Tell Google: Stop Killing Monopoly Research
citizensagainstmonopoly.org
citizensagainstmonopoly.org
Why can't the Open Markets team just find new funders? With this type of publicity, I'm sure many corporations and even individuals would step up.
I think the bigger problem is that the Open Market's team miscalculated that the New America foundation would have the flexibility and/or courage to stand behind this project vs stand up to Google.
It just seems a bit entitled to ask Google to fund research that can hurt them as a company.
Do you think it's ethical for a company funding a news agency to influence what they publish? The same would logically go for research. Google should be free to chose to fund or not fund New America, but they should not be able to use that funding for influence. That's unethical.
Furthermore there definitely is an argument for Google's behavior being unethical regardless. Acting in your self-interest is not unconditionally ethical. By analogy: a person absolutely has a personal responsibility to inform others if they are dangerous. It would be unethical to hide the fact that I'm not a safe driver, or that I'm prone to psychotic rages. Google is not ethically excused if their monopoly is deleterious to the public good just because saying it would affect their bottom line.
Even more important than that though is that think tanks are supposed to produce objective truth through rational arguments. It is unethical to interfere with objective truth. Google can argue the subjective validity of what New America produces, but they can't just block things they don't agree with. By influencing New America to avoid statements condemning Google, that's what they are doing.
I'll admit it's a fine line between withdrawing funding and using it as a threat to influence a think tank, but I think the difference is obvious.
The onus here to protect the Open Markets work, IMO, isn't on Google. It should be on the New America foundation. They had 2 choices: 1, Tell Google goodbye and raise money elsewhere while keeping to fund the Open Market initiative. Or 2, Keep Google's funding while defunding and disbanding the Open Markets team.
The ire, I believe, should be directed at the New America foundation and their leadership. Google seemed to just protect their best interests.
Every news agency's owners and advertisers influence what they publish. The argument from ethics is an interesting one. I know many advertisers who pull their funding from a show whose host said something controversial. They make the network fire the host and cancel a show etc.
The unethical part of what google is doing is that there is very little chance they are not acting entirely in their own self-interest. There is an entire additional stratum of arguments underneath that which are about the real truth, freedom of speech, and whether it is okay to block what people think based on your opinions.
Lots of opinions are damaging to someone or someone's agenda if taken seriously by enough people.
Do you really think these other corporate sponsors don't think about what's good for them and their image when they pull funding? You have to compare apples to apples. Google should be compared to other corporate sponsors of projects.
That answers whether they think it's ethical. However, they weren't asked.
2) They didn't pull funding, they threatened to pull it. I might understand if they had pulled it, instead they leaned on New America, through board chair Eric Schmidt, in whatever the implicit version of quid pro quo is. I think that's part of what's upsetting people here.
Not that New America is blameless obviously.
That they are deciding that this is not the type of research that they wanted to fund is pretty clear step into the "evil" category of common corporate that they in the past have been admired for avoiding.
This isn't news to me but it's probably news for a lot of people.
No. They didn't directly fund any research. Google funds the New America think thank, which houses a group that researches about monopolies. However, it seems that the problem started when one of the researchers wrote a press release celebrating a major antitrust loss for Google on Europe.
This is why Google isn't going to fund this.
Let Open Markets find another think-tank to get funding from.
Remember kids, think-tanks are where corporations go to produce research reports supporting their position. They're not independent academic institutions.
Assuming the product they produce is public sentiment, where is their quality control, to prevent possibly financially-damaging products from being released?
If they were an advertising firm contracted by Google, where Google is providing 80% of their revenue, and they ran an anti-Google ad campaign (let's say Apple commissioned it and then blamed Microsoft), would we feel as bad when Google ended the contract?
Perhaps it's more important to control institutions and the conversation.
I very briefly glanced under the technical covers of this campaign. For the curious, citizensagainstmonopoly.org was created 2017-08-10T18:56:36Z. The site was apparently written by middleseat.co - "Middle Seat is a digital marketing, media and organizing firm advocating for progressive candidates and causes." Its principals are the former Bernie Sanders digital and social media directors and advisor (Zack Exley, frm Wikimedia Foundation).
