DC Edit | Perils of Big Tech Monopoly
They are no longer merely commercial enterprises. As such, any disruption in their operations can have far-reaching consequences for economic activity, governance and public services. This transformation will place an extraordinary responsibility on the companies to ensure that their services remain as far as possible uninterrupted
The massive outage of Microsoft services, which disrupted Outlook, Teams, and other applications worldwide between November 12 and 14, has once again exposed the dangers of overreliance on a handful of service providers. This incident affected people and businesses who rely on these services for their everyday operations, raising serious questions about the consequences of allowing a few corporations to exercise near-monopolistic control over essential services.
Over the last two decades, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other technology companies have effectively become public utilities, as indispensable to modern life as electricity, telecommunications and banking. They are no longer merely commercial enterprises. As such, any disruption in their operations can have far-reaching consequences for economic activity, governance and public services.
This transformation will place an extraordinary responsibility on the companies to ensure that their services remain as far as possible uninterrupted. However, as no technological system can be made entirely failure-proof, companies controlling critical digital infrastructure must maintain the highest standards of reliability, redundancy and disaster recovery. Technical failures cannot be treated as mere inconveniences when their consequences extend across national boundaries.
Nevertheless, the Microsoft outage has also highlighted the advantages of decentralised infrastructure. Organisations operating services on independent servers, without relying on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure, were better insulated from the disruption. This evidence should prompt governments and businesses to reconsider the wisdom of placing all digital operations in the hands of a few service providers.
This incident carries an important lesson for India to protect the interests of 140 crore people. The government should insist that technology giants providing critical services maintain adequate infrastructure on Indian soil, with independent operational and disaster-recovery capabilities. Merely storing Indian data on domestic servers — as mandated by the government — would not suffice if the services themselves remained dependent on centralised systems located abroad.