Meanwhile, the Five are poised to jump beyond their corner of the lagoon. Over the last few years they have begun to set their sights on the biggest industries outside tech — on autos, health care, retail, transportation, entertainment and finance.

The Five aren’t exactly immune to business cycles. Apple’s sales were flat last year, and after a monster 2016, Alphabet’s stock price hit a plateau. The Five also aren’t entirely safe from competition from start-ups, and one of the persistent features of the tech industry is that some of the most perilous threats to giants are the hardest to spot.

Still, at the moment, thanks to smart acquisition strategies and a long-term outlook, the Five sure do look insulated from competition from start-ups; today’s most valuable tech upstarts, like Airbnb, Uber and Snap, could grow quite huge and still pose little threat to the collective fortunes of the Frightful Five.

What has changed is public perception. For years, most of the Five enjoyed broad cultural good will. They were portrayed in the news media as forces of innovation and delight, as the best that American capitalism had to offer. The exceptions were Microsoft, which reached towering heights through corporate ruthlessness in the 1990s, and Amazon, which got under people’s skin for, among other things, making books cheaper and more widely accessible, thereby hurting bookstores.

But generally people loved tech giants. They had gotten huge just the way you’re supposed to in America — by inventing new stuff that people love. And even their worst sins weren’t considered that bad. They weren’t causing environmental disasters. They weren’t selling cigarettes. They weren’t bringing the world to economic ruin through dangerous financial shenanigans. After I noted the Five’s growing invincibility last year, the biggest pushback I got from people at these companies had to do with the moniker I had given them: Why hadn’t I called them the Fabulous Five?

Over the last year perception began to change. Familiarity breeds contempt; as technology wormed deeper into our lives, it began to feel less like an unalloyed good and more like every other annoyance we have to deal with.