Around the world, governments are readying to regulate big tech
Attitudes globally toward big tech seem to be shifting. Until now, the European Union had pretty much set the regulation benchmark, while the United States and China have been much more tolerant of the excessive growth of the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon, or their Chinese equivalents, Alibaba, Baidu or Tencent, among others. In the United States, since Joe Biden came to power, it seems that both Democrats and Republicans agree that these companies have become too powerful and need to be regulated (and in fact, the new administration has been placing well-known critics of big tech in key positions).
Now, China seems to be taking the same route, and is moving to regulate its tech giants. First came the abandoned IPO of Ant Financial, Alibaba’s financial company, destined to be the largest in history until it was suddenly forced to halt the process, restructure and get rid of its founder, the hitherto untouchable Jack Ma. The pressure then intensified after Alibaba was fined a record $2.8 billion for abusing its dominant position by preventing merchants from selling their products on other platforms. Food delivery company Meituan has been fined for similar reasons, while the pressure continues with the government telling Tencent, ByteDance, Baidu, JD,com, Didi and seven other fintech companies to “rectify problems”. Finally, some…
