Google’s Huawei ban is good news: tech giants shouldn’t always get their way

The post-digital revolution starts here. Thank you, Donald Trump. The US president’s decision to blacklist Huawei, which has led to Google ending collaborating with the company, may have the worst of motives. It could have the best of consequences.

So far, global government has proved impotent in forcing the grand monopolies of the digital age to adhere to any regulation. They have gone where they like, gobbled up competitors as they choose and paid taxes (or none) as the whim takes them. The only rivalry has been in physical products such as smartphones, but they are just shells for conveying monopoly power round the world.

Trump’s objections to Huawei are largely based on ignorance. He does not like China, with some reason, and calls it a “foreign adversary”, with precious little reason. No one knows how devious or dangerous Huawei may be, but it is the second-largest supplier of phones to the world – ahead of Apple – and opinion differs on how far this gives it a potential weapon of economic or even military aggression. Huawei’s eagerness to dominate the 5G networks clearly places the agent of a mass surveillance state in an alarming position worldwide……….read more

 

Source: The Guardian 

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