The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

Galloway's book breaks down the four largest US tech companies by the specific mechanisms that have produced their dominance — platform dynamics, data, scale, taste, and luck. Galloway is an NYU professor who writes in a brash, opinionated register that is both its appeal and its limitation; some chapters have aged badly, others remain sharp. For product direction the book is a useful mental model for how concentrated tech power actually works, which is different from how it is usually discussed. Read it critically and selectively — the chapters on platform dynamics and the moats around these companies remain the strongest. Worth skimming, not worth worshipping.