Tuesday, December 17, 2019

What I'm thinking is that global high tech communication absolutely SHREDS a global order based on nation-states [Google and Turkey]

Matt Stoller, Google's Dangerous Monopoly-Based Foreign Policy, BIG, Dec 17, 2019:
There’s something of a parallel to what Google is doing to Turkey, and it’s in China. The U.S. government ordered Google to stop delivering apps to Huawei, and the result is a catastrophe for any attempt to build phones for use outside of China. Here’s one review of one of Huawei’s new phones that works without Google’s apps:
The Mate 30 Pro is an exceptional piece of hardware. Its quad-camera setup shoots outstanding photos, a dazzling 6.53-inch waterfall display is the centerpiece of an inspired design, and its 4,500-mAh battery goes and goes and goes. But the fiasco that is Android without full Google support makes it impossible to recommend.
This isn’t such a problem in China, which has a parallel tech ecosystem of apps like Weibo and WeChat. But it’s a huge problem everywhere else, including in Turkey. I don’t know what happens at this point, but it’s very obvious that if I’m a foreign official anywhere in the world I’m going to realize that Google wants to run my legal system and that I better get access to some sort of tech ecosystem that can support a modern economy.

Google is making a call to use leverage that should only be resolved for very serious foreign policy disputes by the U.S. government, and doing so to protect itself from having to obey an antitrust law in a foreign country. Pulling this kind of stunt is like using financial sanctions recklessly. It works if you’re the dominant network, but every time you use sanctions you create the incentive to build an alternative. To put it differently, it’s like overusing antibiotics. Turkey’s response will in the long-term mean leaning more on China, or Russia, or both. Or the EU and the U.S. could step in, and find ways of demanding that Google obey Turkish law.

Maybe the U.S. government is fine with this decision to prioritize Google’s monopoly and forgo leverage by the government it might need in a genuine national security crisis. But somehow I doubt anyone's really thinking this through, except the officials who used to work at the State Department and now work at Google, like Jared Cohen. And Cohen didn’t do a great job when he worked at State.

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