Google’s New Business Profile: When Search Becomes a Political Tool
nearmedia.co
nearmedia.co
Was it really 2021? lol.
Or was it a political tool from the beginning? When In-Q-Tel helped create it?
"In-Q-Tel sold 5,636 shares of Google, worth over $2.2 million, on November 15, 2005.[10] The shares were a result of Google's acquisition of Keyhole, Inc, the CIA-funded satellite mapping software now known as Google Earth."
>The research arms of the CIA and NSA hoped that the best computer-science minds in academia could identify what they called “birds of a feather:” Just as geese fly together in large V shapes, or flocks of sparrows make sudden movements together in harmony, they predicted that like-minded groups of humans would move together online. The intelligence community named their first unclassified briefing for scientists the “birds of a feather” briefing, and the “Birds of a Feather Session on the Intelligence Community Initiative in Massive Digital Data Systems” took place at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose in the spring of 1995.
It's like saying, if the CIA funded a college department that invented USENET/UUCP, they then therefore had planned all along to create great online chat communities just so that they could easily mine it, a kind of uber honey-pot hypothesis.
It could also be that the CIA just in general, funds lots of stuff, just like DARPA, just like the DOE, they hand out tons of grants because they are flooded with proposals, and they don't always have a master plan on what they think the outcome or use will be. Just like ARPA's work on the internet was motivated by nuclear war, but the outcome was not at all what the original envisioned use is.
Sometimes, the government agencies are just conducting a kind of VC investing in academia and hoping something useful pops out.
Maybe we can leave the Dr Joe Rogan MD conspiracies in the moon landing hoax bin in favor of simpler hypotheses.
It's just the flip side of Google's propaganda, no "morally better" than what Google is doing.
Ticks me off when people talk as if any regulation is prima facie angelic and companies are evil to tell people they don't like it. Sorry, but I don't have a regulation fetish. Make the case!
Government regulation is also nearly impossible to roll back even when it's universally acknowledged as bad. Government bureaucrats get no rewards for taking risks, but can be fired easily if the risks go wrong. So a government bureaucrat will never make a change like rolling back a regulation that exposes them to even a small bit of risk.
We need a mechanism like bankruptcy for the private industry but for government agencies.
Hell, the USPS was going to mail everyone masks but someone nixxed that idea.
Better leadership at the top might have scuttled that insanely awful plan, but the insanely awful plan was 100% the creation of FDA and CDC career bureaucrats. Everyone assumed they knew what they were doing, including Trump's people, but they didn't. At all.
> We are all used to Facebook crying wolf about how small businesses will be hurt by Apple's app-privacy initiatives. Now Google has apparently taken a page from Facebook's playbook.
This paragraphs seems like a better example of propaganda then what it's critizising. "Crying wolf" is not simply an expression for "saying something you disagree with"[1]. And how does this paragraph look without that expression? "We are used to Facebook arguing that small businesses will be hurt by Apple's app-privacy initivatives. Now ..."
Again, a reminder that not all government legislation automatically good. And big corporations are also not automatically bad.
Clearly the author of the article subscribes to a certain political ideology, but that doesn't make people with other convictions "nefarious". Maybe he should simply stop using Google, if he is unhappy with the way they conduct their business.
The nefarious part is that Google pretends to still be an uninterested referee on a fair playing field. All the revelations regarding back door deals and anti-consumer activity makes it clear that they abandoned those principles in order to cement their monopoly and raise their rents.
And as for recruiting your happy customers into your cause -- there are many things we're fine letting non-monopolies do that make us very uneasy when monopolies do the same. Whether this should be one of those things is worth discussing and shouldn't be dismissed with an oversimplified straw man argument.
The entire point of algorithmic ranking is to bias some data over other data to maximize user satisfaction. Search engines have been creating winners and losers since day 1.
Google managed to find a montetization strategy that kept theirs going when the others ran out.
I think Google changed the nature of the unlevel playing field, but it was unlevel when they got there.
