Stock Take

‘Fang’ firms show their teeth with subscription models and price hikes

Shares in Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google are back up, due largely to significant changes to their business models

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta. More than $700 billion was wiped off Meta’s market value as the ‘tech winter’ decimated the sector. Picture: Bloomberg

It’s almost a year to the day since shares in Meta, the US tech giant that owns Facebook and Instagram, plunged to their lowest-ever level to value the company at less than $235 billion. In the three months leading up to that point, more than $700 billion had been wiped off Meta’s market value as the “tech winter” decimated the sector.

Shares in the other big tech firms like Google, Amazon and Netflix were equally ...