What are the “big techs”? Where did this term come from?

If you follow news about technology, politics, or economics, you’ve probably come across the term “big tech” more than a few times. It shows up in headlines, in speeches by U.S. senators, in debates about data privacy, and almost always carrying a certain weight, as if it’s describing something too powerful to ignore.

But what does it actually mean? Where did the term come from? And why does it matter? Keep reading to find out.

What does “big tech” mean?

The literal translation is straightforward: “large technology.” In practice, the term refers to a group of technology companies with global scale, enormous market power, and a presence in the daily lives of billions of people.

Worth noting: “big tech” is not a technical, legal, or official concept. There’s no regulatory list by that name. It’s a shorthand, coined by the media and popularized through use, to describe the industry’s giants quickly and directly.

And the “big” here goes beyond size. It carries the idea of influence: economic, political, cultural. These companies don’t just sell products; they shape behaviors, set standards, and in many cases determine what shows up (or doesn’t) when you run a search or open a feed.

Where did the term come from?

A search through the LexisNexis news archive indicates that the term started gaining traction in mainstream media around 2013, the same year Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance by the NSA came to light.

Before that, the words “big” and “tech” appeared together only as part of longer expressions, like “big tech companies,” without the weight the term would later carry. When the PC and software industry emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s, companies like Microsoft and Apple were seen as young, irreverent, and rebellious, the opposite of what “big” typically evokes.

The shift in perception was gradual. In American history, the prefix “Big”, capitalized, isn’t usually used out of respect or admiration, but out of wariness and as a setup for confrontation. Think “Big Oil” and “Big Pharma”: terms that emerged when those industries came to be seen as concentrating too much power.

The same thing happened with tech companies. As Facebook, Google, and Amazon came to dominate entire markets and were called to testify before Congress on election interference and data practices, the term “big tech” gained both momentum and connotation.

Which companies are considered big techs?

There’s no official list, but the conversation tends to center on a core group: Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company). These five make up what analysts call the “Big Five”, or, in expanded versions, the acronyms FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) and MAMAA (Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet).

The term FANG was popularized by financial analysts Jim Cramer and Bob Lang in 2013. Cramer added Apple to the group in 2017, giving birth to FAANG. Over time, the acronym kept evolving: Netflix came under scrutiny for not keeping pace with the others’ growth, while Microsoft stepped into the spotlight after leading the race in AI investment.

The numbers speak to the level of power concentrated in these companies. The combined market capitalization of the FAANG group reached approximately $9 trillion in Q2 2024. To put that in perspective: the combined revenue of these five companies in 2023 was around $1.4 trillion, comparable to Spain’s GDP, which ranks between 14th and 15th among the world’s largest economies.

Beyond the American players, Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and ByteDance (owner of TikTok) are also part of the conversation, grouped under the acronym BATX.

Why do big techs generate so much debate?

The short answer: concentrated power tends to invite scrutiny, in politics, business, and society alike.

On the privacy front, these companies collect and process massive volumes of user data, raising serious questions about how that information is used and by whom. On the economic side, the accusation that they eliminate competitors before they can scale has become the subject of antitrust investigations in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.

In Europe, the debate took on legal form. The European Union identified 22 services from six companies, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft, as “core platform services” and required compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) by March 2024. Companies that fail to comply can be fined up to 10% of their global annual revenue; repeat violations can push that to 20%.

The regulator’s goal is to ensure that none of these companies use their size to crowd out competition or block new players from entering the digital market.

Is big tech the same as a startup or an IT company?

No. And the confusion is common.

Every big tech started as a startup: Amazon sold books out of a garage, Google began as a university project, Apple was founded in a garage in Cupertino. What sets them apart today is scale, a mature business model, and the level of influence they hold over their markets.

A technology company can be specialized, agile, and technically sophisticated without being a big tech. In fact, that’s often exactly where the competitive edge lies: smaller, focused companies tend to deliver what the giants can’t, proximity to the client, the flexibility to pivot quickly, and solutions genuinely designed around the actual problem.

Technology that works for your business

Understanding what big techs are helps put the technology ecosystem in perspective. They set trends, move markets, and build infrastructure that countless other companies rely on. But when it comes to digital transformation applied to your business, size is not the same as fit.

NextAge is a software development and IT outsourcing company that operates precisely in that space: where large corporations don’t show up with the agility the situation requires. With proprietary methodologies like NextAge’s Staff Augmentation and Nextflow AI, which integrates generative artificial intelligence directly into the development lifecycle, NextAge helps companies accelerate their digital products with high-performance squads, straightforward contracts, and a constant focus on delivering value.

If your company is looking for a technology partner to grow faster and with less friction, it’s worth getting to know how NextAge works.