It sounds to me as if they clearly lay out the disadvantages (in their view) to their users. That's pretty much all there is to it. I don't think they pretend to be "uninterested referees" in a call to action against certain legislation? Who would ever think that? Clearly they are "interested" in shooting down that legislation.
As I said elsewhere, there is plenty to dislike about Google and their power. That article was not about that, though.
The "monopolies" argument is just commie propaganda in my opinion. In general the "people with power" theory, which commies want to use to gain power over other people. If you don't like Google, again, don't use them. It is only the people giving it its power. Likewise, if your employer exerts "power" over you, look for another job. The people could stop using Google at any moment, taking away its power. Government regulations, on the other hand, are REAL tyranny as there is no way to opt out.
Sadly, I can’t. For a business user, there’s really no alternative to Google. 95% of my search and referral is through Google and Google maps. If I stop using them, I stop having businesses.
I don’t think it’s nefarious, I just think it’s abuse of market position.
Do you think it’s ok for a business to ask all employees to sign up for anti-union material. Every time they log in to their employee profile?
I don't think it would be OK to demand businesses are pro union, or pro anything that endangers their business. Why would they be?
Even if you feel you can't escape Google, I don't think it is abuse of market power if they advertise their interests. Maybe it is just market power, without the abuse part.
You could campaign for people to stop using Google, if it means so much to you. Then businesses wouldn't rely so much on Google anymore.
Edit: do you think it is OK for unions to abuse their power? They are essentially forming monopolies and then using their monopoly power to enforce things.
Probably the first time I’ve heard someone describe labor unions as monopolies.
I have nothing against commenting on that and writing critical articles. What bothers me is the framing as nefarious and evil, of a completely normal activity. Clearly Google has different interests than the author. That doesn't make them evil.
Of course the author is also entitled to consider them evil. I merely point out that it is ridiculous, or at least the argument is it evil because they enlist their users is ridiculous.
I am not even a fan of Google, I detest them for a lot of things.
The first thing Google shows to users of Business Profile. Other people (which is most people) wouldn't know about it without articles like this.
And does Google disclose that two of their three sources are funded by Google?
I take issue with the framing as nefarious, especially the argument that it is nefarious because they advertise to their own users.
By all means, make it public. I personally don't see the huge issue. Of course they are against government regulation that would harm their business. In the same vein I don't think it is very newsworthy that they fund sources they cite. Why wouldn't they?
But if they are publishing astroturfed propaganda, as the article claims, I find that nefarious no matter who their audience is.
> In the same vein I don't think it is very newsworthy that they fund sources they cite. Why wouldn't they?
Obviously they would never say "According to a study we paid for...", because no one would believe it. But it's still a study they paid for, and hiding that fact is meant to make it more credible. It's deceptive.
That google supports organizations that work towards their own goal again is hardly "nefarious", but completely normal and sane behavior. What else are they supposed to do? Donate money to their enemies (which incidentally, they actually do, I expect, but that is besides the point).
I am just tired of such articles breathlessly proclaiming big corp conspiracies for normal, sane behavior.
I also don't see any references to "a study" in the article. And just because they support some organization that wrote something they like, doesn't mean they paid for that particular thing to be written.
Even so, can we not expect some basic internet knowledge from Google users? Why would they automatically trust anything somebody links to support their cause? Of course if you follow a link from Google that says "this supports our cause", you take into account that the source is probably biased.
Maybe the real issue is that people have some unrealistic expectations of Google to be some god-like neutral benign entity only working for the common good? No such things exists - and no, governments are not it, either.
It's not like Google made a donation to an organization that already existed which they happen to agree with. Without Google, these organizations wouldn't exist.
Which would all be fine, if Google made that clear when referencing them.
When some organization makes a public statement, don't you like to know who financed them?
Ultimately I don't think it is unusual if people with the same interested work together.
Which is exactly what some of us are already doing.
It can become an issue when you start to penalize users who refuse to be enlisted.
Clearly Google has taken a political stance and also adjusts search results to stir people into a certain political direction (ironically it seems to be the direction the author of the article actually favors). But that is not the subject of the article and not penalizing users, either. It is a good reason to stop using Google, but again, not subject of the article.
