A cursory glance at the myriad apps and platforms that clutter our online lives would suggest rich competition. In reality, online diversity — now a reflection of offline competition — is in long-term decline.
The online economy’s lack of diversity can be seen most clearly in technology itself where in most of the Western world Google dominates search unchallenged; Facebook reigns supreme in social media and Amazon rules in online retail.
But it’s not limited to the technology space - recent research examining global competition across all industries over the last decade finds that across all industries a small number of companies (as represented by the domains they control) account for an ever increasing share of the total online attention..
