Why government must make Google, Facebook pay for content
February 25, 2021, 11:35 AM IST
Saubhik Chakrabarti is Associate Executive Editor, ET.
As the world’s largest democracy, as its second-largest online market, as a soon-to-become fastest growing major economy, India should have taken the lead on making Google and Facebook – two alarmingly dominant global super-monopolies – pay a fair share of earnings they make from domestically produced news content on the internet.
Even more so because, first, India’s government has demonstrated it is perfectly willing to take on Big Tech on multiple other fronts and, second, it has made atmanirbharata (self-reliance) its economic policy mantra. A large democracy with growing internet market power run by a government that champions local enterprise and can get tough on global players is just about the perfect candidate to be a key player in this fight.