ABSTRACT
Many authors from both the political economy of communication and the theory of platformisation describe the Big Five (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft) as very powerful actors, as super-platforms. Yet the study of these tech giants’ localisation strategies in India, which are very strong, reveals important limits to the power of these actors. These limitations are not so much related to the still modest size of the Indian digital market in terms of monetisation or the lack of infrastructure. On the contrary, the Big Five have established a market to build and develop, but limitations may be imposed by the political authorities. They expect the Big Five to provide Indian industrial players, and in particular the national champion Reliance Jio, with the technologies and the financial capital they lack. The Indian government also expects the Big Five to relay government attempts to control the political public space. The Big Five also need to access various local resources and are therefore obliged to collaborate with Indian industrial players, especially with telecommunication operators. This chapter also shows the limits of the theory of platformisation, whose conception of the relationships between industrial players is focused on a Western model and an excessively socio-technical vision that obscures a large part of the political and economic issues raised by the Big Five.
