US businessman billionaire George Soros, in Davos, launched a scathing attack on giant technology companies, describing them as manipulative monopolies, tyrannical to subvert democracies.
During a traditional annual dinner at the World Economic Forum held in the Swiss Alps, Soros turned his attention Thursday to a number of topics, including US President Donald Trump, and the hype surrounding the default currency.
But the Hungarian-born investor devoted most of his anger to Silicon Valley's technology giants and said it needed tougher controls.
"Facebook and Google really control half of the advertising revenue on the Internet," the 87-year-old billionaire said in a speech to his guests.
"They claim to be mere distributors of information. The fact that they are semi-monopolistic distributors makes them public facilities and must be subject to stricter laws aimed at maintaining fair, open competition, innovation and global communication."
He predicted that technology giants would "involve themselves" in access to key markets such as China, creating "an alliance between authoritarian states and large IT monopolists with vast amounts of data."
"This could really cause an authoritarian network of control," he said. He predicted that governments would begin a tougher regulation of the sector. "Davos is a good place to announce that their days are numbered," he said.
Soros, who is known for his lucrative financial transactions, has criticized currency as a "typical bubble." But he said the virtual currency would probably avoid a complete collapse because tyrants still wanted to use it to make secret investments abroad.
He said Russian President Vladimir Putin ruled "a mafia state" and described Trump as a "danger to the world." But he predicted that Trump's appeal would not last. "I consider it a temporary phenomenon in every sense of the word and it will disappear in 2020 or even before that," he said.
But the expectations of the traditional billionaire in Davos have not always been successful. Last year in Switzerland he warned that the boom in financial markets would end after Trump was elected and China's growth rate was unsustainable.
Growth is continuing in China, while US stocks are trading at record levels.