What is Google? It’s a search engine. What is Amazon? It’s an online bookstore. What is Facebook? It’s a place to connect with your friends. These are the simple, foundational ideas that got us to sign up and log in. We still think of these companies by their original purpose. But that original purpose is now just the front door to a completely different building. The core products of our biggest tech giants have been slowly and deliberately evolving, and the business they are in today is not the one we think it is.
Google: From Librarian to Library
Remember the old Google? It was a brilliantly simple tool. You asked a question, and it gave you a list of ten blue links that would send you away to another website to find the answer. Its job was to be the world’s best librarian. Today’s Google has a completely different goal: to keep you on the page. Ask a question now, and you get an “AI Overview,” a “Knowledge Panel,” or a featured snippet. The answer is right there. Google is no longer the librarian; it is the library. This shift wasn’t for our convenience; it was to ensure that Google, not some other website, gets to show you the ads and collect your data.
Amazon: The Bookstore That Became the Internet’s Landlord
Amazon started as a charmingly nerdy online bookstore. It then evolved into the “everything store,” selling every physical product imaginable. But the true evolution, the one that makes the most money, is almost invisible to us as shoppers. The real Amazon is Amazon Web Services (AWS). To run its massive online store, Amazon had to build a world-class cloud computing infrastructure. Then, they had a brilliant idea: why not rent that infrastructure out to other companies? Today, AWS is the silent backbone of a huge portion of the internet, powering everything from Netflix to NASA. The “everything store” is now the biggest and most profitable customer of the real Amazon: the internet’s landlord.
Facebook: From Social Network to Attention Engine
We all signed up for Facebook to see photos of our friends and family. It was a social utility, a way to keep in touch. Take a look at your feed today. It’s no longer a chronological list of what your friends are up to. It is a highly-addictive, algorithmically-curated firehose of viral videos, news articles, and posts from pages and groups you’ve never even heard of. Facebook’s core product evolved from a tool for social connection into a machine for harvesting human attention. Its goal is not to connect you with your friends; it’s to keep your eyeballs glued to the screen for as long as possible, because that’s what sells ads.
Apple: From Hardware Maker to Subscription Service
For decades, Apple was a simple company to understand: they made beautiful, expensive hardware. You bought an iPhone or a Mac, and that was the transaction. But look at their financial reports today. The fastest-growing part of their business is “Services.” This is the 30% cut they take from the App Store, the monthly fee for iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple TV+. The hardware is no longer just the product; it’s the beautiful, gilded cage that gets you into their ecosystem. The evolution of Apple is from a company that sells you a thing once to a company that sells you a dozen things every single month.
The Verdict: The Bait Was the Product
This evolution is not an accident. In each case, the original, simple, and beloved product was the “bait.” It was the tool that got us to trust the brand and integrate it into our lives. Once we were hooked, the product quietly evolved into a more complex, more profitable, and often more invasive machine. Understanding this evolution is critical because the simple bargain we think we’re making with these companies is not the one they are making with us.
