Land of the Giants

By Recode

Technology Tech News Business

What's Land of the Giants about?

Today’s “information age” is predominantly powered by five major technology companies: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google – or “FAANG”. Each season, we’ll dive into one corporation and examine the ways it’s changed our lives – for better and for worse. Produced by the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Planet YouTube

03.02.2021

When Google bought YouTube, it went from being a company that helps users search the Internet, to a company that shapes the Internet itself. With 2 billion users, YouTube generates its own gravitational pull on society and culture worldwide. And ...

Land of the Giants episodes:

03.02.2021 Planet YouTube When Google bought YouTube, it went from being a company that helps users search the Internet, to a company that shapes the Internet itself. With 2 billion users, YouTube generates its own gravitational pull on society and culture worldwide. And ...
02.23.2021 Chrome and the Android Wars Today, nearly all of the world's smartphones are powered by Android. Which means Google is the gatekeeper to the Internet for billions of people. The story of Android is the story of how Google became so big. And it started ...
02.16.2021 The Search Begins Some of the core values that built Google's runaway success — innovative technology to the max, an intellectually playful and open culture, and a corporate aspiration to do good ("Don’t be evil") — set it up for the existential questions ...
02.09.2021 The Google Empire In Land of the Giants: The Google Empire, Recode’s Shirin Ghaffary and Big Technology's Alex Kantrowitz explore how a company that began with idealistic goals of creative experimentation and making useful products has turned into a worldwide power with enormous ...
10.15.2020 Go For Broke: Inside the Dot-Com Bubble While you wait for the next season of Land of the Giants, we have another podcast we think you'll like. Go For Broke is a new series from the Vox Media Podcast Network and Epic Magazine exploring the frenzy of ...
08.04.2020 World War Stream The "streaming wars" are here, but they're not what you think—or rather, where you think. While competitors are duking it out in the US, Netflix wants to take over the world. Hosts: Peter Kafka & Rani Molla This podcast is ...
07.28.2020 Money to burn; why Wall Street loves NFLX Netflix owes around $15 billion, yet it continues to spend money billions each year to fund its original programming. Is this a brilliant move to set it apart from the competition or a house of cards ready to collapse? Hosts: ...
07.21.2020 Netflix is Hollywood \| Part 2 Netflix hasn’t just disrupted Hollywood, it has become Hollywood. How has that changed the lives of studio executives, movie producers and creators in the entertainment industry? A lot. Hosts: Peter Kafka & Rani Molla This podcast is a production of ...
07.14.2020 Netflix vs. Hollywood \| Part 1 Loaning out shows and movies to Netflix used to be a great way for studios to make a little money on the side, until they realized they were training audiences everywhere to watch Netflix. In this episode, we look at ...
07.07.2020 Did the algorithm make you watch Tiger King? Netflix’s recommendation algorithm is supposed to find you TV and movies that you’ll like — and that will keep you paying for Netflix. But is Netflix really showing you stuff you want to watch, or just stuff that Netflix made? ...
06.30.2020 Who really killed Blockbuster Video? Netflix killed our trips to the video store and ushered in the streaming era. But when Netflix started out, it was a fraction of the size of Blockbuster. It should have been crushed, and almost was. What went wrong? Hosts: ...
06.23.2020 “Netflix is a team, not a family” Is working on a team of all-stars, excellent pay, and unlimited vacation worth the stress of constant criticism from co-workers and the knowledge that your boss is considering whether to replace you? Netflix execs will tell you that their internal ...
06.15.2020 The Netflix Effect In Land of the Giants: The Netflix Effect, Recode’s Peter Kafka and Rani Molla examine how Netflix got where it is today and whether or not it can maintain its streaming supremacy. Hear from Netflix’s founders and top executives as ...
11.26.2019 Amazon's Middlewomen Why do so many Amazon packages take a pitstop in the small town of Roundup, Montana? Find out in this episode of Reset, the new tech podcast from Recode and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Jason Del Rey and Reset ...
09.12.2019 'I love Amazon. Let’s break it up' In the final episode of our season on Amazon, NYU professor and “Pivot” podcast co-host Scott Galloway tells Jason Del Rey that Amazon needs to be broken up - and which parts of the company should be spun off first. ...
08.27.2019 Is Amazon Too Big? We Ask Its Sellers Small businesses and major brands alike rely on Amazon but are increasingly ambivalent about selling on the platform. The Amazon Marketplace is a battle royale of millions of sellers and declining profit margins. Meanwhile, Amazon is building its own branded ...
08.20.2019 How Amazon Charmed Wall Street When Amazon became a publicly traded company in 1997, it was losing money. And it wouldn’t turn a profit for years. So how did it convince Wall Street to do something unprecedented: Turn a blind eye to profit? And how ...
08.13.2019 Why the Robot Revolution is Our Fault In recent years Amazon has quietly become one of the leaders in automation, reshaping its workforce of nearly 600,000 workers, and the way humans work with robots. We fear robots taking over the world, but do we understand just how ...
08.06.2019 When Amazon Leaves Your Town In 1999, Amazon opened one of its first warehouses in the small town of Coffeyville, Kansas. Fifteen years later, it closed. We visit Coffeyville to learn what Amazon can bring and what it can take away, and what lessons Coffeyville ...
07.30.2019 Alexa, What's Amazon Doing Inside My Home? Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant can tell you the weather, operate home appliances, and video chat family members. Alexa aims to be the centerpiece of the “smart home” connected to the Internet. It can lull us with the convenience, but what’s ...
07.23.2019 Why You’ll Never Quit Amazon Prime With over 100 million members, Prime is the engine that’s made Amazon a retailing juggernaut and one of the largest companies in the world. Jason Del Rey explores how Prime came to be, why it’s so effective at keeping us ...
07.22.2019 The Rise of Amazon Examine how the biggest tech companies rose to power, and what they're doing with that power. In season one, The Rise of Amazon, Recode's senior commerce correspondent Jason Del Rey traces how Jeff Bezos transformed Amazon from an online bookseller ...
06.11.2019 Introducing Land of the Giants Recode's Kara Swisher and Jason Del Rey preview Land of the Giants, a new narrative podcast that examines the unparalleled power of the world’s biggest tech companies, and how they've changed the way we live today.