Most small businesses expect to grow this year and are relying on digital tools to do so. Large technology firms have spent years developing and deploying the infrastructure, technology, and platforms these small businesses use to compete effectively against much their larger rivals. Apple, Google, and Amazon each take their own unique approaches to helping small businesses flourish and compete.
Apple’s small business hub is aimed at owners who do not have an IT department to lean on. It handles device setup and security, and ensures that the apps a business depends on continue to function correctly. A dedicated Apple Small Business team is available, assisting startup owners with free in-store training. Additionally, Apple Business Connect helps small businesses identify and reach their target customers by providing tools to manage how they appear in apps such as Maps and Wallet. Put together, Apple has quietly built an advertising and customer outreach technology stack for business owners who cannot afford a marketing department of their own.
Through Apple Maps, small business owners can also access a free place card, helping claimed businesses raise greater awareness than unclaimed ones by displaying custom photos and seasonal promotion tools. The place card also enables the use of custom action buttons, letting customers book, order, or call straight from the listing, a feature which has lifted clickthrough rates by 31 percent. A set of built-in business tools, including search, interaction, and competitor benchmark data, help small businesses understand what strategies are actually working for them.
Google’s small business support starts with visibility through the Google Business Profile, a free listing tool that puts a business on Search and Maps. This one tool has become the default way most small businesses get discovered, with 80 percent of consumers saying they search online for local businesses at least once a week, and 72 percent of them specifically searching through Google. But Google’s small business support goes far beyond online listing tools. Google’s 2025 U.S. Economic Impact Report found that its tools – including organic search visibility, Google Ads campaigns, Google Cloud infrastructure, YouTube advertising, and app distribution through Google Play – helped generate $947 billion in economic activity for American businesses last year.
Google also offers Grow with Google, an AI training program aimed at educating small businesses and their employees on how to use AI effectively in their day-to-day work. Local Grow with Google Coaches and in-person workshops partner with Chambers of Commerce across the country to support small businesses. Brian Newham, president of Atlas Automotive, says Gemini opened up new ways to help customers and fix cars. The payoff shows up in the numbers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce surveyed small businesses using AI and found that 85 percent reported higher sales, 84 percent reported higher profits, and 82 percent grew their workforce.
Amazon’s approach runs through its own marketplace. Independent sellers, most of them small and medium-sized businesses, account for more than 60 percent of everything sold through Amazon, a share built up over 25 years and $2.5 trillion in cumulative sales. Amazon’s sellers now support more than 2 million U.S. jobs, per its 2025 Small Business Empowerment Report. More than 75,000 small businesses crossed $1 million in sales last year, while over 11,000 grew their sales tenfold or better. Using Amazon’s Global Selling program, independent U.S. sellers exported more than 580 million items last year and reached shoppers in over 130 countries and regions. Plenty of these shoppers a small business owner would never have found alone. Andy Jassy has described the seller partnership as one of the most significant collaborations in retail history.
All of this is already in motion, and none of it needed a law to make it happen. For plenty of small businesses, these companies have been the difference between staying small and becoming something much bigger.