The Four

How have a handful of firms come to dictate how you shop, socialize, search, and even think? In The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, Scott Galloway explores the anatomy of modern corporate dominance—examining how these four companies have embedded themselves into every fiber of your life and reshaped what it means to succeed in the digital age.

Galloway argues that the success of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—the Four Horsemen—cannot be explained solely by technology or business acumen. Each company has tapped into a fundamental aspect of human nature: consumer desire, love, connection, or the search for meaning. Together, they represent the commercialization of our most basic instincts: Amazon channels our drive to accumulate, Apple embodies our yearning for beauty and status, Facebook feeds our hunger for connection, and Google satisfies our thirst for knowledge and certainty.

A New Kind of Empire

Galloway insists that these companies function as modern-day empires—privately controlled ecosystems rivaling nations in reach and wealth. Amazon dominates commerce, controlling half of U.S. e-commerce growth; Apple commands an almost religious following with products that blur technology and luxury; Facebook has redefined community for billions; and Google stands as an all-knowing oracle of information. Collectively, they influence what we buy, how we communicate, and even how we interpret truth.

According to Galloway, their power stems from two forces: their ability to leverage our instincts and their mastery of scale and intelligence. Rather than simply inventing technology, they reinvented how technology interacts with human emotion—merging machine efficiency with human vulnerability.

The DNA of Dominance

Each Horseman embodies an archetype of human need. Amazon appeals to consumption and survival—our hunter-gatherer instinct to hoard goods and seek convenience. Apple seduces through beauty and sexuality, cultivating luxury and identity as a modern religion. Facebook satisfies emotional and social cravings by monetizing connection and love. Google represents intellect and faith, playing the role once reserved for priests and philosophers.

The companies differ in mission but share common DNA: a relentless focus on the user, vertical control over their ecosystems, an ability to scale globally, and a mastery of data. Each of them grows smarter with every click, each crafting the illusion of a benevolent partner while quietly absorbing enormous power and wealth. Together, Galloway suggests, they represent the most successful colonization of human attention in history.

Human Instinct Meets Digital Exploitation

Behind their sleek design and customer obsession, these firms exploit the same biological and psychological impulses that once fueled religion and tribalism. Amazon’s relentless convenience feeds our drive for resource security. Apple’s minimalist perfection offers transcendence. Facebook’s endless stream of validation through likes rewards us with dopamine hits. Google, meanwhile, absorbs our doubts, offering certainty in an uncertain world. They are, as Galloway says, the “Four Horsemen of god, love, sex, and consumption.”

“No other firms in history have combined the reach of nations, the intimacy of religion, and the precision of modern science like these four.”

Why It Matters

Understanding the Four isn’t just an academic exercise—it’s the key to understanding your economy, your career, and even your private life. Galloway shows how they’ve reshaped entire industries, hollowed out traditional media, destroyed millions of retail jobs, and redefined success around digital scale. Their dominance, however, comes with consequences: the erosion of privacy, the polarization of politics, and the concentration of wealth among a tiny elite.

Through these pages, you’ll explore how Amazon weaponized consumer convenience, how Apple turned design into dogma, how Facebook blurred the line between love and surveillance, and how Google became a digital deity. You’ll also see how their playbooks—relentless user focus, data mastery, global ambition, and likable storytelling—can help ambitious people and companies survive in a world they’ve remade. And beneath it all lies Galloway’s haunting question: if the Horsemen define the modern world, what comes after them—and who, or what, will ride next?

Scott Galloway paints Amazon as the great white shark of retail: a predator that never stops moving and devours everything in its path. At its core, Amazon’s genius isn’t just logistics—it’s anthropology. Jeff Bezos built a company that taps into humanity’s most primal instinct: our endless urge to gather, collect, and stockpile for survival. When you click “Buy Now,” you’re not just shopping; you’re echoing a million years of hunter-gatherer behavior refined into algorithmic efficiency.

Instinct Meets Infrastructure

Galloway takes us back to prehistory, where the women of the tribe gathered and the men hunted—roles that built distinct psychological drives. The gatherer’s obsession to collect extended to today’s consumerism. Amazon capitalizes on that instinct by offering an infinite digital marketplace. It removes the friction of scarcity and replaces it with the abundance of instant gratification. With one click, Bezos turned hoarding into habit and consumption into an unconscious compulsion.

