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Comment by laurentl | Hacker News Reader

> Congratulations, you just got most of a country to angrily write their parliament-critters.

Yes, and you also got every single other country in the world to take notice and to wonder what would happen if the same happened to them... leading to ad hoc legislation, actively looking for alternative providers, and a surge of new, sometimes govt-backed competitors (you know, in the name of national independence). Not to mention that all your existing competitors will start yelling “we would NEVER do that” at the top of their lungs.

The FANG may be as powerful as big nations, but event the biggest country needs a very good reason to declare war —and defending privacy isn’t it.

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> […] and a surge of new, sometimes govt-backed competitors (you know, in the name of national independence).

Not sure if this is worse or better than FAANG. I can see the appeal though.

Cloud Service Providers have an intrinsic, shared/common interest in maintaining the easy cross-border operations and transactions.

So were they to coordinate - just as some big providers did around SOPA/PIPA, then they would have some impact. Otherwise of course no one will risk such a move.

Apple, though not a CSP is pretty much interested in keeping their privacy game going. (Which might not mean much outside the US for customers.)

> and a surge of new, sometimes govt-backed competitors

Eh, if you build it, they won't necessarily come (e.g. google+).

There’s no alternative providers.

Countries don’t have the power to dethrone FAANG.

China never allowed them to ascend the throne in China in the first place, because it's very firmly reserved for the CCP.

There may be no global, credible alternatives now. There would most certainly be local, semi-credible alternatives gaining ground shortly after such a move. If the biggest, most entrenched provider suddenly disappears... well that’s going to give some ideas to a lot of people.

There are other search engines (maybe not as powerful as Google, but if you don’t have a choice...). There are other e-commerce platforms, and there are a shitload of cloud providers. There are other high-end phone and laptop manufacturers. There may not be a credible FB alternative (but I’m not shedding any tears over that). The only real crazy-hard-to-replace infrastructure IMO is the App Store duopoly.

As another poster pointed out, there are countries (Russia, China) where credible alternative providers evolved because FAANG were not allowed to enter the market. In time, the same would happen if they were to leave a market.

> Countries don’t have the power to dethrone FAANG.

Tell that to the countries that already block them.

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