You mean, like Tobacco companies encouraging smokers to complain about anti-cigarette legislation for example?
Lying about the unhealthy effects of smoking would be nefarious. But if people willingly decide they want to smoke, why wouldn't they be interested in preventing bans on smoking or whatever.
I often wonder about it, as I can't stop eating chocolate. Would I prefer a world in which chocolate doesn't exist (and alcohol, and cigarettes)? I am not sure about that. All those things can be good in moderation (except perhaps tobacco, but I guess if I was a soldier maybe I would take up smoking, too, because why the hell not).
LOL. Do you have a business listed on google? I'm yet to meet satisfied owners to be honest.
For example: I rent a room for classes weekly, and I have no google sanction way to show that on the map, because I don't own the business location itself.
All the structured data, the rich result, etc stuff from google is a mirage, and despite the fact the I can hand write the correct JSON-LD they want, it doesn't even make a dent in the search results.
Nevertheless it is normal for a company to call its users to aid against government regulation that would harm the product.
What other course of action would you propose for a company? Just give up and donate their business to the communist party?
If most users are unhappy with the product, it just means they will be unlikely to follow the call for action, which makes it even less of an issue to worry about.
What makes the article even more ridiculous, however, is calling on the statements by Yelp as witness for the evilness of Google. Yelp is actually known for shady business practices (asking for bribes to have bad reviews removed).
just because businesses fight regulation, doesn't mean they're morally in the right. Car companies fought seatbelt regulation for years. They also convinced their users/drivers that this was operating in their best interests and tried to get them on-side to fight said regulation.
True, but they are also not automatically not morally in the right. The article cites "they oppose government regulation" as proof that they are evil, which is nonsense. There are many evil governments in the world, which to oppose would be the morally right thing to do. And many proposed legislations in the US are evil, too.
Could you give an example of a regulation in the US that is straightforwardly evil? Generally speaking when I think of evils propagated by government I think of wars/colonialism, oppressive social policies and benefitting businesses at the cost of citizens' wellbeing. The US does all of these in varying degrees but I'm curious as to how the US is actually oppressing its corporations; from my perspective, the US seems like the most corporation-friendly country on the planet.
People are used to the leftist way of thinking about "us vs them" and automatically think of corporations and "employers" as evil oppressors.
I think the other way round. I think "workers" are just a social construct, and being able to start your own business is the very means to achieve freedom. So regulations destroying businesses are enemies of freedom and hence evil.
For example my motivation to run my own business may be that I want to work the way I want. Now regulators perhaps give unions the right to determine how I am supposed to work. That's completely fucked up.
The correct response to bad working conditions is for employees to quit and change jobs. If no good jobs exist, they should start their own business. People who crave socialist structures are free to start businesses with socialist structures.
The correct way for governments to help out workers is therefore to facility opportunity and thriving economy that leads to more companies and hence more alternatives for being employed.
Most legislation does the opposite of that.
(another simple example: here in Europe we have to senselessly click on cookie banners thousands of times, because of a misguided regulation on cookies. Wasting people's energy like that is also evil. Worse, we will soon have upload filters, destroying freedom of speech for good, as "indie publishers" won't be able to afford the required infrastructure and legal teams).
> People are used to the leftist way of thinking about "us vs them" and automatically think of corporations and "employers" as evil oppressors.
Eh, a lot do, but I don't. Capitalism is a system that encourages becoming a capitalist, and rewards greater sociopathy in being a capitalist. That means that some people like Jeff Bezos are pretty obviously exploitative, but the problem is the system that incentivises such behaviour, not that people with low moral standards are capable of following incentive models to their inevitable conclusions.
> I think "workers" are just a social construct
If you mean that wage labour is a social construct, then yes - under capitalism. "Workers" are people who perform labour, and is not a social construct. If you start a freelance business, you are both a worker and a capitalist; that's what being self-employed is.
> Now regulators perhaps give unions the right to determine how I am supposed to work. That's completely fucked up.
Unions represent your workers, so it's not the regulators negotiating how you work, it's the people who actually do that work.
