The 5 major companies that control the entire internet and digital world are Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon (especially with AWS). These are collectively called BigTech.
With the monopoly of these American companies, very few countries have managed to hold their own and maintain their Digital Sovereignty.
China, Russia, South Korea, Iran, and Vietnam are the only 5 countries with Digital Sovereignty apart from the US.
China banned all American BigTech companies by 2010, Iran was under sanctions by the US so had to develop its own local versions, South Korea and Russia managed to develop their local versions despite the competition, and Vietnam has been actively working to end the monopoly of the BigTech.
EU, India, and Japan are slowly waking up to the realities of BigTech monopolies and the need to develop local versions. The Digital Sovereign countries are also cracking down on the BigTech companies for monopolistic behaviour. EU and South Korea have levied fines worth hundreds of millions of dollars on Google and Facebook.
India started on a similar journey by notifying the IT rules to get social media platforms under Indian sovereignty, data localisation rules are another way for India to ensure its claws back its digital sovereignty, and banning Chinese social media apps that allowed Indian alternatives to emerge.
TikTok ban allowed Moj-Takatak (Sharechat), Josh (Dailyhunt), Chingari, and Roposo (InMobi) have emerged.
Innovation by govt-backed platforms or networks like Aadhar, UPI, or ONDC and companies building on the trends within the Indian digital space like vernacular social media, and companies catering to the markets beyond metro and tier-1cities.
ONDC is a newly launched open network that allows any app to become an e-commerce app among enabling other things.
A lot of heavy lifting needs to be done by India and would require intervention by the Government of India to make any initiative successful.
Let us have a look at the individual features of BigTech that we need to tackle.
Many of these services are unbeatable while some have found a local competitor.
Let us start with Google. Google has partnered with Jio and Airtel - both the major Indian telecom companies. Thus, the biggest sources of Google’s competition have been internalised. Jio is making a low-cost smartphone in partnership with Google. Thus, we cannot expect the large companies with massive capabilities to produce network effects to work against Google or towards Indian Digital Sovereignty.
There is where the Indian government can step in. It is already responsible for making GPay as it uses govt-made UPI for processing transactions. Whatsapp also launched Whatsapp Pay using UPI.
Search is Google’s only unbeatable product as even Apple’s Safari Browser uses Google Search as default. All else is up for grabs!
Twitter already has a local alternative in Koo. Microsft’s Windows and MS Office have a sarkaari as well as a private company solution - BOSS OS by the Government of India that is lying in the cold storage and Zoho Office by India’s most profitable startup Zoho.
Making electronic devices is not possible until we have large-scale mobile manufacturing and a thriving semiconductor ecosystem. India has made remarkable progress in mobile manufacturing in the last 5 years and has now embarked on an ambitious journey to develop semiconductor designing and manufacturing capabilities. Dixon has become one of the biggest mobile manufacturers while Lava Mobiles (from the iconic Indian mobile trio of Lava, Intex, and Micromax) has made a comeback by launching new smartphones.
Social media has seen Indian giants emerge primarily due to the innovation by companies like Indian Sharechat and Chinese TikTok. TikTok getting banned allowed Indian alternatives to come up.
Meta has two unbeatable products - Facebook and Instagram - due to its network effects.
However, the rest of the products can be beaten. Some are easy while others would require a lot of effort and positive government intervention.
Here are my ideas:
Aadhar and the India Stack allow any Indian to get verified instantly. This can be used to create an alternative to Google’s Sign-In that has become mandatory to retain one’s internet memory with the Google or Facebook linked Log-in making all apps dependent on them. All government and Indian apps can start by incorporating an Aadhar-based log-in which can then become the default for India instead of Google and Facebook.
This can then possibly be leveraged to get more users for a Google Drive equivalent called DigiLocker. DigiLocker is limited to official documents but can be tweaked to allow for normal documents to be stored as well.
ISRO and MapMyIndia have already given a much better alternative to Google Maps. The Indian government has already come out with a great policy that makes ISRO a facilitator and enables startups in the space sector.
