Canadian Government Executive - Volume 25 - Issue 02

40 / Canadian Government Executive // April/May 2019 The Socialization of Big Tech V ery soon, two of the world’s largest privately-held companies will go public. The highly-anticipated IPO’s (initial public offerings) of both Uber and Airbnb will fully legitimize ride-sharing and home-sharing operations offered by both these disruptive pioneers and many likeminded competitors. Going public presents not only an investment opportunity for retail investors but a myr- iad of new responsibilities for the companies themselves – across millions of new share- holders on the one hand, and via key stakeholder groups on the other hand. One such stakeholder is government, or rather governments, since technology companies operate in literally thousands of jurisdictions around the world encompassing national, regional and local state entities. For more established players – notably Facebook, Amazon, and Google – the growing pains of balancing profitable innovation and societal expectations have been fully on dis- play in recent months. By Jeffrey Roy Governing Digitally