Hegemony comes from “hegemon”— leader, guide. Think “Enders Game” (my favorite science fiction book of all time, as audiobook). Or think of the “Dollar Hegemony” (Henry C K Liu).

Typically when people think “hegemony” it is seen as bad and evil. “Hegeomai” (the root word of hegemon, or hegemony) is actually good … it means to lead, go forth, lead the way, guide. It comes from the Proto Indo European “*sehg”: to seek out.

Anyways back to the notion of “Digital Hegemony”— the gist is at this point Google *is* the Internet which means if you desire to be relevant online, best to kowtow and merge with Google and play good with Google, or be left behind.

What about Facebook?

Facebook owns and is Whats App, Oculus Virtual Reality and Instagram. It will eventually all become one product. But my thought:

Google will eventually win out, because Google is open source and an open garden. Facebook is closed.

Open will always win in the long run, even versus closed.

How about Google vs Apple?

Apple makes products and tools. Google is a search engine, advertising engine, and now the de facto Maps engine and GPS engine. They’re not really competitors. No way in a billion years that a tech elite would prefer a Google Pixel phone over an iPhone Pro. This is also why I’m confident in innovation in America:

We will never see in our lifetime a Chinese phone or even Korean phone (South Korea as a pseudo-colony of America) surpass the iPhone.

As long as rich Chinese international students (and the rich elite of China) prefer using MacBook Pro laptops, iPad Pro, iPhone Pro, AirPods Pro … America will always be #1 for Innovation on the planet.