Two and a half centuries in the past, the American colonies launched a violent protest towards British rule, triggered by parliament’s imposition of a monopoly on the sale of tea and the antics of a vainglorious king. At present, the tables have turned: it’s Nice Britain that finds itself on the mercy of main US tech corporations – so large and dominant that they represent monopolies of their fields – in addition to the whims of an erratic president. But, to the skin observer, Britain appears curiously comfortable with this association – at occasions even desperate to subsidise its personal financial dependence. Britain is hardly alone in submitting to the ability of American corporations, however it provides a transparent case research in why nations must develop a coordinated response to the rise of those hegemonic firms.
The present age of American tech monopoly started within the 2000s, when the UK, like many different nations, turned nearly fully depending on a small variety of US platforms – Google, Fb, Amazon and a handful of others. It was a time of optimism concerning the web as a democratising power, characterised by the assumption that these platforms would make everybody wealthy. The dream of the Nineties – naive however interesting – was that anybody with a passion or expertise may go surfing and make a dwelling from it.
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