Google App Store and Apple App Store have been charging exorbitant fees that have made many developers, including one of the world’s biggest game developers, unhappy. China does not face this problem as each mobile manufacturer has its own app store that allows for a competitive discovery of the optimal commission and a variety of options for developers. India has a company called IndusOS that powers Samsung’s app store. Government can partner with them to promote an Indian alternative to Google’s Android and mandate all mobile companies to keep that app store.
Cab aggregators like Uber and Ola take commissions of up to 40% while Google Playstore takes a 30% commission for apps earning more than $1 million each year. YouTube charges its creators up to 55% of the ad revenue from the videos. The government needs to mandate a cap or limit on the maximum commission that these platforms can charge. In my opinion, 25% seems an optimal maximum cap on apps and content creators. The government has already warned cab aggregators of penal action if they do not limit unfair and surge pricing. Globally, all countries are fining Google and Facebook to share advertising revenue with the publishers, especially news content. Both companies have entered separate agreements with publishers across countries to share advertising revenue.
A chat app has emerged as the most basic function of a digital economy. Whatsapp enjoys a 100% monopoly here. Whatsapp founder Brian Acton left the company post its acquisition by Facebook to start a non-profit app called Signal. Signal joined Telegram as among the chat apps that pose a genuine threat to Whatsapp’s monopoly. Many countries like Switzerland and Iran have urged their govt officers and army personnel to start using local alternatives. India had Hike Messenger but it closed down after a valiant fight. Zoho has come up with a chat app called Arratai while Jio has JioChat. The government does not need to step in. All telecom companies can come together and jointly own an app that they would mandate for use on their respective networks thus helping the app counter the network effects of its rivals.
The Government of India had made its own Operating System in the last decade for its own use. It’s called BOSS or Bharat Operating System Solution. It has been built using the Linux OS and developed by Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). On top of this, we can have Zoho’s Office or any open source or even Microsft’s MS Office. As far as the browser is concerned, only Apple and Samsung have been able to counter Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Edge. Vietnam has managed to create a browser called Cốc Cốc based on Google’s open-source Chromium engine. It has also managed to create its own search engine called Cốc Cốc Search Engine which has been able to extract a small but significant market share away from Google in its unbeatable product.
The most ambitious and audacious idea is the following. Doordarshan used to be India’s premier TV network until the mid-2000s when the private media networks surged ahead. As of today, only Reliance’s Viacom is the only Indian media network in India as Zee was merged with Japanese-American Sony and Disney acquired the already foreign-owned Star network. India is the only country where almost all media networks are foreign-owned while Doordarshan, the state television network, languishing at the bottom. South Korea, Japan, Germany, France, Mexico, and even Pakistan has no foreign ownership of their media network.
Doordarshan is in the process of transforming itself into a modern media network along the lines of BBC and launching an OTT app as well. I propose that we widen the scope of Doordarshan further by making it a video-sharing app as well. DD has a great brand value and would readily get the top content creators to launch their latest video a day or two earlier on DD before posting the same video on Youtube to give DD a boost. The vision is to make DD a combination of BBC as a media network, Netflix via an OTT app that can leverage the huge repository of classic content, and a video-sharing platform with priority partnerships with top creators. DD can also pressurise YouTube to lower its commission by providing a competitive service.
This might seems impossible or a waste of time but when one considers that India has been spending billions of dollars to keep deadweight like Air India for decades. The government is spending billions of dollars to upgrade BSNL into a lean organisation and upgrade it to 4G and 5G in partnership with the Tata Group.
If billions of dollars can be spent to fight an asset- and operation-heavy task like BSNL revival then, it can definitely spend a few hundred million dollars for India’s Digital Sovereignty.
In 2018, the French government decreed that all government searches be made using the privately-owned encrypted search engine Qwant, dubbed the "Gallic Google'. All countries the world over have been helping their local companies to perform better. Even the USA, the hub of capitalism, has been helping its entrepreneurs if the company is of strategic importance. Elon Musk's SpaceX was on the verge of bankruptcy when it was saved by a billion-dollar contract by NASA.
Therefore, we as a country should not feel any shame or hesitancy in asking for state intervention, especially in matters of strategic importance.
Overall, the government needs to take a comprehensive look at the entire BigTech products and services and take a holistic approach as executing these ideas would require a consistent and sustained effort by the government in active partnership with the private sector or its own institutions.
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