I think it will, at best, be a semantic argument in retrospect. The companies highlighted are all clearly defined as being bolstered by computing technology. But what about next generation, huge companies that are bolstered by computing and other technologies fused together? For example, if a company manages to create a brain-computer interface that gains global adoption and equivalent valuations to the existing tech giants, but the software layer is a mashup of, by that time, commoditized services from the existing tech giants who fail to enter this industry, does it count?
It seems like the whole analysis is predicated on the idea that technology = software made in Silicon Valley, with unimportant secondary factors. That 3M and ExxonMobil are not "tech" companies because they don't make iPhone apps.
Every company is a tech company, not because we've had computers for a while, but because technology is what we build to get what we want.
These kinds of narrow, myopic, siloed takes miss the forest for the trees.
If you think the epitome of human evolution is going to be people looking at bright rectangles for eternity, you haven't been paying attention to what technologists are doing.
