The Internet's Gilded Age
The Author (Geoff Huston) also presented this thesis in a talk during APRICOT 2017, highly recommended to watch:
My perspective is different, as a resident of San Francisco, while Huston is a scientist in Australia. Though, I think he is essentially right.
These new Internet businesses employ fewer people than the industries that they displace, but these are American jobs they are creating. For (unspecified) reasons the US has a high amount of entrepreneurship, so that a web site running from a desktop in a dorm room can shortly become an international power. The top 5 or so most valuable companies in the world are all American.
When we want a list of the gilded age Internet companies, they are all American. This makes regulation a bit tricky. Germany is trying to regulate Google; where is the German Google? The only competitors are in China and Russia, where the government outright banned Google and Facebook.
This is also a challenge for America. It’s better for us for the jobs to be American, but I don’t want to kill the entrepreneurship. Hillary Clinton told the coal miners to go back to school and reenter the work force with new jobs. They revolted and voted for Donald Trump.
So basically the head of APNIC is saying "we have a problem: private control of public services". A familiar issue.
If CDNs are so powerful I wonder why they're paying broadband ISPs instead of vice versa.