Microsoft has a long history of funding, encouraging, and astroturfing opposition to Google. One easy approach to discouraging this behavior is to make sure Microsoft is mentioned whenever a Google "evil monopoly" campaign goes by. Especially if it mentions Facebook and Amazon as well, but leaves out Microsoft. So I mention it in passing here, mostly to illustrate the approach. I know of nothing connecting Microsoft with the current campaign.
FWIW.
What exactly have they done to this effect? The closest I can think of is Scroogled [1], which was pretty transparently a Microsoft marketing campaign. I would hardly characterize it as "astroturfing".
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130207164132/http://www.scroog...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2365060/microsoft-caught-astr...
Confirmed: Ben Edelman Paid by Microsoft, Attacks Google
http://techrights.org/2011/08/30/ben-edelman-works-for-monop...
Astroturfing Antitrust: How Microsoft is Crafting the Grassroots Case Against Google
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/astroturfing-antitrust-how-micr...
Who’s Behind This Shadow Group Attacking Google?
>If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place
-Eric Schmidt
What a bunch of monsters.
> If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
let's apply your "rebuttal" to that then, too:
He means like smuggling food to political prisoners in an oppressive regime? Like hiding Jews in Nazi Germany? An abused child writing a letter to the police? Or even just a desperate prisoner writing a secret diary to hang on to their sanity or memories?
What a bunch of monsters. [super dramatic pause]
Even if you restricted it to wanting "literally nobody" to know (which is nonsense, especially in the context of online communications, so that's just some sophistry on Schmidt's behalf to be corrected by the reader), there's plenty examples to be found.
Compared to all that, bleh to a search engine. Yeah they're useful, but if I had to pick between either using only search, or only word of mouth, link lists and bookmarks, and having the comparison, I'd use the latter.
There is no such substitute for privacy. I would even say your "right" to their services doesn't outweigh the actual rights of others and yourself to liberty and dignity. I'm not saying they necessarily clash, but insofar they do, those are the priorities. Wildly popular, schmildly schmopular. If what some people like is such a great measurement, why are they liking such bad things?
Honestly, if you read some Barry Lynn and Matt Stoler and other people in that Open Markets crew... it's like 90% empty and loud rhetoric and maybe 10% cogent argumentation. It feels like a big circular link fest, takes so long to find something meaty. So much smoke and mirrors and equivocation on key terms... like, for example, "monopoly".
I'm not saying there aren't good questions to raise about Google's power, Google's anti-competitive practices or Google's link to research.
But the tone and quality of this public surge of the conversation driven by the Open Market 'scandal' seems highly manufactured and low quality. I can only assume some larger forces are throwing a ton of money in as well. But I guess that's how policy and economic talk tends to go when it hits the mainstream.
Edit: have to admit it's also riling me up that the pretty-far-left progressives like Stoller are happily now joining up with Tucker Carlson and that ilk, who raking Google over the coals for the James Damore memo fallout. Stoller was on Tucker's show yesterday. High fives.
[1] https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/press-releases/intere...
[2] https://medium.com/@slaughteram/when-the-truth-is-messy-and-...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNoVefpaPtVOsGyQnpNQR...
And this excellent article in the Yale Law Journal from Open Market's Lina Khan is a discussion on Amazon but is quite detailed and is probably the best argument the Open Markets program has put forward to date:
http://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox
You could also look into Barak Orbach, he's a legal scholar and his website has links to a lot of his articles on antitrust law. The modern anti-monopoly movement is really built around the idea that the courts made a mistake when they bought Robert Bork's (and others) argument that monopoly effects should be judged solely on price effects (obviously a big simplification.) Check out the links!
1) Open Markets didn't let Slaughter know they were publishing work critical of Google.
2) Slaughter had to rush to explain the work to Google.
3) Schmidt expressed his displeasure. But didn't directly request anyone be fired
4) Slaughter told Open Markets they had to part ways, and mentioned how OM could make it harder for all of NA to get funding.
Thats the essence of the story, and no one is disputing it, and it strongly indicates New America is heavily influenced by their corporate sponsors.
Where were the exaggerations:
Barry didn't mention that he had aggreed to allow Slaughter to preview work and show it to google before he published. Also, Slaughter didn't outright fire anyone at OM. HOWEVER, Slaughter is bending the truth to imply that Google/Schmidt didn't influence her decision to remove open markets, when the entire scope of problems she has with Barry and OM come from the tension between Google and OM, and Google's desire to see what OM will publish before it becomes public. She writes a lot about how what OM says is false without EVER addressing the core issue! Instead, she tries to get around it by leaning on the fact that she was not commanded to do anything by Google.
