Today, September 6th, 2023 the EU designated six “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will require additional steps by the named corporations in order to comply with EU regulations.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_4328
These firms include: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft. (they listed Samsung as well, but left it off the infographics).
This acronym, listed as AAABMM, captures the major players in the internet and computing industry. Previously, this was known as the FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google), but with the shifting fortunes (as well as corporate name changes) in telecom, an update was required.
Of course, AAABMM utterly fails as an acronym. But we can Scrabble this (or Wordle it in 2023) and arrive at something a little bit better.
ABAAMM?
ABAMAM?
BAMAMA?
MAMABA?
MAMBAA? Oh, there we go, that’s close. a little sheepish at the end though.
MAAMBA? Not bad. I like it. Rolls off the tongue.
“The EU has just designated the cyber-MAAMBA overlords as Gatekeepers…”
There were a couple other options of course: BBAAAM was right there. But MAAMBA works well in communicating the threat level, and the other metaphoric associations one can draw when dealing with the “Artists Formerly Known as FAANG”
(Thought I guess you could use BAMAMA if you need to defang them (pun intended)).
Anyhoo, update your lexicons accordingly. I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more about the MAAMBAS in the near future.