But while the behavioral coding is ancient, the infrastructure is futuristic. Amazon’s massive investment in warehouses, robotics, and last-mile logistics redefines convenience. It spends billions to let you save seconds, compressing commerce into near thought-speed. As Galloway notes, this frictionless experience—what he calls the removal of pain—is the defining business principle of the digital age.

Storytelling: The Cheapest Capital on Earth

Amazon’s empire wasn’t built on profits—it was built on a story. Bezos’ ability to persuade investors that short-term losses would lead to long-term monopoly gave Amazon access to cheap capital for two decades. Galloway calls this “visionary capital”—a narrative so compelling that markets reward the storyteller with billions. While other CEOs cut costs to satisfy quarterly earnings, Bezos poured cash into infrastructure and experimentation. “It’s impossible,” Galloway quips, “to compete with a company that doesn’t need to make money.”

Failures like the Fire Phone weren’t fatal—they were lessons in agility. Amazon treats misfires as research and doubles down when success hits. This willingness to take “Type 2” risks—experiments you can reverse—builds resilience and cultural speed. It’s the same principle Bezos applied to successful bets like Prime, AWS, and Alexa, which now anchor entire galaxies of profitability and data collection.

The Dark Side of Efficiency

Amazon’s relentless drive has made commerce frictionless but not harmless. Galloway notes that its efficiency obliterates competitors and jobs alike. By 2016, Amazon’s growth correlated directly with brick-and-mortar collapse: malls hollowed out, thousands unemployed. Even Walmart, the original “price killer,” became prey. Amazon’s automation expands its margins but contracts the workforce—it’s capitalism without compassion, efficiency without equilibrium.

Bezos’s vision also morphs Amazon from a store into a utility. With Echo, Alexa, drones, and a growing logistics network, Amazon doesn’t just sell goods—it seeks to privatize consumption itself. The ultimate goal, Galloway warns, is “zero-click ordering,” where Amazon predicts and ships before you choose. The company dreams of knowing what you want before you do—a digital reincarnation of the hunter anticipating the prey.

“Amazon isn’t about selling more things to more people—it’s about removing thinking from buying. Convenience is its religion; your data, its tithe.”

Amazon’s future, Galloway argues, is inevitable dominance but also moral danger. Like the industrial barons of the past, it concentrates power and capital while erasing the middle class that once sustained the economy. By turning work into algorithms and shopping into reflex, Bezos may usher in an age where consumption is effortless—and employment optional.

Apple, Galloway argues, is the first tech company to transcend technology—it sells transcendence itself. While other firms aim for utility, Apple aspires to luxury, blending artistry, identity, and religion into one seamless ecosystem. Its logo doesn’t just mark devices; it brands the modern self. To own an iPhone is to signal status, intelligence, and belonging to the creative elite. Steve Jobs didn’t just create products; he created worshippers.

The Church of Steve Jobs

Galloway compares Jobs to a modern prophet—part visionary, part tyrant. Like Moses with a MacBook, he led followers toward “Think Different,” a mantra that became scripture for innovators. His key insight was that technology needed emotion. The beige boxes of the 1980s appealed to the brain; the iMac appealed to the heart and genitals. With its curves, simplicity, and aesthetic minimalism, Apple made hardware sexy.

In Galloway’s words, Apple mastered luxury through design: scarcity, beauty, and belonging. Its retail stores are temples—clean, luminous spaces where customers experience ritualized devotion. The “genius bar” is a confessional booth, and the worshipers line up overnight for communion in the form of the latest iPhone. This design religion doesn’t preach salvation in heaven but in the palms of your hands.

Luxury as Strategy

Apple occupies the rare position of being both the low-cost producer and the premium brand. With 14% global smartphone share, it reaps 79% of the industry’s profits—a margin luxury automakers envy. The secret lies in moving down the human torso—from brain (rational product) to heart (emotional brand) to genitals (desire and status). You don’t buy an Apple Watch because you need one; you buy it because it whispers, “You matter.”

Like Chanel or Ferrari, Apple has mastered vertical integration: it designs the product, controls the store, manages the aesthetics, and influences every detail of the experience. Jobs understood that control breeds consistency; control turns commerce into theatre. That’s why Apple stores earn more per square foot than any other retailer in history.

