Throughout the week, as general coverage hailed the state’s return with Joe Biden, the Wall Street Journal grabbed headlines in the opposite direction, highlighting the concentration of economic power in the United States.
Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft released their first quarter results, leaving financial coverage running out of steam.
In the most media-used data, Google and Facebook ad revenue jumped 34% and 46%, respectively, from the same period last year.
Together, the profit of the five increased by 105%. Income, 41%. And its performance has spread to other areas, starting to cover much of what promises to be the new consumer economy, post-pandemic.
On this, notes the Financial Times, the financial market has even temporarily forgotten the fear of a possible state intervention “to limit the power – and the profits – of Big Tech”.
The model for this intervention by Biden, as in much of what he has announced for the United States, could be Xi Jinping’s China.
Chinese regulators fined Alibaba 18.2 billion yuan (15.3 billion reais) in an action described on the US cover as targeting Jack Ma, the company founder and alleged opponent of Xi .
But Caixin’s most recent coverage points out that the fine was “the start of the crackdown on anti-competitive activity” on the Chinese Internet, “where certain titans increasingly dominate the daily lives of consumers.”
In the climax of the country’s main financial publication, “there is no international experience to learn, for China’s antitrust case, which means it could be the first to move forward.”
Closing the month, regulators on Friday announced a first round of fines for monopoly actions against Tencent and ten other tech companies, including Didi, from Brazilian enforcement 99.
In Bloomberg’s explainer video, “In China, there is a duopoly of Alibaba and Tencent that brings together everything from purchasing to insurance, and regulators are demanding a level playing field.”
And in the almost didactic video from the WSJ, “US is targeting Big Tech too, but here’s how China is doing faster.”
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The US giants know that regulation has started, not only in China, but in Europe, and has started to pressure Biden to seek allies so as not to allow him to go too far, as noted. the Axios website, behind the scenes in Washington.
The actions of other countries are already copied by some US states. Experts / lobbyists claim that “the United States must work with the European Union on a regulatory framework before undemocratic countries take the lead.”
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