> The correct response to bad working conditions is for employees to quit and change jobs.
If that worked, then companies with bad working conditions would be shutting down from lack of workforce. This isn't happening systemically, so clearly this approach does not work. Amazon is one of the biggest companies on the planet and it's been well-documented how badly their workers are exploited.
> here in Europe we have to senselessly click on cookie banners thousands of times, because of a misguided regulation on cookies.
I agree that this regulation is pretty stupid, and would've been better implemented as a legally-required setting in your browser. Do-Not-Track with teeth, essentially.
> Worse, we will soon have upload filters, destroying freedom of speech for good, as "indie publishers" won't be able to afford the required infrastructure and legal teams
This is done for the protection of copyright, no? I thought you would be in agreement with this, as it benefits corporations.
I can understand why people think that, but the history of capitalism is much misrepresented in that way. There was a huge rush of poor people into the cities because of the breakdown of feudalism, among other things. So many poor people desperate for work - asking for modern working standards might have prevented many of them from getting jobs. You can still see that in China and India, I suppose - bad as the working conditions may be, they seem to be better than starving doing subsistence farming in the countryside. And demanding factories there would have the same standards as, say, in the US, would just mean jobs wouldn't be outsourced there anymore and the people would be back to starving doing subsistence farming.
As the factories ramp up and make more money, they also have more resources ("capital") for improving the working conditions.
Also why should things degenerate to that, if people simply quit if an employer misbehaves.
If "workers" are in demand, employers can't afford to treat them badly. Look at the Google offices with their slides, free food and childish gadgets. They provide that because they compete for "workers".
"If you mean that wage labour is a social construct, then yes - under capitalism. "Workers" are people who perform labour, and is not a social construct. If you start a freelance business, you are both a worker and a capitalist; that's what being self-employed is."
You enter a contract and exchange labor for money. That's it. There is no need for creating an arbitrary class of "workers".
"> Now regulators perhaps give unions the right to determine how I am supposed to work. That's completely fucked up.
Unions represent your workers, so it's not the regulators negotiating how you work, it's the people who actually do that work."
If unions make demands, it is fair game (negotiation). If governments give unions special rights, it is not. For example in my country I think you can not fire people who form a union in your company. That's fucked up. Those people are free to say "if you don't give in to our demands, we quit". Yeah, go ahead, quit.
"If that worked, then companies with bad working conditions would be shutting down from lack of workforce. This isn't happening systemically"
I think that is happening, there is just a huge amount of leftist journalists who try to frame everything as "exploitation of workers". Like the endless stories about Amazon warehouses. It seems likely to me that the things that sound bad from the outside may be necessary to make things work. Like you and me probably wouldn't take a 5 hour long toilet break to spite our employers, but some warehouse workers may do so. So they have limits on toilets breaks to make it possible for people to work there who couldn't work anywhere else. (Just a guess, I have never been inside of an Amazon warehouse - in any case, as always, if you don't like it, quit).
Also there may be government regulations preventing free flow of workers, for example the health care issue in the US seems weird (not sure what is going on).
"This is done for the protection of copyright, no? I thought you would be in agreement with this, as it benefits corporations."
I am not for corporations, I am for freedom. And that law wouldn't even benefit corporations, as it is impossible to adhere to it. In my opinion the only fair way would have been for the government to provide an API that everybody could query to check for copyright. Instead they just created an unsolvable challenge and require businesses (and individuals) to solve it.
Oh for sure feudalism was worse than capitalism. My concern is that we can do better than neoliberalism, in terms of looking out for individual welfare, reducing oppressive/exploitative living or working conditions, and solving collective problems that are not well-addressed by market dynamics (e.g. global warming, climate destruction and other civilisation-tier concerns).
> As the factories ramp up and make more money, they also have more resources ("capital") for improving the working conditions.
They don't tend to though, as working conditions are not their motivation; profiteering is. Tesla Motors' factories have a pretty high injury rate, despite being one of the most over-capitalised companies in existence.
> Also why should things degenerate to that, if people simply quit if an employer misbehaves.
