Hans H. Luik, founder and shareholder of the Estonian media group Ekspress Grupp, who spoke at the Login 2015 conference in Vilnius, says the international giants are there to completely push out local competitors. Trends in social media, he says, clearly point toward internet giants conquering the world market in its entirety.
According to Luik, Latvia’s draugiem.lv is the only local social network in Europe that managed to maintain a relatively good market position. That, however, might soon change, too.
In all other markets, Facebook reigns supreme, having pushed out all local social networks like one.lt in Lithuania.
“They [internet giants] want to take everything, not just a part,” the Estonian media veteran noted in Vilnius.
According to him, Baltic businesses are facing a particularly big challenge in the fact that internet giants like Google, Twitter and others refuse to share information about how much they make in the Baltics, which make it difficult to estimate their exact share in the online advertising market.
Moreover, the money they make here goes to overseas companies, which cuts into tax revenues of the Baltic governments.
Luik says that the form of capitalism we have now is transforming into one which will leave the mass of people owning very little while international behemoths will be taking everything.
“They are cannibalizing the market, their force is so huge that they are building their own energy sources, laying their own cables. They are so good at grasping the power of statistics and data analysis that they are able to take everything in the market,” Luik said.
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