How are Big Tech Companies Dominating the Markets in the Global Arena?
By: Vishnu Aravindhan
Tags: Amazon, Business, Facebook, Google, Apple

Our focus today will be on big tech companies. Let’s take, for example, Amazon, Apple, etc.,

Amazon

Let’s say, for example, it is called as the gatekeeper of e-commerce. It reduces the competition and harms the consumers and people who are not putting their products on this particular platform. Let’s say, for example, Amazon has a huge amount of money in its kitty. It decimates the brick and mortar stores and it makes sure that it is collecting all the data of a particular customer. This also pushes a product to the customer such that his data and privacy are also compromised. So Amazon being too big and has a huge market dominance has become impossible for other companies to dominate over Amazon.

Apple

Apart from this, when it comes to Apple. Apple also favors its own applications. It also puts rivals at a disadvantage as well, and when it comes to Apple and Google, they are on a buying spree as well. Whenever they see a competition that is popping up against the hegemony of these companies, they immediately buy that particular company rather than competing with them. Instagram and WhatsApp could have become the competitors of Facebook, but since they saw that they could not compete with Instagram, they immediately grab an opportunity to buy that specific company; the same is with Apple and Google.

When it comes to Google, it buys at least one firm a month, and when it comes to Apple, it buys two to three firms every single month, says statistics.

So what would be the impact?

When it comes to the impact, the consumers or the customers who have been availing their services will have limited opportunities. Since they have limited opportunities, they will not have multiple options as well. This ultimately means that they have to go buy that particular service only from big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Apple, or in fact, Facebook as well. And as a result, what will happen? The consumer base will also start increasing only with respect to those big tech companies. So what will happen? We are giving away our data, and this particular data, when it is given, can be violated, which will violate the right to privacy. Initially, when Facebook had come, initially when there was Google as well, all these people used to respect the right to privacy with eventuality when there is no competition.

They also take up our data and manipulate our data because data is the new fuel for Facebook and Google. So what do they do? They target our inboxes with what is called as the advertisement with which we attempted to buy a particular product as well. They also understand what our political inclinations are, and they also play a political role as well. Such is the devastation that they cause when it comes to the consumers.

Now when it comes to India. Let’s look at some of the statistics. More than 400 million of Whatsapp’s estimated two billion users are in India. Amazon has around one-third of the share of online retail in India, neck to neck with Flipkart, which was recently acquired by Wal-Mart. Then we have India as Facebook’s largest single market with around 270 million accounts. Google completely dominates the search engine space in India. Most smartphones in India are also Android-based OS.

Since they are dominating in India, this article suggests that for the Competition Commission of India and elsewhere in their own countries for more regulation. When it comes to countries in Europe and the United States of America, they are also planning to break companies as well. One such suggestion was given by the federal agency in the United States of America. Back in the 1980s, we have AT&T, which had also gone too huge when it comes to its market. So what was decided by the federal agency back then? They had to break this AT&T and split this particular organization.

Similarly, they are also planning a proposal with respect to Facebook as well. The split will be Facebook as an independent organization. We will also have Instagram as an independent organization or an application and WhatsApp as an independent application. So this is a suggestion given by the federal agency. So they do not have all the hold in the market, and there are diversification and more options given to the customers as well. This is one of the proposals given by the federal agency and also in European countries as well.

Also, remember, when it comes to companies like Facebook or Google, they have a cozy relationship with political parties in India as well. So what we require is more regulations, more laws to control the dominance of the big tech firms. And at the same time, India does not have a privacy law. So when it comes up with privacy law, they have to make sure all these aspects of data collection are taken into the picture when a law is being drafted.

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