This works in theory, but many people do not have the option to just quit. Many are living paycheck to paycheck, others are in various countries on work visas attached to their employer (e.g. H1B in the US), or just don't have many options. Given that market pressure on unskilled, and thus highly competitive jobs, pushes wages towards subsistence levels, this will always be the case for the lowest rungs of the career ladder. You only need to look at reality compared to the theory of "you can just quit" to see that it clearly doesn't solve the problem. If you've worked an entry-level job in retail, an office or wherever, you will likely have experienced some pretty miserable conditions.
> If "workers" are in demand, employers can't afford to treat them badly. Look at the Google offices with their slides, free food and childish gadgets. They provide that because they compete for "workers".
That's true of Google because of the market dynamics of California's software engineer job market. It doesn't scale to everybody; also, many of these perks are designed to blur the lines between work and social life so that their employees spend more time in the office. It's soft exploitation, but it's still exploitation.
> You enter a contract and exchange labor for money. That's it. There is no need for creating an arbitrary class of "workers".
It's not arbitrary; it's the people who earn money working. I'm not sure what your opposition is to the drawing of economic class lines?
> If unions make demands, it is fair game (negotiation). If governments give unions special rights, it is not. For example in my country I think you can not fire people who form a union in your company. That's fucked up. Those people are free to say "if you don't give in to our demands, we quit". Yeah, go ahead, quit.
This just comes back to "if you don't like it you can just quit" though, because under this model strikebreaking, bussing in non-union workers and such are legitimised. You might as well ban unions if you give workers no leverage in any negotiations, and by default the employer holds all the leverage because they're not the ones who need a wage to put food on the table.
> I think that is happening, there is just a huge amount of leftist journalists who try to frame everything as "exploitation of workers". Like the endless stories about Amazon warehouses. It seems likely to me that the things that sound bad from the outside may be necessary to make things work. Like you and me probably wouldn't take a 5 hour long toilet break to spite our employers, but some warehouse workers may do so. So they have limits on toilets breaks to make it possible for people to work there who couldn't work anywhere else. (Just a guess, I have never been inside of an Amazon warehouse - in any case, as always, if you don't like it, quit).
My dad worked in an Amazon warehouse. He's an extremely hard worker and a tough guy all round, he said it was pretty tiring work because they were constantly sprinting round the warehouse to meet deadlines and had 5-10 minute bathroom breaks. There's been quite a lot of reports of workers having to urinate in bottles because they don't have time to go to the bathroom - do you really think that's acceptable working conditions in a first-world country?
> Also there may be government regulations preventing free flow of workers, for example the health care issue in the US seems weird (not sure what is going on).
What is going on is that that's what happens then your healthcare is run for profit by large corporations. Regulation seems to exacerbate the problem, but in that case the problem is that the incentives are not correctly aligned between healthcare and profiteering, hence healthcare should be a government service first and foremost.
> I am not for corporations, I am for freedom.
Freedom is not one thing, it's a series of tradeoffs. Your tradeoffs seem to prioritise freedom of trade, which primarily benefits businesses, over freedom from oppression, which would benefit workers.
> And that law wouldn't even benefit corporations, as it is impossible to adhere to it.
It's impossible to adhere perfectly, but companies are rolling out copy protection laws all over the place to try to protect their interests as best they can.
> In my opinion the only fair way would have been for the government to provide an API that everybody could query to check for copyright. Instead they just created an unsolvable challenge and require businesses (and individuals) to solve it.
So you actually want even more power held for the enforcement of copyrights compared to now. Because you want it to be not just a corporate responsibility, but a government one. How is that any different to the upload filter you expressed disdain for?
It's difficult to find much information about it, as most texts focus on the conditions of living under "Manchester capitalism", but what I remember reading is that the issue was that feudalism took care of the people (while they were "owned" by their lords, the lords also took care of his property), and when that fell apart, people poured into the cities. I don't remember why there was a population explosion at the same time, but iirc that was the case.
"solving collective problems that are not well-addressed by market dynamics (e.g. global warming, climate destruction and other civilisation-tier concerns)."
