Apple blocks YouTube from its App Store. YouTube demands a revenue share from all content that traverses its technological highways. Facebook increasing feels the need to get its fair share from everyone benefiting from its 900 million strong global user base. And this is just the tip of the iceberg…at stake here are great new ecosystems that transcend conventional boundaries and comprise of multinational consumers and revenue streams.
In the past centuries, major wars have been fought over territorial and resource gains. Sure ideology mattered, but in the end, it was always about protecting imagined or real strategic interests – which were invariably territory or valuable resource material. All very tangible and commercial!
In the second decade of the 21st century, a dramatic new global conflict is brewing. But this time the key protagonists are not rival countries, but rival US Multinational Corporations – whose citizenry (read consumers) have a size & spread bigger than most nations. These companies have spread their technological tentacles everywhere and threaten to overwhelm nations, nationalities and ideologies in their wake.
The new war is for market share on a global battlefield- with Apple, Facebook and Google being the majors – and each attracting or coercing into its sphere of influence a whole slew of minors. Giants like Microsoft, Nokia, Intel, etc meanwhile struggle to adapt to the rapidly changing environment but still remain relevant (for now) because of their sheer size. And then of course, joining the battle daily are players – new and old – who end up converging and fighting for the same share of market because technology is blurring the lines between product & service, between entertainment & information, between disparate industries and geographies itself. In the final holocaust, it will be a brutal fight for share of mind, attention, time and wallet – and nobody is quite sure that these are separate wars at all!
Net Neutrality is supposed to be the global mechanism to prevent a horrible, bloody and unequal carnage…but hey, in times past, it was ideas like humanity, civilisation and equality that were supposed to prevent bloodshed and subjugation, and were almost always trashed in the face of glory, material gain and conquest.
This then is the latest World War. Who are the Axis and who are the Allies is very hard to tell. As our lives unfold, we will live and thrive through the War Years, benefitting from all this mayhem. For the average consumer, it only gets better 🙂
China, in an interesting throwback to the 15th century, is again trying to close its borders to the foreign devil’s influence & corruption. And like the last time, they may well succeed – and then proceed to decay in an ignorant, isolated bliss…like the last time. Looks unlikely, though.
Meanwhile, the juggernauts march on. Let the war games begin!
SAMEER NAIR 