From my vantage point in the venture capital industry, it is apparent that many start-ups are failing or changing their business models because of their dependence on Amazon, Facebook or Google. The situation has progressed to the point where venture capitalists discount companies that rely on a digital platform to reach their markets.

It’s no secret that these corporations rule their overlapping corners of the digital landscape and control the data that flows through them: Amazon captured almost 50 per cent of ecommerce transactions in 2018; Google owns 90 per cent of online search; and Facebook rules social media with more than half of the US market. Advertisers follow the traffic, giving these platforms a combined 65 per cent of online ad revenue. Cash and customer data are like the stone walls and moat of a medieval fortress — the one unbreachable, the other unsurpassable.

Amazon’s plans to open a chain of bricks-and-mortar grocery stores separate from Whole Foods is a case in point. It reads like a new game from the same playbook Amazon used to develop the discount online bookselling model that helped shutter independent bookstores, after which Amazon launched a chain of bricks-and-mortar bookstores — the height of chutzpah.