{"id":1344,"date":"2016-05-19T03:59:12","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T03:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=1344"},"modified":"2016-05-19T03:59:12","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T03:59:12","slug":"google-narendra-modi-game-monopoly-bjp-amit-shah-yahoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=1344","title":{"rendered":"Google, Modi, and the Game of Monopoly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\u00a0\n

S<\/span>eptember 4. This momentous day has gone down in history books as the day mankind reached a turning point. No, this isn\u2019t the day the wheel was invented or the day the printing press put out its first pamphlet. On September 4, 1998, a couple of Stanford University students with the last names Brin and Page, filed paperwork to register the odd-named company Google.\n\n<\/p>To paraphrase, the rest is the present. I researched even this little factoid through a Google search. You know you\u2019ve achieved cultural intrinsicness when a proper noun becomes a verb, just the way \u201cjust fucking Google it\u201d has. Just like \u201cUncle ek Bisleri dena\u201d or \u201cUncle do Xerox nikalna\u201d before it: A metonym; a product, an idea, distilled down to a brand name. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\n\nI suppose today is the day I should be thanking Google from the bottom of my heart. If it weren\u2019t for the search engine, I\u2019d never know how to spell Schwarzenegger (although, I am yet to figure out how to pronounce it) or find out answers to bizarre sexual queries that I\u2019m ashamed to ask my friends or Dr Mahendra Watsa. <\/span>\n\nBut more than anything else, Google is today an illustration of the Indian political landscape. The essential flaw that afflicts Google \u2013 a complete lack of competition \u2013 also shapes our government. <\/span>\n\nIf you really think about it, Modiji, the BJP, and Google aren\u2019t that different. Google doodles cover every event around the world, while Modiji literally covers the world. Google has made our lives easier, while every BJP minister claims that acche din aane wale hai. Google is so big it rules two thirds of the search engine market, just as the BJP rules about two thirds of India. Google has ensured that the competition has virtually diminished, and the BJP just became BFFs with its biggest competitor, Nitish Kumar. <\/span>\n

Competition is healthy, in the same way that playing in keechad in your childhood days helped you develop immunity.<\/blockquote>\nDespite everything wonderful that Google and the BJP have done for us, is this the world we want to live in, where our beliefs have no challenge (don\u2019t bother answering that if you have a Digital India filter DP)? Could either of these entities do really well without any test of their limits? <\/span>\n\nLook at sport, for instance. Could Roger Federer have unleashed his best if he didn\u2019t have a Rafael Nadal to compete with? Or commerce. Without Amazon, we\u2019d all still be buying stuff off Flipkart. Or culture. Could <\/span>Dhinchak Pooja<\/span><\/a> really aspire to greatness without a <\/span>Taher Shah<\/span><\/a> to spar with? Hell, without the 90-percenter Sharmaji ka beta, we\u2019d all still be backbenchers happy with our B-minuses. <\/span>\n\nCompetition is healthy, in the same way that playing in keechad in your childhood days helped you develop immunity. If you\u2019d paid attention in your eighth-grade economics class, the one thing you\u2019d remember is that monopoly is bad, because you can exploit your customers and people have no choice. Imagine craving an ice cream but there\u2019s only one shop in your entire area that only stocks vanilla \u2013 and you have to pay any price he demands. <\/span>\n\nThe best alternative to Google is Bing, which can be called the Rahul Gandhi of the search engine world. Bing is so bad that if you enter a question, you get search results that have nothing to do with the search query. It\u2019s like watching Rahul Gandhi say \u201cwomen empowerment\u201d regardless of the question you ask him. It\u2019s almost like watching an MMA fighter in one of the greatest bouts of his life\u2026 in a boxing ring. Sure, it\u2019s entertaining and a lot of people are invested in it, but we all secretly know how it ends.<\/span>\n\nWithout competition, the big just keep getting bigger and stronger. Google is now a powerhouse of information. Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, AdSense, Goggles: There are now more Google products than there are MDH Masala flavours. Google knows you better than you know yourself. <\/span>\n\nJust. Like. <\/span>Aadhaar<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>\n\nThe Aadhaar card is now linked to more services than the number of women that have been linked with <\/span>Ranveer Singh<\/span><\/a>. If the past is any indicator and if the government is as callous with our personal data as it has proven to be, the day isn\u2019t far away when even our breathing and our sex lives will be constantly tracked to sell us penis enlargement pills. Through PayTm, of course. <\/span>\n\nBut just think about the way that the Aadhaar is being forced down the throats of the Indian population. Could the BJP have really been able to achieve it if our Opposition hadn\u2019t been as ineffectual as a bunch of wilted daisies? The only time there was a sign of life from the other side in recent times was when the presidential elections were taking place; and then it was back to the graveyard. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\n\nYet. \u201cWith great power, comes great responsibility,\u201d as the only quote worth remembering from that Spider-Man movie goes. Google has had to pay a heavy fine for using the power of its search engine to discriminate against rival shopping sites. They scaled the \u201chide chocolates from the fridge so your sibling doesn\u2019t find it\u201d prank to the largest scale possible. Aadhaar too has been under fierce debate in India, with questions being raised about its security, integrity, and privacy-related issues. There are more articles on Aadhaar in newspapers these days than pictures of Aaradhya Bachchan and Taimur Ali Khan combined. That\u2019s when you know it\u2019s a really serious issue.<\/span>\n\nThe BJP is all set to cruise with the 2019 general elections in India. Google too has mega plans in store for expanding and diversifying. Google is investing heavily in a project (Calico) that will attempt to make humans immortal. I thought <\/span>Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insaan<\/span><\/a> had already figured that out. But let\u2019s just pause and think for a moment, how different it would be if we had more choice. There would be real competition and more ideas that affect every part of our life would be challenged and debated. Not in the way they are on Arnab\u2019s show, with 12 people yelling over each other and none of them making any sense. But in the manner in which we have competition among porn sites. Healthy, in good spirit, and that which keeps customers happy. <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google, today, is an illustration of the Indian political landscape. The essential flaw that afflicts Google \u2013 a complete lack of competition \u2013 also shapes our government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":1345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[1766,2256,561,2257,180,211,2258],"class_list":["post-1344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-amit-shah","tag-bjp","tag-google","tag-larry-page","tag-modi","tag-narendra","tag-sergey-brin"],"yoast_head":"\nGoogle, Modi, and the Game of Monopoly<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Google, today, is an illustration of the Indian political landscape. 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