Asia's regulators ignore rising influence of Big Tech at their peril
Market power of Alibaba, Reliance, Tencent and Gojek could outweigh US behemoths
The heads of the U.S. big four tech giants escaped their recent Capitol Hill grillings without lasting damage. Whether Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook will be so lucky in future is less clear, given the likely arrival of President Joe Biden later this year, and near-unanimity among his Democrat colleagues that America's tech giants need to be brought to heel.
Viewed from Asia, the hearing spectacle looked curious, however. Governments here have come to view Big Tech more positively, with China and India in particular racing to nurture dominant national technology champions. The result could leave Asia with a cluster of cyber behemoths with even more entrenched power than their U.S. equivalents -- a profound long term economic development that may turn out to be a mixed blessing at best.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Asia-s-regulators-ignore-rising-influence-of-Big-Tech-at-their-peril
#asia #BigTech
Market power of Alibaba, Reliance, Tencent and Gojek could outweigh US behemoths
The heads of the U.S. big four tech giants escaped their recent Capitol Hill grillings without lasting damage. Whether Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook will be so lucky in future is less clear, given the likely arrival of President Joe Biden later this year, and near-unanimity among his Democrat colleagues that America's tech giants need to be brought to heel.
Viewed from Asia, the hearing spectacle looked curious, however. Governments here have come to view Big Tech more positively, with China and India in particular racing to nurture dominant national technology champions. The result could leave Asia with a cluster of cyber behemoths with even more entrenched power than their U.S. equivalents -- a profound long term economic development that may turn out to be a mixed blessing at best.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Asia-s-regulators-ignore-rising-influence-of-Big-Tech-at-their-peril
#asia #BigTech
Nikkei Asia
Asia's regulators ignore rising influence of Big Tech at their peril
Market power of Alibaba, Reliance, Tencent and Gojek could outweigh US behemoths
How to Fight Against Big Tech’s Power
We are beholden to a few Big Tech overlords for much of our digital lives. We can be more conscientious about it.
In the morning, you check email. At noon, you browse social media and message friends. In the evening, you listen to music while shopping online. Around bedtime, you curl up with an e-book.
For all of those activities, you probably used a product made or sold by Google, Amazon, Apple or Facebook. There’s no simple way to avoid those Big Four. Even if you subscribed to Spotify, you would probably still be using a Google Android phone, an Amazon speaker or an Apple iPhone to stream the music. Even if you deleted Facebook, you might still be using the Facebook-owned Instagram or WhatsApp.
Being beholden to a small set of companies that touch every corner of our digital lives is precisely why lawmakers have summoned the chief executives of Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple to testify in an antitrust hearing on Wednesday. Expect the tech titans to be grilled over whether their companies have become so powerful and far-reaching that they harm rivals and all of us, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/technology/personaltech/big-tech-power-how-to-fight.html
#BigTech
We are beholden to a few Big Tech overlords for much of our digital lives. We can be more conscientious about it.
In the morning, you check email. At noon, you browse social media and message friends. In the evening, you listen to music while shopping online. Around bedtime, you curl up with an e-book.
For all of those activities, you probably used a product made or sold by Google, Amazon, Apple or Facebook. There’s no simple way to avoid those Big Four. Even if you subscribed to Spotify, you would probably still be using a Google Android phone, an Amazon speaker or an Apple iPhone to stream the music. Even if you deleted Facebook, you might still be using the Facebook-owned Instagram or WhatsApp.
Being beholden to a small set of companies that touch every corner of our digital lives is precisely why lawmakers have summoned the chief executives of Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple to testify in an antitrust hearing on Wednesday. Expect the tech titans to be grilled over whether their companies have become so powerful and far-reaching that they harm rivals and all of us, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/technology/personaltech/big-tech-power-how-to-fight.html
#BigTech
NY Times
How to Fight Against Big Tech’s Power
We are beholden to a few Big Tech overlords for much of our digital lives. We can be more conscientious about it.