In Korea, there is such a company:
It is the epitome of the Chinese Internet in South Korea;
It started from communication software, covering mobile payment, games, entertainment and other major fields;
South Korea has a population of 51.75 million, 47.5 million people are its users, the app covers 97% of the population, and people are nicknamed "Internet Little Samsung".
Even, even WeChat almost "fell". (South Korean media have repeatedly emphasized that Tencent's success on WeChat is a model of copying Kakao)
However, it is such a "whole wall" existence that occupies the Korean Internet, and suddenly the Internet is cut off, and this interruption is 4 days.
On October 15, the 40 million netizens in the Republic of Korea seemed to have suddenly entered the "Stone Age", and communication all depended on roaring (chat software collapsed), and eating was all bartered (payment software was no longer needed).
Even the email exchange link, which is not highly technical, but is of great significance to business cooperation, was sealed for 4 days.
This is exactly how the "Doomsday Stream" novel opens.
It wasn't until the Korean network gradually recovered that everyone found out that a data center in South Korea caught fire, causing Kakao's servers to be paralyzed.
According to South Korean police, the fire occurred near the lithium battery rack on the 3rd basement of the electrical room of Building A of the data center. The power supply was stacked on five battery racks, and when the incident occurred, one of the lithium batteries sparked and started a fire.
But this is nothing, the original network disconnection is a trivial matter, whose server is not down.
You see, as soon as Sina Weibo has a hot spot, the CEO needs to go out to rent a server, and big platforms such as B station and WeChat have not been complained about.
It doesn't matter if it collapses, the key is that a normal enterprise collapses for a few hours, and it is already considered once in a decade.
As a result, Kakao collapsed for 4 days.
The worst thing is that the platform NAVER, which was disconnected from the Internet in the same fire, took only 4 hours to repair, which made kakao, which took a full 4 days, how to dump the pot?
So Kakao greeted the long-stored anger of South Koreans.
After all, kakao is everywhere in Seoul.
Almost everyone needs the company's app to send messages, taxis, navigation and payments.
Kakao Talk is not only the largest instant messaging app in South Korea, but also its Kakao Pay is currently the largest e-wallet tool in South Korea, with a total of 36 million users, equivalent to 7 out of every 10 Koreans using Kakao Pay.
In terms of travel, Kakao also controls nearly 40% of taxis in South Korea and 96.1% of ride-hailing users.
Even, 8 national-level applications, including the above software, can only be logged in through kakao's account.
So ah, kakao cooled for 4 days, which is basically equivalent to "eliminating the spiritual and cultural life of the Korean people".
Imagine that you lost your life to Meituan, Baidu, Alipay, and WeChat and QQ, and you can experience the same anger.
Some Korean netizens likened this experience image to a 1 million times missile attack.
And those grumpy old buddies are already scolding the street online.
Technology critic Kim Good-hyun turned the discussion of the incident into more serious thinking:
If you don't have anything else, forget it, but now kakao makes everyone can't even scan the health code, which is already a "public health event".
"The Kakao app plays a quasi-governmental role in the country, for example, in dealing with the coronavirus outbreak or sending notifications from government offices," Kim said. ”
At the height of the pandemic, KakaoTalk partnered with the Korea Agency for Disease Control and Prevention to offer in-app features such as QR code scanning and digital vaccine certificates.
During the pandemic, these functions became crucial in everyday life as they were called into hypermarkets and restaurants.
Everyone must have a deep understanding of this.
However, things have come to this point, as a big business, the basic crisis
PR can still be engaged.
After the server was completely down, the official did make a lot of remedial measures: in addition to quickly restoring service functions, compensation was also made for some paid services.
For example, Kakao Games, a game division under kakao, announced on the 17th that it would compensate its major games such as "Odin: God Rebellion" and "Princess Wired", and all players can receive generous game prop rewards from the official.
In addition, officials have established a responsible center to record and compensate users for their losses.
Even, the management directly fired the co-CEO.
Originally, if kakao had maintained this sincerity, maybe this matter would be over, and the Internet has no memory.
