Dr John Mohan Razu
We live in a world of knowledge in which technology plays the most pivotal role.Coronavirus (COVID-19) has escalated and furthered its importance and presence by pushing us to virtual—on-line reality. Apparently, we are pushed to a scenario which we call—a new normal. All activities such as economy, polity, social-cultural and religious have become on-line. Catastrophes usually helps the rich and powerful and this time COVID-19, a global pandemic, has enabled the top four tech companies as the world is moving towards virtual reality. The tech companies control the connectivity and so to get connected to the world that we live we need to have instruments and the apps. When other businesses kept crashing, the tech companies amassed huge profits.
Who are they? CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google were grilled by the Congressional lawmakers on the 29th July, 2020, over their dominance and alleged monopolistic practices that stifle competition. The four tech giants are being accused of becoming too powerful and increasingly getting involved in anti-competition modes. The law makers said that they have grown too big and bit too much and should be subjected to anti-trust laws. Instead of getting into healthy competition they are accused of indulging in cut-throat competition with triune principles—kill, crush and acquire. Legislators questioned Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Goggle and Tim Cook of Apple at a hearing of the Judiciary Sub-Committee on Anti-trust.
The panel went deep into the business practices and patterns that Silicon Valley giants for some time so that they could be regulated within the framework or even be broken up. Five-hours of grilling with a barrage of questions that revealed and unfolded the levels with which these big oligopolies could go. The oligarchs via video testified to the lawmakers wherein most of the law makers seated wearing masks on the hearing room in Washington DC. Some of the responses revealed the hideous nature of these oligopolistic corporations, the volume of information and data they give to the public but at the same time how they control amidst competition and in the process how they destroy close competitors using their powers; engaging in political bias affecting polity, economy and host of others.
In one of the biggest revelations that the Chairman David Cicilline with these: “each platform-controlled by Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple is a bottle for a key channel of distribution.” “Whether they control access to information or to a market place, these platforms have the incentives and ability to exploit this power.” He added that “They can charge exorbitant fees, impose oppressive contracts, and extract valuable data from people and businesses that rely on them.”“Simply put it: They had too much power.” Since globalization and more particularly during pandemic these four tech companies and its CEOs became everyday logo and woven to the fabric of everyone to the tune of billions of people and its products have moved much closer to everyday life and eventually became their customers.
The four tech oligopolies and its oligarchs command and control billions of people with combined market value which is greater than the entire German economy. Bezos, the world’s richest individual and Zuckerberg, the forth-ranked billionaire had to face difficult questions, while Pichai and Zuckerberg seemed to be visibly rattled as they were asked unsavoury aspects of their corporate business activities. Benzos acknowledged that alleged misdeeds at Amazon that had used data generated by independent sellers on its platform to compete against them—would be “unacceptable” if proven right.
Tough questions for Google and Amazon involved accusations as they used their platform to scoop up data about competition in a way that gave their unfair advantage.Cicilline accused Goggle CEO of leveraging the dominant search engine to steal ideas and information from other websites and in the process for having manipulated its results to drive people to difficult services to boost its profits.Anti-trust law makers in their first sitting grilled the four tech oligopolistic corporationsthoroughly with regard to the nature, extent of their activities, modus operandi and the ways they maximise profits to the tune of four trillion dollars are now swimming in difficult terrains.
A question raised at Apple CEO—relationship between a drug dealer and drug addict inferring to “conspiracy theory” to enhance market value and share prices. It clearly manifests that the four oligopolies have become the dominant players in the on-line economy controlling the social media in absolute terms. With massive capital and technology power tends to control the nation-states with their data and extent of viewership. They have grown big and becoming too powerful, and so by all means should be controlled.Global capitalism if left unchecked leads to monopolisation and economic hegemony. It would not allow fair competition and with their bigness they can eliminate who they consider as their enemies.
Tech oligopolies presently the four that controls even the social media now are more powerful than the nation-states because of the capital and information power—supra entities. Political economy during COVID-19 is entering into another phase wherein the big players and the politicians converge—economy and polity. For example, recently during the Reliance Annual General Meeting, Chairman Mukesh Ambaniannounced that Google has invested Rs. 33,737 crores in Jio platform for a 7.7% stake. Google became the second largest investor in Jio after Facebook which has a 9.9% stake company.It is said that Google $4.5 billion cheque and Facebook’s $5.7 billion investment were cheaper than the rest.Over 40% of that went to Jio whose owner is the richest man in the country.
Mukesh Ambani is the fifth richest person in the world with a net worth of $77.4 billion bringing him closer to Mark Zuckerberg. Communication technology, its apps and contents are controlled by a few oligopolies. A closer proximity and nexus at all levels might have happened –quite logical and natural between the capitalists and politicians. This is what political economy is all about. Providing platform for data and information and host of others such as digital transformation should not be taken seriously as we come across digitalization has widened the gap between the so-called “connected” and those” not connected”. A classic case is on-line education that marginalized further the poor and the hapless.
From the five-hour grilling of the global top five-tech oligarchs their most common five-sugar-coated so-called “truth” started crumbling, instead their lies started unfolding : 1) You’re in control of your data—blatant lie wherein they are in control of our data and with that they control everything; 2)You have lots of choice which is again a biggest lie because these four oligarchs and their corporations have completely monopolised social media and information technology and major population of the world is dependent on them; 3) You’re not that big—again an attribute that points out that they’re oligopolies with massive capital, size and reach; 4) We only provide you ‘the most authentic information’—absolutely false information wherein a lot of twists and turns we find that suits their profit and political considerations and 5) Social media does not profit from harmful information—yet another cover-up which is rather the opposite to what they claim.
