Last week, I met a strategist from one of Silicon Valley’s largest technology companies to catch up on a turbulent year in the tech world: 2018 has been pretty rough for Big Tech, we agreed, what with the erosion of public trust, employee rebellions and threats of more regulation.

But the more subtle breakdown was of the relationships between tech companies, said the strategist, who joked that there has been a “conscious uncoupling” — the euphemism used by the Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow to describe the collapse of her marriage to musician Chris Martin.

It was partly a light-hearted dig but the sentiment is revealing. Silicon Valley companies and executives are starting to re-think their PR strategies, to differentiate their public image from one another. This breaking of ranks marks a pivotal moment in Big Tech’s history, according to Leslie Berlin, the author of Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age. “Until very recently, it was taken as a given that tech equalled progress and tech equalled good and tech equalled economic strength,” she told the New York Times. “This is something new.”