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Comment by gremlinsinc | Hacker News Reader

This is absolutely retarded.. If I were apple, google, and facebook, and twitter - companies that ARE nations unto themselves in terms of user reach, I would start some sort of embargo, countries that enforce these kind of rules, simply ban all traffic from the country. Imagine the social upheaval and political capital the UK would lose if facebook, google, twitter, apple, bing, etc...all were no longer accessible. No more funny cat videos on youtube or facebook? Brits would go crazy, and get angry, and the politicians who made the rules, would get outted pretty darn fast and never be elected again.

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Multiple replacements for each company would appear within 24 hours. One would spread virally and gain an initial base of users, then press, and within a few months it would be in a dominant market position filling the void left by the American company it replaced.

This is exactly what happened in China when Google left - Baidu exploded in popularity and now dominates the market so completely that it would be nearly impossible for Google to unseat it.

The Chinese government does this on purpose to facilitate the growth of its own domestic companies. The Great Firewall serves as much of an economic purpose as a political one. By degrading service quality of foreign companies, it opens space in the market for domestic companies to establish themselves and gain market share. It would be impossible for any one of those companies to bootstrap its initial userbase if a giant American corporation already cornered its market.

I don't think you'll be replacing Apple or Google overnight, Twitter and Facebook only work because of the network effects, a 'facebook or twitter for the UK' would fly just about as good as a lead balloon.

Tell that to tencent, weibo, baidu, youku...

They did not spring up 'overnight'.

They are also forced upon the population by the state and China speaks a different language than English.

Baidu was there already there to quickly fill the void that google left. Similar things would happen with other companies if major players magically vanished the next day too.

Found the brit !

I don't think I'm following you.

1971genocide thinks you are British!

Not sure whether to take that as a compliment, which is a sad reflection on the state of both the UK and NL.

I thought Baidu was already the leader by far before Google even stepped in.

Right.. Baidu had 2/3rds of the market when Google left in 2009 (google had the other 1/3rd) [edit: and that 1/3rd was the peak for google in China too]

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/21/google-baidu-internet-intel...

This is correct. Baidu was already well entrenched long before Google left.

You'd like it if companies used their economic muscle to effect national security laws?

I agree in this case, the law isn't a good one, the snoopers charter generally is a problem.

But I don't want companies throwing their weight around more than they already do (and they do, but in a largely predictable capitalistic, profit maximising way). The road to companies becoming de-facto governments is paved with good intentions.

Initially you invite the Roman Empire in to help secure your borders against regional powers, then before you know it you're a vassal state, then a prefecture, then Jerusalem is burning, and your country is gone for 1900 years.

Or, to put it another way, you arm the Mujahadeen to help you fight the Russians, and then...

The problem with this idea is that media here in the UK (the red tops, Daily Mail, tv news etc.) would just turn on you, berate you, and then, eventually, ignore you. The headlines would start something along the lines of:

"Arrogant American tax-dodgers refuse to abide by the law... and take it out on you!",

or, "Facebook choosing terrorists over us!"

Promptly follow that up with reports about the number of UK jobs at risk.

All the focus would end up being on the social and economic consequences rather than the cause, and eventually the sheep would turn on you as well... or, worse, just learn to live without you while still being apathetic to the Governments assault on their liberty.

>being apathetic to the Governments assault on their liberty

I wonder at what point do we just decide they don't deserve those liberties and work to try to ensure we are part of the haves and not the have nots. It is a shame for the children who won't get a choice, but for the adults who choose this, at what point do we stop them from getting what they want?

> I would start some sort of embargo, countries that enforce these kind of rules, simply ban all traffic from the country.

I wonder how it would work the opposite way: Start redirecting google.co.uk to uk.google.com, hosted and operated by a non-UK corporate entity outside of UK jurisdiction. Make them block you. China would do it; would Britain?

It would never happen, the money from ads is too lucrative for management to do something like that.

The "unrelated" non-UK company would "license" some technology from google, and pay Google a "license fee" which is coincidentally equal to gross ad revenue less operating expenses. You know, basic undergrad-level tax dodging stuff.

You lost me at "retarded." Learn the laws of social decency and then come back and have a discussion.

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