From Technology to Theology

Even Apple’s rebellion has moral undertones. When the FBI sought to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone in 2015, Apple refused, positioning itself as the guardian of the modern soul—privacy. This, Galloway argues, wasn’t just legal posturing; it was theological branding. Apple cast itself as the defender of personal sanctity against intrusive governments and tech rivals. It transcended corporate identity to become a symbol of virtue.

“Steve Jobs created not the most profitable company on earth, but the first major religion of capitalism.”

Apple proves that in an age of abundance, people no longer buy for need but for narrative. The act of purchasing an iPhone is a declaration of belief in innovation, individuality, and immortality—what every faith promises, only sleeker and rechargeable. And while Jobs is gone, his cult endures, updated annually—with slightly better cameras.

Facebook’s empire, Galloway writes, was built on the oldest human drive of all: the longing to connect. At its best, it delivers joy, belonging, and even love. At its worst, it commodifies intimacy, turning our personal lives into advertising data. Beneath the friendly blue interface lies the most powerful psychological engine ever built—the systematic monetization of human relationships.

The Dopamine Machine

Every “Like” is a micro-dose of validation. Galloway compares Facebook to a slot machine—variable rewards triggering the brain’s pleasure circuits. The company has transformed social currency into literal currency, feeding you a constant stream of stimuli optimized by algorithms that know your preferences better than your friends do. A post about a new relationship or a newborn baby sends dopamine spikes rippling across the network, and advertisers pay to ride those waves.

Behind the scenes, Facebook’s machine observes and learns. Each click, pause, and scroll becomes data in its global hive mind. This intimacy gives it a unique power: it doesn’t just know what you look at—it anticipates what will keep you looking. Its success comes from straddling the entire human condition: love, fear, outrage, envy. No previous media company has ever penetrated so deeply into our private lives.

Connection or Control?

Galloway calls Facebook’s public persona “the bait”—a place for friendship and self-expression. But the real product isn’t the app—it’s you. Every smiling family photo, every heartbreak post, every #blessed brunch snapshot is behavioral data fed to advertisers and politicians. The 2016 Trump and Brexit campaigns, powered by Cambridge Analytica, mined these insights for microtargeted persuasion, proving that sentiment analysis isn’t just for selling shoes—it can sway democracies.

Yet Galloway doesn’t render Facebook purely villainous. He acknowledges its role in reuniting loved ones, collapsing distances, even nurturing empathy on a global scale. Social platforms arguably reduce violence by making strangers visible to one another—an extension of the ancient tribal circle. Still, the same mechanisms also amplify outrage and misinformation, pulling users into echo chambers that reinforce identity over truth.

The Cold War of Privacy and Relevance

Today, users consciously trade privacy for relevance, convenience, and belonging. When you accept Facebook’s terms, you volunteer for surveillance because it feels worth it. “If you’re on social media,” Galloway writes, “you’ve decided privacy is less valuable than your ego.” But the long-term consequences—social fragmentation, addiction, fake news—are real. Facebook is both medicine and poison, love story and cautionary tale.

“The business model of Facebook is emotion. Every outrage, every reunion, every heartbreak is inventory.”

To survive ethically, Galloway suggests, Facebook must accept responsibility as a media company—not a neutral platform. Until then, it will continue to serve both our best and worst selves, connecting billions while quietly dividing them. Its true product isn’t connection; it’s the manipulation of connection for profit.

If Facebook monetizes love, Google monetizes faith. Galloway casts Google as the modern world’s god—a benevolent, omniscient entity to which billions turn daily for answers once reserved for priests. We whisper our secrets, our fears, and our hopes into its search box, trusting it with an intimacy that outstrips our closest friends. Every query is a prayer typed into the void—and Google always answers.

Omniscience and Trust

Google’s genius lies in how it earned our reverence: through accuracy and neutrality. By giving users the best answers, not the highest bidders, it built a bond of devotion. Unlike governments or churches, it provides certainty without judgment. Over time, that trust has turned it into a cognitive prosthesis—an external brain that extends human memory. One in six Google searches has never been asked before, proof that people confide in it questions too private for any conversation.

The Power of the Algorithm

Behind this faith lies the algorithm—Google’s sacred text. Galloway likens it to an evolving priesthood of code interpreting the world’s data. But this digital theology isn’t without sin. Publishers, newspapers, and entire industries sacrificed themselves at Google’s altar, trading free content for fleeting traffic. The result: a global information monopoly. By 2016, Google and Facebook captured over 90% of all digital ad growth, leaving traditional media fighting for scraps.

