HN Explorer

Ask HN: Should FAANG be renamed GAAF?

4 points by csa ↗ HN
Since Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are being investigated for anti-competitive behavior, I think that the collective of big tech companies should be relabeled as GAAF.

And let’s be honest, Netflix was always an outlier in those companies — they do business in a very different way.

To mark a move into a different tech era, shall we start referring to them as GAAF?

7 comments

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mytailorisrich
In France they usually use the acronym GAFA, which is your GAAF in a different order. Lately there is also GAFAM, with Microsoft added.
smt88
I'll never understand why Netflix was originally included and Microsoft wasn't.
detaro
Because it was a stock market term describing hot tech stocks, and Microsoft wasn't hot at the time.
smt88
Thanks for clarifying!

It's frustrating that it leaked out into wider usage, like in the tech industry itself. Microsoft often gets excluded in relevant discussions (e.g. privacy) as a result.

detaro
Yeah, it IMHO only makes sense to treat it as genericized term for "big tech company", not as the actual firms in the acronym.
rvz
If you use Alphabet instead of Google, Then it becomes: FAAAM.