But unexpectedly, in the most influential Kakao Talk communication section, Kakao company arrogantly said:
The bad reviewer almost squirted out a sip of salt soda, losing a small target has not run, the market value has dropped by 100 billion, and he even wants to save money and stop loss, which is to treat the Korean "white prostitute party" as ah.
With this arrogant attitude and financial picking, it's no wonder that Kakao was able to disconnect from the Internet for 4 days. The money for backup of the data center is estimated to be saved by them...
Even I am so angry, the Koreans have long been cracked.
At this time, it is useless to rely on dialogue, and it is over to directly resist kakao.
Kakao talk lost 8 million users during the weekend outage, and people began using other alternatives like Facebook's Messenger, Telegram and Naver's Line.
Telegram taunted Kakao on Twitter, saying, "We welcome our new Korean users and hope they can enjoy the stability of Telegram's multi-data center infrastructure. ”
And a Seoul-based lawyer, Shin Jae-Youn, is leading the public to prepare a class-action lawsuit against Kakao:
This series of changes has caused the whole of South Korea to evolve from a spit on kakao to an anti-kakao wave.
And the overwhelming public opinion has just given the South Korean government the opportunity to engage in anti-monopoly.
Prior to this, the collision between South Korea's monopoly forces and anti-monopoly had already made a lot of noise.
At first, in the face of the deep-rooted consortium forces within South Korea, the South Korean government did not venture forward (and may even have suffered from it), but tactfully trained overseas Internet giants.
In 2016, the South Korean government issued a fine of $860 million to the "patent troll--Qualcomm", which became a monument in the history of Korean monopoly, and the anti-monopoly business was out of control.
Subsequently, South Korea struck while the iron was hot, and in 2021, it legally prohibited Apple and Google from forcing developers to use their fixed payment channels by amending the Telecommunications Business Law.
In other words, the App Store and Google Play's commissions are no longer a must, and app developers have more choices, which has starved domestic game vendors.
Although soon after, Apple launched countermeasures, saying that third-party payment transactions still require a 26% commission.
However, as the first country in the world to shoot at the "apple tax", South Korea's determination to fight monopoly can be seen.
However, compared with Samsung's toughness in international anti-monopoly, internally, the South Korean government is a bit weak.
Although the Korea Justice Commission has been promoting the development of guidelines for the review of online platforms since 2020, it has not been able to implement them due to the inability to complete the coordination of stakeholders' interests.
Simply put, the opposition is too strong. ( We won't say who it is, we understand it all)
In the end, it was President Yoon Seok-yue who acted as a peacemaker, stopping the official work of formulating review guidelines and replacing them with the method of "platforms formulating self-discipline norms".
But how does the term "self-discipline" look more and more like a "fig leaf for the loser"?
This time, the Kakao service paralysis accident can be regarded as providing a credit for antitrust, and South Korea has restarted the platform review guidelines.
Even President Yoon Seok-yue, who has always emphasized "freedom of enterprise", has changed his words:
The impact of the Kakao service disruption is "no different from the disruption of the national communication network", and in the event of a monopoly or oligopoly that manipulates the market, "we need to take systematic measures at the national level to safeguard the interests of the people".
This is also the first time in the history of the South Korean president that the "anti-monopoly issue" has been mentioned.
South Korea's ruling party and opposition parties have reached a consensus for a long time: they will legislate to promote data centers of a certain size such as Kakao into the management of the state.
One kakao has united the South Korean people, the ruling party and the opposition party who have been looking at each other, and this time it is enough for kakao to drink a pot.
In the future, I am afraid that there will be good dramas.
However, it may not be realistic to solve the monopoly problem in the Internet field through this collective denunciation of Kakao.
After all, there may be contradictions between these consortiums, but most likely they will not sit idly by on anti-monopoly reform.
However, this monopoly, especially the monopoly on the Internet, is increasingly intensified, which is an oppression of the country, the industry, and ordinary people.
We all know that in the industry ecology, more manufacturers enter to maintain ecological balance. Only healthy competition can inject a steady stream of nutrients into the development of the industry.
Otherwise, there will be a scene of arrogance like kakao, and the Koreans who were not firm enough before have already suffered bitter fruit.