A storm is brewing in the shadow of Big Tech’s gleaming facades. The recent landmark decision by a Washington, D.C. court, declaring that Google’s search division has operated as an illegal monopoly, has sent shockwaves through the global tech industry.
Recently, international media outlets from Bloomberg to The New York Times and The Guardian have reported a potential Google breakup, including the divestment of the Chrome web browser and Android OS, Brazil’s most popular mobile operating system. Nearly 82 percent of mobile devices in Latin America’s largest economy run on Android.
New regulatory shifts, along with a reimagining of our dependence on the dominance of too few tech giants, is good news for Brazil — which was once again near the top of the list for global cyberattacks, behind only the U.S., for a tenth year in a row per a March 2024 report by Netscout. The top three industry sectors targeted by DDoS attacks (denial-of-service attacks) are wireless telecom carriers, general cargo transportation companies, and data processing, hosting, and related services, according to Netscout.
In March, IBM warned of a new threat via the constantly mutating PixPirate malware in the form of a sophisticated Brazilian banking Trojan Horse that users cannot see and is designed to trigger wire transfers from Android devices using Brazil’s wildly popular PIX instant payments system. PIX processes about three billion transactions at just over three years old, totaling around BRL 250 billion (USD 44.3 billion).
The shifting tide to fair competition and broader protection control
The most recent U.S. Department of Justice ruling, coupled with looming antitrust cases against others, including Amazon and Meta, signals a seismic shift in the regulatory landscape — as evidenced by Brazil’s efforts to reign in via antitrust practice and enforcement this year.
As the digital titans that have shaped our online existence for decades now face unprecedented scrutiny, we’re forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: our world has become perilously dependent and controlled by only a handful of tech behemoths.
The dangers of this digital oligarchy were thrown into sharp relief in July when a routine…
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