Sometimes I wish people wrote concise stories. This one goes on forever. It is not a book that we need to learn everything from the beginning. Interesting is this comes 2 days after Google India has lost a huge tax case: https://www.medianama.com/2017/10/223-itat-google-india-tax-...

more countries need to do this, just because you have no local physical presence doesn't mean you get to avoid paying taxes

The tech sector essentially exists the way it does today by dint of the slow pace of the law vs. technology. In short, this is a new robber-baron period, and it will probably end just as messily for everyone involved.

But hey, who cares when people think they're magically smart enough to avoid the consequences of their actions...

With 65% of the population under the age of 35[1], India will be a tremendous market over the next 20 yrs. That is the reason why you see Google, Facebook, Amazon all playing a role there, which will only accelerate.

But to activate this market India needs to get its act together on sociopolitical front. And I’m barely optimistic about that.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India

Can you elaborate on the socio-political front? I am trying to understand how politics and social dynamics prevent the penetration of technology.

Sure. Zukerberg is right now in China, not for tech rollout but to navigate the politics. 42 countries currently block parts of open internet and the trend is growing. In India the people successfully defended net neutrality by pushing back on facebook’s free offering. So on…

OT: Can someone explain why 3 votes made this the 3rd post on the frontpage?

What's even stranger is that your post is always auto-closed. No matter if I open it, log in, log out .. whatever. Whenever I reload this page, your post is auto-closed.

I default-collapsed it because it's so offtopic. I guess that has a catnip effect when a thread is at #1. But consider how irrelevant all these comments are.

Yes, that is strange.

To quote calcifer:

> "someone with privileges wanted it that way"

And it is off-topic.

Closed for me too

I don't have the authoritative answer or anything but just based on observation, I've noticed that there are (almost?) always one or two new articles with low vote counts on the front page. I assume it's so we don't need so many "knights of new" to make ensure that the content on the front page matches what the masses want to see.

OT but I really don't understand these types of questions. The possible answers range from "because the ranking works that way" to "someone with privileges wanted it that way". On either end of the spectrum, the real question remains: so what? What difference does it make why a particular post is in a particular position? If the title seems interesting, you click on it. If not, you move on.

I don't mean to question you in particular. It just seems like such a trivial concern to me that I truly can't understand why someone might possibly care.

I don't think there's the one real question. Of course you can always ask "So what?"

And why are some posts, like yours, collapsed by default? And some accounts have default auto-dead comments. It's not transparent how this all works.

Edit: looks like another commenter mentioned this too. Sorry for the dupe.

Slow weekend I guess.

OT: What does OT stands for?

Off topic.

let's hope china (or somebody else) crushes their dreams. seeing the same big four dominate everything over and over and over is getting tiresome.

can GOOG/FB/AMZN die already?

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, including rant-only comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That is a very strange sentiment. I would prefer them being overtaken by a better (US/India or any moderately free country) company. I would prefer they not be crushed by an oppressive regime.

I disagree. Power consolidation into a handful of multinational corporations has the potential to destabilize the globe more than a single oppressive regime. If dozens or hundreds of countries require these companies to function, that takes power from the country's citizens(if it's a democracy) to the hands of the powerful within those multinational corporations.

"potential to destabilize"

Potential evil vs actual oppression today?

Potential _global_ evil vs actual country-wide oppression. The strength of a corporation capable of population-wide cultural and psychological manipulation shouldn't be taken lightly.

You think China is not on its path to global evil? E.g. Silk Road, Taiwan, 9-Dash line, String of Pearls strategy etc.

No. What in my comment made you think I think that?

You only listed three? Who do you consider the fourth? Personally think it is one tier with two, Google and Amazon and then FB and do not know of a fourth.