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August 16 - September 16, 2019
Western and Eastern tech companies are very different beasts
Western companies release products tailored to the developing world, they’re just spin-offs of the main apps.
Meanwhile, Chinese companies usually don’t just drop tweaked versions of Chinese apps into other markets. Instead, they tend to invest in local businesses that create apps and business models custom-made for local markets.
Singapore’s Grab,[1155]
Indonesia’s e-commerce startup Tokopedia,[1156]
Pakistan’s e-commerce startup ...
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Lazada
Lazada
Indonesia’s Go-Jek,[1160]
Indian ride-hailing app Ola,[1161]
Tencent’s famous investment in the makers of Fortnite.[1164]
(These investments could also be future lures to get people on WeChat.)
Western companies have long focused on creating business models that can be grown, or scaled, easily.
with few changes required except maybe the language.[1166]
Chinese companies tend to let entrepreneurs in those countries build tailored companies and buy them once they’re ready.[1167]
American firms’ incredible scalability gives them a huge head start whenever they enter a new market:
Alibaba backs the Southeast Asian e-commerce startups Tokopedia[1170] and Lazada,[1171]
Google, in a typically-Eastern move, started investing in the Indonesian ride-hailing company Go-Jek[1174] and Indian e-commerce startup Fynd in 2018.[1175]
That same year, Alibaba announced several globally-available cloud computing products, marking Alibaba’s first Alibaba-branded product launch outside China.[1176]
“tech war”[1177]
The internet has become the primary way we shop, read the news, communicate, research, and do business.
antitrust, free speech, privacy, and more.
treasure trove
Supporters of the move said it was only fair, since the data-selling regulations didn’t apply to Facebook or Google, which also make billions by using data to target ads.[1206] They said that ISPs needed ad-targeting power to compete with Google and Facebook.
net neutrality.[1212]
net neutrality
Net neutrality
is the principle that ISPs should treat all data equally. No bit of data should be given preferential treatment;
no movie or Tweet or GIF should be allowed to move faster than others
(which would make that data more attractive to consumers than...
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But if ISPs get to tilt the playing field in favor of whatever companies pay them the most, that’s a huge loss for consumers. The internet loses its openness, innovation and competition is restricted, and economic growth gets slowed.[1214]
In 2013 and 2014, Comcast and Verizon slowed down content from Netflix,[1217] perhaps because they wanted to give a boost to their own video-streaming services.[1218] The throttling got so bad that Netflix had to pay Comcast and Verizon to stop.[1219] Thus, Comcast and Verizon used their power over customers to give their own products an unfair advantage and squeeze money from Netflix.
“paid prioritization,”
Zero rating
But a startup building the next great messaging app definitely could not,
zero rating
As we mentioned earlier, the European nonprofit called Epicenter.works ran a study on zero rating within 30 European countries and found that, when a country allowed zero rating, wireless carriers increased prices. Countries that banned zero rating saw steady drops in the prices of wireless plans, but countries that allowed the practice actually saw an increase.[1226]
European Court of Justice in 2014, when the court ruled that, in the European Union, the right to privacy includes a “right to be forgotten.”[1239]
If Google doesn’t comply or the EU doesn’t like their decision, the EU can take legal action against Google.[1243]
Americans tend to value free speech above almost anything else,
Europeans generally place more emphasis on the right to privacy.[1263]
The weather industry, which includes big companies like AccuWeather, the Weather Channel, and Weather Underground,
valued at about $5 billion.[1267]
In other words, the US government created a $5 billion industry out of thin air just by re...
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Private industries can’t build the satellites and radar needed to take millions of accurate weather measurements, but the government can provide this data.
For instance, in 1983 the US government made GPS data publicly available
McKinsey estimated that government open data could unleash $3 trillion a year in economic activity.[1273]
It can also help citizens and companies make useful apps:
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the internet, argued that there are five levels of open data, as shown in this chart. Governments should aspire to reach the highest possible level. Source: UK Parliament[1290]
Governments need to be more careful when deciding what personal data to publish.
