By Aditya Sinha
The Matrix is everywhere, said Morpheus. So is Big Tech. Google, Meta, X, Amazon, and Microsoft shape not just how we connect but how we think, consume, and interact with the world. Laissez-faire champions the idea that markets thrive best with minimal interference, equating deregulation with innovation and dynamism. Yet, power unrestrained does not ensure freedom, it rather consolidates control. Left unchecked, Big Tech risks becoming the gatekeeper of information, commerce, and even public discourse, undermining the very competition and free enterprise that laissez-faire seeks to protect. In an age of deregulation, some forces demand regulation, not to stifle innovation but to preserve it.
A cursory look at the search engine market share poignantly brings out our point. As of March 2024, Google’s share in the search engine market worldwide is estimated to be around 91.37% compared to 3.37% of Bing, 1.64% of Yandex, 1.1 % of Yahoo, 0.99% of Baidu, and 0.53% of DuckDuckGo. A similar trend is evident in the market share of operating systems (both for desktops and mobile phones). As of March 2024, for desktop operating systems, Windows owns 72.5% followed by OS X (14.6%), Linux (4.05%), and Chrome (2.27%). The share gets further skewed when it comes to mobile operating system with Android owning 70.79%, followed by iOS (28.46%), Samsung (0.39%), and others (0.32%).
The objective of highlighting these is to indicate that as our life increasingly gets digitised, and unprecedented scale of data is generated, it is imperative for users (individuals and entity) to be conscious about how integral aspects could be shaped by a handful of players. Such concerns were echoed by sections of India Inc when some Indian apps were delisted from Google’s Play Store for not complying with Google’s billing guidelines.
Although the issue was swiftly resolved, it prompted India’s information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnav to comment that the fate of Indian start-ups could not be left to Big Tech. This seemingly passing issue in a way demonstrates the vulnerability of India’s start-up ecosystem. The possibility of it being weaponised by Big Tech could not be eliminated completely. It is being argued that Big Tech in itself has become a new kind of leviathan.
They have an immense reservoir of data about any country’s populace at their disposal, thereby posing a challenge to a state’s exclusivity and sovereignty. A similar pattern has emerged in countries like Canada and Australia, where governments sought to regulate Big Tech’s control over digital news distribution. Both nations introduced legislation mandating that companies like Meta and Google compensate news publishers for the content shared on their platforms. This move triggered a sharp backlash from the tech giants.
In Canada, Meta retaliated by blocking all government advertisements and went a step further by restricting updates related to the country’s wildfires — an act that hindered real-time information-sharing during a critical emergency. The move drew strong condemnation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who accused Facebook of “bullying” and undermining Canadian democracy, asserting that “Canadians won’t be bullied by billionaires in the US”.
In Australia, Big Tech resisted government regulation by banning the sharing of news and links on its platform. It extended to official government websites, including the health department’s page. This restriction came when Australians relied on official sources for pandemic-related advisories, raising serious public safety concerns. These incidents highlight the extent of Big Tech’s influence and its ability to contest (and perhaps undermine) the authority of a sovereign government.
Beyond national regulatory battles, Big Tech is increasingly being leveraged as a conduit for extending American state power on the global stage. Their dominance in digital infrastructure, data flows, and online services provides the US with unprecedented extraterritorial reach. As America’s National Security Agency (NSA) notes, “much of the world’s communications flow through the US”. This was evident post-9/11 where the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) allowed US agencies access to its database. It is argued that the worldwide reach of SWIFT made it a tool for global surveillance. Additionally, the NSA’s PRISM programme taps user data from tech giants like the Google, Apple, etc. The PRISM programme, as a media report notes, “facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information”.
The Huawei episode in 2019 further illustrated this entanglement, when the US placed the company on its entity list, and Google revoked its access to Play Store, Gmail, and YouTube, impacting its international smartphone market. Closer home in India, armed groups have been found to possess Starlink devices aimed at bypassing the internet restrictions of the government of India for law-and-order purposes in the conflict-ridden state of Manipur, raising concerns about national security. However, both Starlink and its owner Elon Musk have denied the usage in Manipur. Similarly, during protests in Iran, the US authorised tech firms to provide internet access despite Iranian government bans, a move that could be seen as an interference in state sovereignty.
This poses a serious challenge for countries like India, where an open democracy is both a strength and a vulnerability, demanding a strategic reassessment. India needs to strengthen data protection with the implementation of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, to ensure platform neutrality. It should also require critical personal and financial data storage within the country. While fostering innovation is necessary, nations must ensure that digital infrastructures serve their interests, not undermine them.
Co-authored with Paras Ratna, doctoral student at National University of Singapore.
The writer is a public policy professional.
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