Economists concerned about slowing productivity have spent the past decade hotly debating the value of free digital services such as Google¡¯s web search and Amazon¡¯s online store. But those online services have proven their worth during the pandemic . And COVID-19 may ultimately push our society to learn new ways of using digital technologies that accelerate productivity growth.
Over the past year I¡¯ve been occasionally bombarded with tweets casting doubt on the value of software companies. The allegation that online services didn¡¯t help with the pandemic came on top of a pre-existing concern ¡ª prevalent among some economist, as well as critics of the technology industry ¡ª that these services add little to the real economy.
But let¡¯s do a scary little thought experiment. Try to imagine what 2020 would have been like without Google, Amazon, Zoom, Slack or any of the other online services. It¡¯s pretty terrifying.
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