Amazon, Google and Microsoft. How and how much big tech affect
Giordano Alborghetti's post
Some time ago I found on the internet the news that Mediobanca had made presentations using their studies entitled “The giants of the web”. Intrigued, I went to their website and found their reports and that of the first 6 months of 2020 . By downloading them I began to analyze them and the more I went on, the more I realized how much the web, compared to the beginning, was and is firmly in the hands of a few big big techs.
Although I did not have specific studies behind me, I thought of making a presentation to take to the annual conference of the LibreItalia Association. So I did and in a provocative way I changed the original title to "I padroni del web". This deliberate provocation of mine is in fact the dramatic situation in which we find ourselves. Not only as Italy, but by broadening the view, Europe and the world. What leaves me thrilled, as I have written several times on Twitter, is that the conclusions I have reached, should have come people much more prepared than me. Instead there has been today, a deafening silence very worrying.
Why am I writing this?
Because in a normal situation, when you read certain data you should be very worried. A few examples? The reports read: "In Italy only 14% of total liquidity remains, while through thecash pooling system [an expression borrowed from English to define the centralization, virtual or actual, of all financial resources (incoming and outgoing) of a group in a single company] the remaining 84.7% goes to countries with subsidized taxation, such as the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, other countries ". In fact it means that in Italy, as we still read, the swimming pool has almost dried up, precisely because most of the earnings "take flight". Already this should have awakened or awakened the conscience of various political and non-political subjects, but to do this, in the words of Wendell Phillips one would need to have: “moral courage”. This is what has been missing in Italy for decades.
Going forward in the reading we find that among the top 25 big techs 14 are American – and except Microsoft – are based in the state of Delaware (it is a tax haven), 6 are Chinese, have their registered office in the Cayman Islands, 3 Japanese in Japan and 2 European in Europe. Precisely on the tax aspect it is right to remember that in 2018 Amazon had to open in Switzerland. In January 2019, new VAT rule: if you sell by mail order and earn more than 100k Swiss francs a year, you will pay all taxes in Switzerland. Swiss customers received a communication from Amazon: as of December 26, 2018, it will no longer deliver to their land. For completeness Amazon delivers via Amazon.de, Amazon.it, Amazon.fr. This means that just as the Swiss had "Moral Courage", so should we.
Going on to analyze the reports we also find that from 2015 to 2019 the Websoft market is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. The first three are: Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft which account for half of the aggregate revenues. Amazon dominates and alone accounts for a quarter of total revenue. Someone accidentally raised his hand and said "Houston we have a problem". Nobody. Precisely for this reason at some point in my presentation I had put this slide.
Because that's what's happening with no or little political will to change things. Compared to forced digitization following the pandemic, Microsoft said there was a 775% increase in the use of Microsoft Teams. It is assumed that the same could also be written for Google Meet, and all the others. So you can very well imagine that behind the semblance of wanting to facilitate students and teachers with Dad, there are merely and cynically economic interests.
My presentation ends like this: “It is therefore not surprising that there is all this infantile enthusiasm towards Ddi (integrated digital teaching). On the one hand for lack of knowledge, on the other for convenience "suggested" by those who propose proprietary software solutions, without considering how many solutions there are in free software. Let's not forget the tax damage. Non-application of the CAD art.68 and art.69. Recent studies have also highlighted the damage caused by the prolonged use of Ddi ”.
Do we have to resign ourselves to all this? Absolutely not!
What is certain is that it is not enough just for civil society to rebel, but politics should begin to play its part in the awareness that today more than ever everyone should have a minimum of digital and IT knowledge and skills.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/amazon-google-e-microsoft-come-e-quanto-dominano-le-big-tech/ on Sat, 05 Jun 2021 06:44:35 +0000.