Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

India, Jio, and the Four Internets

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 279 posts

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#151

Post by reactspa »

op03 wrote: post #86

Too much overconfidence in Reliance. This is the same firm well known for totally missing the boat on India's IT boom. It has done a great job deploying the network. Unmatched probably anywhere in the world. But that set of skills has nothing to do with charting out a vision that will work in future. That set of skills to rollout a network at huge scale quickly, existed in India because of cut throat competition in t…

Great points in parent comment.

Additionally: the problem of nepotism. The most recent shareholder AGM showed up in my YouTube recos. I didn't watch the video, but in the mouse-over preview there were only 3 people: Mukesh, his mother, and his wife.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#152

Post by wadkar »

balladeer wrote: post #68
wadkar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah now it makes sense why there are so many Amazon recruiters pinging and connecting on LinkedIn :-) Thanks, I am happy to know Google Pay is run from India. Hope things change for the better for Google SWE/SREs in India - I am sure they're at par if not better than their Googleplex counterparts.

> I am sure they're at par if not better than their Googleplex counterparts I have heard it's not. PS. Amazon's work-life balance is is non-existent in most teams.

> I have heard it’s not.

Really? I was under the impression that the Hyderabad/Banglore office is old enough that they must’ve figured out their hiring process by now. You would expect at least great Infra/SRE support teams for Google Pay - as it’s an India centric product.

As for Amazon - yeah, read those stories here on HN but not sure what to make of it. They must be having huge churn in that case.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#153

Post by divbzero »

OP is clearly presenting a simplified picture for sake of discussion, which made me wonder what populations or regions he might be leaving out.

– Most populous continent not discussed: Africa [1]

– Most populous country not discussed: Indonesia [1]

– Biggest economy not discussed: Japan [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#154

Post by wobbly_bush »

flak48 wrote: post #112
op03 wrote: post #86

Too much overconfidence in Reliance. This is the same firm well known for totally missing the boat on India's IT boom. It has done a great job deploying the network. Unmatched probably anywhere in the world. But that set of skills has nothing to do with charting out a vision that will work in future. That set of skills to rollout a network at huge scale quickly, existed in India because of cut throat competition in t…

Maybe we are underestimating the power of their relations with the present government, in terms of an ally that can be used to threaten or harm competitors both Indian and foreign. Just like TikTok can be banned, other services can eventually be banned too, under the garb of nationalism or whatever and India can potentially go the full China way with Reliance as the Indian Baidu or Alibaba, or at least as a major ren…

From your [2],

> Last month, India tightened rules that will disallow foreign-owned online retailers from selling products via companies in which they own equity, and forbid them from pushing merchants to sell exclusively through their platforms

Amazon and other companies are running into this problem even in the US - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/wsj-amazon-uses-data-from-th.... So the speculation that action of Indian government is just that - speculation.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#155

Post by topher200 »

divbzero wrote: post #153

OP is clearly presenting a simplified picture for sake of discussion, which made me wonder what populations or regions he might be leaving out. – Most populous continent not discussed: Africa [1] – Most populous country not discussed: Indonesia [1] – Biggest economy not discussed: Japan [2] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

The author is based in Taiwan. I believe he would have good insight into developments and trends in Asian regions generally.

That's a very interesting list of absent economies that you posted though. We don't hear much from the telecom/internet backbone from those areas... perhaps they don't have as much local development and rely more on US/China based developments and infrastructure.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#156

Post by wobbly_bush »

op03 wrote: post #86

Too much overconfidence in Reliance. This is the same firm well known for totally missing the boat on India's IT boom. It has done a great job deploying the network. Unmatched probably anywhere in the world. But that set of skills has nothing to do with charting out a vision that will work in future. That set of skills to rollout a network at huge scale quickly, existed in India because of cut throat competition in t…

> If you think polarization/inequality/fake news etc etc in US is bad, go and visit India. I was there in Jan and the whole place was burning.

This kind of gloom and doom messaging about India has been happening since the 1950s. This is more an emotion than actual facts. The equivalent of this in US is doubting the capabilities of SpaceX because of BLM protests - totally different issues.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#157

Post by jay_kyburz »

Barrin92 wrote: post #8

I feel like every Stratechery piece on Europe is just plain bashing because Ben Thompson is allergic to regulation. Somehow extrapolating from one Indian company, Jio, to some sort of global vision of an internet while completely disregarding the European continent (which in pure market value obviously still is large) just seems like bad faith. Every time I read one of these pieces about growth, growth and growth I'm…

Yes, the elephant in the room is that the laissez-faire internet of the US is doing irreparable harm to the US and much of the world. (Just one example would be the US's response to covid-19 because people can't distinguish fact from fiction)

I think one of the most important roles of a government is to say "no" to some parts of its society to try and make it function better. The EU is taking its first tentative steps towards fixing the internets problems. The US hasn't even acknowledged there is a problem yet.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#158

Post by zapdrive »

op03 wrote: post #86

Too much overconfidence in Reliance. This is the same firm well known for totally missing the boat on India's IT boom. It has done a great job deploying the network. Unmatched probably anywhere in the world. But that set of skills has nothing to do with charting out a vision that will work in future. That set of skills to rollout a network at huge scale quickly, existed in India because of cut throat competition in t…

> well known for totally missing the boat on India's IT boom.

There's two different Reliances. When the old Papa died, the two Ambani boys divided his empire into two. The older one kept the oil etc, and the younger one got telecommunications etc. There was some agreement of not competing for X years. The younger brother's telco failed miserably and had to be bailed out by the elder. After that the elder went ahead and start his own telco. That's why he's a little late in the game.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#159

Post by jay_kyburz »

product50 wrote: post #139
posguy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify, Qwant, Here Maps, Minecraft, etc

Wow - such great companies. I am flattered. Please be real. US has FB, Google, MSFT, Apple. China has Tencent, Alibaba, Bytedance. And look at the list you have come up for Europe.

Yea but, who cares about Unicorns. Their investors. The rest of us would prefer smaller companies and more competition.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#160

Post by pdonis »

tw04 wrote: post #143
pdonis wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> municipalities were building out their own ISP Municipalities were trying to build out their own last mile infrastructure . Some of them wanted to add ISP functionality on to that, but not all. In other words, they were already trying to do exactly what a "1 wire rule" would have mandated. > They were left to try to come up with their own solution In other words, municipalities were trying to do what was best for t…

>Municipalities were trying to build out their own last mile infrastructure. Some of them wanted to add ISP functionality on to that, but not all. In other words, they were already trying to do exactly what a "1 wire rule" would have mandated. Building out last-mile != becoming an ISP. The city builds roads that lead to my house, they don't sell me the car I drive down the road or the gas I fill it with. >Yes, and fu…

> Building out last-mile != becoming an ISP.

Which is exactly what I said, yes.

> There's a reason the federal government has handed out hundreds of BILLIONS to expand internet coverage in the US.

Yes, it's called regulatory capture and corporate lobbying.

> Are you serious?

Yes.

> A city with a budget measured in the hundreds of thousands per year would immediately cease and desist if they were faced with a multi-million dollar settlement should they lose the case.

If the lawsuit is obviously frivolous, they won't lose. Their lawyers will be able to advise them of that before they decide how to respond. In a sane legal environment, the municipality's lawyers would know that a judge was going to see the suit as frivolous and throw it out, with the plaintiff ordered to pay the defense's costs. Of course, we don't currently have a sane legal environment.

> Regulation has never been the issue in the US.

Evidently we don't live in the same reality. So I don't see that further discussion is going to have any point.

Post reply on HN