Yet power invites prophecy and peril. Google now knows your intentions before you act. Its predictive analytics can anticipate crime, disease, even romance. Galloway warns that this divine foresight blurs ethics—if algorithms know what we’ll do, do we still have free will? And who’s accountable when the machine’s knowledge shapes rather than serves humanity?

“When you search your soul, it’s Google that answers.”

Galloway ends where philosophy begins: with awe and fear. Google made knowledge free, democratizing access to truth, but in doing so it became the most powerful arbiter of it. In the church of information, algorithms are gods and we are the congregation. And like faith, our devotion is both our salvation and our surrender.

In analyzing what makes the Four Horsemen so unstoppable, Galloway develops a blueprint he calls the T Algorithm—eight traits shared by trillion-dollar firms. It’s both diagnosis and prescription: if you want to build the next giant, you must think like a horseman.

1. Product Differentiation

First, the product must truly be better—not just marketed better. Amazon’s frictionless checkout, Apple’s design purity, Google’s reliable search results, and Facebook’s addictiveness all deliver tangible superiority. Advertising cannot save mediocrity when consumers can instantly compare. In this era, removing friction is more valuable than adding features.

2. Visionary Capital

Great firms attract cheap money by promising grand missions. Bezos vowed to build “Earth’s Biggest Store.” Google would “organize the world’s information.” These stories reduced investor skepticism to faith. Capital, like love, flows to conviction.

3. Global Reach & 4. Likability

To dominate markets, companies must cross borders and win hearts. Each Horseman is global because its product transcends culture. But likability matters too. Regulators harassed Microsoft’s Bill Gates; they applauded Zuckerberg and Page. The public forgives charming disruptors longer than despised monopolists—a truth as old as politics.

5. Vertical Integration

Owning the customer experience, from product creation to service, protects brand equity. Apple’s stores, Amazon’s warehouses, and Google’s Android ecosystem keep competitors locked out. Middlemen die; ecosystems thrive.

6. Artificial Intelligence

AI turns scale into intelligence. As users feed data, the product improves. Netflix recommendations, Facebook news feeds, and Google results refine themselves. Galloway notes that this “Benjamin Button effect”—products that age in reverse—creates compounding advantage. The more you use them, the smarter they get—and the dumber competitors look.

7. Accelerant & 8. Geography

The best firms attract the best people by accelerating careers—offering prestige and learning velocity rather than comfort. Unsurprisingly, most are rooted near elite universities (Stanford for Silicon Valley, University of Washington for Amazon). Talent clusters like wealth—and geography becomes destiny.

“A trillion-dollar company isn’t built by code or capital—it’s built by cults: of product, purpose, and people.”

In the end, the T Algorithm isn’t just corporate strategy—it’s a mirror for the age. It explains why some firms achieve immortality while others fade. Galloway’s lesson: the next great empire won’t sell new things. It will redefine what it means to be human in a digital world.

In his closing chapters, Galloway challenges you to consider what happens when four companies become too powerful to fail. The rise of the Four has made life faster, easier, and in some ways richer—but also more unequal. Their efficiency has created extreme productivity and extreme concentration. Each new job at Amazon erases dozens elsewhere. Each social platform meant to unite us often divides us instead.

The Cost of Worship

The Four occupy a quasi-religious role in society—offering connection, comfort, or control. But their ascendancy also signals a collapse of old institutions. Churches, newspapers, and even governments are losing social trust to digital gods. The result is a world where personal data replaces faith as currency, and your attention is the altar at which economies pray.

Galloway warns that this concentration of private power threatens democracy itself. When one company can engineer behavior across billions, the balance between citizen and corporation skews dangerously. We have more convenience and less agency. “Power corrupts,” he writes, “especially when disguised as progress.”

Hope in Understanding

Yet Galloway is no doomsayer. He believes that recognizing the forces shaping our world gives us leverage over them. By studying the Four, you learn not just how they dominate but how to compete: through authenticity, creativity, and empathy—the uniquely human strengths machines can’t scale. The future belongs to those who learn the Horsemen’s language without losing their soul.

“It’s never been easier to be a billionaire, but never been harder to be a millionaire.”

For Galloway, the lesson is simple but urgent: you can’t fight the Four by rejecting them—you must understand them, then humanize what they’ve made mechanical. The next great revolution will not be technological; it will be moral. And it will decide whether the gods of the digital age will serve humanity—or consume it.