In multiple places, she indicates he's been difficult to work with and insubordinate. Probably understandable that a federated institution like New America, with multuple parallel units working on different interests, doesn't want the bullshit a person like that brings into the mix.
As her statement says, they tried to part amicably and leaving Open Markets intact and independent. Looks like Open Markets went for the publicity grab. Doesn't make me a fan.
As far as I can tell, though, Slaughter doesn't contradict any of the facts laid out by Lynn.
Also, I find this passage from [2] troubling:
> On the contrary, Barry’s new organization and campaign against Google is the opening salvo of one group of Democrats versus another group of Democrats in the run-up to the 2020 election, at a time when I personally think the country faces far greater challenges of racism, violence, a broken political system, and geographic and partisan divisions so great that we are losing any common sense of what we stand and strive for as a country.
Should we not pay attention to problems related to the growing power of large corporations and monopolies just because the US has other significant issues?
Meh.
Find a hand to feed you that's not the one you're currently trying to bite. There are plenty out there, you'll be fine.
They're a natural analogy for the way a monopoly's reach impacts different areas of life.
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/48508d5f59aa4bcaa900cb7da0d1c29f/p...
I might be wrong, but this doesn't sound like research to me...
What this is amounts to: You were getting millions of dollars from Google and only now that the money is gone you conveniently you have a bone to pick. If you really believed Google was evil as your website claims you wouldn't have been taking Google money until the day it was revoked.
How long does this group need to perform research into Google's anti-competitive behavior and how much money do they need? It seems all you need to do is try to compete or happen to be a market leader where google decides to compete and you have all the evidence you need.
Internet search market share = x%
using that dominance and information on search terms and advertising dollars to determine what market to compete in next in how many occasions= x
advertising costs increased when google began competing = x%
# of companies that were advertising on google that shut down once google began competing = x
What are the actual goals and what are the actual methods to achieve these goals other than asking for money to replace Google's money to conduct research?
I have been talking about it for some time, it starts with empowering people, show people they can take on google and win. Start small, give the people a road map and execute. Try a google search boycott, inform the public when the boycott begins, inform the public how to set their devices/computers to a google competitor, and create your list of demands. My recommendation start small, but meaningful, give an achievable goal that is understandable to the public and sets the stage for the public to wake up and accept the facts that they wield all the power but also impacts googles pocket. Create a clear cut economic line in the sand, you are either on your side or on you are in Google's pocket, you pick. In short, highlight their tax avoidance scheme in Ireland, they are headquartered in the US right? But they claim to be headquartered in Ireland to avoid paying taxes in they very country they benefit from...boycott their search engine until they stop playing the tax game, make them sign a pledge or even contract agreeing to pay the US corporate tax, including, all back taxes. Is that fair to Google? Are they alone? Most assuredly not, but its not about Google, its about tearing back the veil on the perceived power struggle, does Google owe the people or do people owe Google?
"Tell Google" is directing your complaint at the wrong party.
Here are some better suggestions: 1. Force government institutions to use alternative search engines 2. Have government institutions nominate a "search engine of the month" and all their employees must use that 3. Subsidize search engine research in the public domain 4. Determine if any search engine patents are blocking innovation, and invalidate those patents 5. Subsidize research into decentralized search engines
Imagine how much money flows out of investors' pockets and into the pockets of government insiders and lawyers during a big antitrust lawsuit..
Now imagine all the value and money-making opportunity created for those investors by having a healthy and active competitive marketplace.
If 4 is doable, it would take many years and involve many lawyers and potentially wind up achieving nothing.
1 and 2 involve directly interfering in the operations of other organisations in order to erode 0.000001% of Google's business. How would you enforce this anyway?
Companies operate in our society, and they impact the citizens of our society. It is reasonable to directly stop a company when it is working against the shared values of our society.
Really, I would argue that it is barbaric to force a society to live with a company which ignores the wider interests of society.
Can I reach into your backpack and crush your bag of potato chips?
What's the matter; all the baked potato material is still there!
(Not that all corporations harm people. But some combination of "the way we tend to structure them" and "human behavior in large groups" seems to make them a lot more cavalier about collateral harm and negative externalities, particularly as they get big.)