's largest business (consumer retail) has come to the conclusion that there's no way the economy will be able to create, as it has done in the past, enough jobs to replace those being destroyed. [because he believes we need a universal minimum wage to protect all the workers who will lose their jobs]" - Pg 53
• "...we need business leaders who envision, and enact, a future with more jobs - not billionaires who want the government to fund, with taxes they avoid, social programs for people to sit on their couches and watch Netflix all day." - Pg 62
• "best of times for the remarkable, and the worst of times for the unremarkable." - Pg 61