In the age of the internet, we’ve come to understand that the free market doesn’t always favor competition. Sometimes, consumers get the most benefit when everyone uses the same thing. That’s why there’s an ongoing war in tech to be the most powerful platform, the thing that everyone uses to do everything.
The iPhone is a platform. Windows is a platform. Your Gooogle account is a platform. They each have this in common: the more people that use it, the better it gets. That’s why it’s so unsatisfying to add a new app these days, because with low adoption it’s hard to find someone you actually know using it.
When a company is able to create a platform that we use to socialize, consume entertainment, pay our bills and buy stuff through, that company will have created a platform to rule all platforms. In that way, it’s like the quest for Westeros’ Iron Throne in Game of Thrones, and when you play Silicon Valley’s game of thrones, either you win or you atrophy down into irrelevance. Just ask Myspace.
So with Game of Thrones season seven just ending, we got to thinking: which big tech company most resembles each of the great houses in Game of Thrones? We put our picks into the slideshow above.
Note: We had basically written this before checking to see if anyone else had ever had the same idea. Turns out, some had. Not all our answers are the same, though, but let’s give credit where credit is due: Thrillist did it for the Bay Area in 2014, an intranet startup called WeVue did it on its blog in 2015, and Wired UK did it on Twitter earlier this year.