I note a recent article in The Australian by John Rolfe calling for the breakup of Google by News Corp. Below is an extract of this:
News Corp Australia has made a submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s digital platforms inquiry to split up Google. It is believed to be the first time a major media company anywhere in the world has suggested Google be split into different businesses. It comes as regulators and politicians around the globe look to the ACCC inquiry for ideas on how to grapple with Google’s growing dominance.
The ACCC is examining the impact of search engines, social media platforms and content aggregators “on the supply of news and journalistic content and the implications of this for media content creators, advertisers and consumers”.
News Corp are making this submission out of self-interest, of course, but they are cottoning onto the next level of democracy that needs to get up to the international level. The interconnected world is allowing monopolies and oligopolies to thrive again. The only way for democracy (99.9% of everyone) to fight back is to create rules that must be obeyed at the international level.
The first rule to bring up to international level is easy. Tax the multinational bastards!
The second? Bring competition policy up to the international level.
This will take longer but it is still vital. People may think this is a pipe dream to have international laws in Company Income Tax and Competition… but when 99.9% of people are disadvantaged, a trickle will become a groundswell and voila! We’ll be putting some fairness into these disgusting monoliths such as Google.
