Who's to say we'll ever see a major international company like that again? I foresee a future where DNS root server control is yanked away from the USG and the internet is partitioned.
The pendulum has peaked at globalization and now it's swinging towards isolationism. Whether we like it or not borders have been drawn along the previously wild-west-like internet, and it may take on the form of virtual Berlin Walls.
Hopefully someday we can enjoy the same euphoria that followed Germany's reunification but on a global scale, and that day may take a century to get here.
I was thinking this after the NSA thing. People could end up in 150 person (Dunbar number) sized LLCs like the city-states in the novel.
On a more serious note, I hope the internet stays together, but that the pendulum will start swinging back from "cloud" to decentralized, federated or even P2P protocols and services. Wasn't it originally meant that way? (with NNTP, email, ...).
Brilliant insight. Globalization will probably be only a blink of an eye when compared to the history of human civilization. A snapshot in time when conditions were favorable.
Now the conditions are changing again: peak oil, international surveillance and rising labour costs in developing countries are all deal breakers.
Fact is, Russians don't use Facebook and Gmail because they have more popular local alternatives. This decision is ultimately more about trade protectionism than anything else, much like the US witch-hunt on ZTE and Huawei.
huh? Gmail/FB and local alternatives (yandex/vk) take about the same market share. Russia has it's own NSA (SORM-2), so I'd stay away from it.
In this context, it makes sense.