There was a time when a company took decades before coming to occupy dominance on any market, and once reached the top was destined to remain unchallenged for entire decades.
That time is gone.
Twitter just celebrated its first ten years of life, Airbnb we have not yet arrived, Uber and Whatsapp there are a little over half a decade and the ‘list of actors-children of the so-called app-economy could go on much longer.
and each of them, today the undisputed master of the first screen of our smartphone and our tablets and, in this way, the undisputed star of our newspaper is expected to remain so until they find someone – or, rather, something – easier to use, more cool , with most appeal .
Then a tap longer than those with which normally activate these app and begin to use its services, will pop up a “x” and before will drag its icon down at the bottom, in the third or fourth screen of our smartphone, in the cemetery of the app or, even worse, we will delete forever.
With few exceptions those for our app and the related services are, in fact, intense but fleeting passions , suggested seasonal falling in love more from the digital word of mouth advertising and loves you consume quickly, or at least vastly more quickly than those that have so far characterized the relationship between consumers and the large producers and distributors of goods and services operating in the physical world.
Just think of the first nine on the remote control of our assigned TV, more or less the same channels for decades, to the first nine automakers including cyclically find us choose the car to buy, to supermarkets in which we go to the grocery store or the newspaper that we read always.
But even this list, such as that of the producing companies-girls of the app that stand on our smartphones could go on and on.
yet to review the further disputes that the European Commission sent yesterday to Google in connection with the Android operating system seems to suggest in no uncertain terms, or hesitation that less than ten years – so many he has the green robot of the Android brand, probably more than his name – can today enough to conquer a market and get so high to be found even to be able to abuse its dominant position to the detriment of consumers and competitors , and treating each other like a herd of cattle forced to run in a one direction because of contractual and digital fences raised left and right.
But is it really so?
really the market to roll it on the screens of our smartphone and tablet looks both liquid, open and volatile is, however, both closed, colonizzabile and fragile as suggested by his action the European Commission accuses Google of abusing its dominant position to do so on a half smartphone world there were always their own app?
the question is too complex and delicate to try to advance hypotheses in one direction or another without having all the data, information and items that the European Commission has collected thus far and will gather over the next few months.
It ‘obvious, in fact, that in an increasingly connected through its own app, smartphone and tablet freedom of the relevant market is an unfailing to underpin a development not only economic but also and above all social, cultural and sustainable democracy. If there is no freedom in that market on which it depends, and will depend more and more of our citizens and users existence – and not vice versa – there is not and there will be no freedom in our countries.
Great respect and attention, then, to the process of ‘ . As of now, however, it is worth to line up some suspicion only to leave him then dispel the time, the European Commission and by the facts.
The first.
there is a unique concentration of events – perhaps only daughter of the times – where Europe, through its laws and their application, seems, at times, “rage” against the giants in recent years web stars and stripes: the great theme of the web tax, that of the transfer abroad of personal data [with the cancellation of the famous decision of the EU Commission regarding the Safe harbor by the Court of Justice, ed ], that of the famous judgment on the right to be forgotten and now – but already before now – the antitrust Brussels march against Google.
All of these initiatives although with different nuances, although strictly legal matrix appear contaminated by a political approach that sometimes leaves the unpleasant taste in the mouth anti-colonialism.
There to be hoped that this is a random perceptions, wrong and distorted because they should by now be clear to everyone that markets and companies are global and that a rich country policies such as Europe should work hard to put their citizens and entrepreneurs in the best possible conditions to excel in new markets rather than try to defend them anachronistically, in a relentlessly episodic, with strokes of laws and judgments.
The second.
We are confident that the antitrust rules yesterday, remain adequate to govern a market in which you reach the top and rushes to the bottom much more quickly than they were connected in the past?
the third and last.
Europe and its institutions seem to prefer – but maybe it’s just the fault of the tools that do not have – act ex post when the fence is now open and escaped oxen instead of preventing the realization of events and phenomena that then, they themselves, judge serious and alarming .
it took ten years and a judgment the of the European union Court of Justice – without saying cyclone DataGate – to put pen to paper that the United States could not – and perhaps can not – be considered a safe harbor for data personal Europeans .
And now if the latest allegations made by the European Commission in Google were well founded, would mean that it took more than five years to see that a giant was colonizing such a central market for Europe’s future as that of apps and smartphones.
also of concern is that, perhaps most of the attempts of a company – real or imagined – to corner a market.
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