Has Britain become an economic colony?

"Two and a half centuries ago, the American colonies launched a violent protest against British rule, triggered by parliament's imposition of a monopoly on the sale of tea and the antics of a vainglorious king. Today, the tables have turned: it is Great Britain that finds itself at the mercy of major US tech firms so huge and dominant that they constitute monopolies in their fields as well as the whims of an erratic president."

"The current age of American tech monopoly began in the 2000s, when the UK, like many other countries, became almost entirely dependent on a small number of US platforms Google, Facebook, Amazon and a handful of others. It was a time of optimism about the internet as a democratising force, characterised by the belief that these platforms would make everyone rich. The dream of the 1990s naive but appealing"

Britain has become highly dependent on a small number of dominant US tech platforms, which function as monopolies across search, social media, cloud and marketplaces. The dependence emerged in the 2000s amid optimism that the internet would democratise wealth and opportunity. Policy choices allowed US firms to consolidate market power, while China pursued an industrial policy to build its own digital ecosystem under different political conditions. Cloud services and platform markets were quickly cornered by a few firms, and Europe failed to produce serious competitors to major US platforms. The concentration of wealth and power from the internet has been uneven, prompting a need for coordinated national responses.

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