Why would they not be well-addressed by market dynamics? Market dynamics surely are the best way to find the most energy efficient ways to do things, for example. Free markets does not mean externalities should have no price.
"They don't tend to though, as working conditions are not their motivation; profiteering is. Tesla Motors' factories have a pretty high injury rate, despite being one of the most over-capitalised companies in existence."
Bad example - it is a very young company that grew at a rapid rate (As did the capitalisation - most rise of the stock price happened within the last year). And if you google now, you find "injury rates have improved".
Nevertheless, as I said before, the solution is more choice for workers. If Tesla were unable to find workers because of the high injury rates, they would be forced to improve working conditions. Also buyers of cars are free to take working conditions into account. I don't think the typical Tesla buyer would feel good about exploitation of workers.
"This works in theory, but many people do not have the option to just quit"
As I said, the correct solution is to work towards providing more options. If you want to help the poor, work laws also only help a fraction of people, and neglects the people who have no work to begin with. Also people can do things to improve their lives. And nobody owes anybody else a job.
"It's soft exploitation, but it's still exploitation."
Working at Google is exploitation - yeah right... Poor victims. Sorry but you have to give people some responsibility for their own lives. For sure Google may be trying to get as much work as possible from their workers. That doesn't make them victims. They can still quit at any time.
"I'm not sure what your opposition is to the drawing of economic class lines?"
What exactly is the use of drawing economic class lines? The workers have their bodies and skill as capital. And actual machines are laughably cheap these days. You can get a computer for next to nothing, and you can get stuff produced at a factory in China. Also you can raise capital on financial markets if you absolutely need it.
"There's been quite a lot of reports of workers having to urinate in bottles because they don't have time to go to the bathroom - do you really think that's acceptable working conditions in a first-world country?"
The people working there apparently think they are acceptable working conditions.
I'm sure it is hard work. Unfortunately, even in first-world countries, somebody has to do hard work. In general it seems normal that work is tiring.
If people have to pee into bottles there, maybe they are not fit enough for the job. I don't think you can demand every job should be suitable for everybody. And if those people decide they can keep up by peeing into bottles, it is their choice.
You will claim they don't have a choice, but it is not Amazon's fault that they need a job. Amazon just provides more options for workers. Often the warehouses are in the middle of nowhere, there would be no jobs if not for Amazon. How is that a bad thing?
Also the job may keep your dad fit. Are you sure it is worse/harder than sitting in an office chair all day?
"that's what happens then your healthcare is run for profit by large corporations"
I rather doubt it. What is preventing other people from making a better offer of health care? There are many people who just want to do good and not profiteer, why can't they provide health care insurance?
"Your tradeoffs seem to prioritise freedom of trade, which primarily benefits businesses, over freedom from oppression, which would benefit workers."
There are not workers, that is the thing. Everybody is a free agent, or "business". Therefore freedom of trade and benefits to businesses are also benefits to "workers". The more extra benefits for workers you create, the more you lock them into their wage slave condition. The thing with all the pro-worker regulation is that it makes it more and more difficult to become independent from the system. What is your perspective to escape from the wage slavery? You don't have the perspective to run your own business anymore and do things your way. You can only join the grey masses and hope for government regulations to make tiny improvements to your standardized life.
" companies are rolling out copy protection laws all over the place to try to protect their interests as best they can"
Companies can not roll out laws, only governments can do that. Governments can lobby for laws to keep the competition down.
"So you actually want even more power held for the enforcement of copyrights compared to now. Because you want it to be not just a corporate responsibility, but a government one. How is that any different to the upload filter you expressed disdain for?"
All I am saying is that if society (represented by the government) wants copyright laws, they should be implemented in a fair way. It was just an example for an evil law that destroys the possibilities for "small" people to run web sites and gives a monopoly for creative expression to big corporations.
Your process of reasoning is just finding excuses. People don't quit jobs that are objectively degrading, making them pee in bottles? They must secretly like it. My dad says the job is overly demanding, especially for a country with high levels of unemployment (Scotland) where you could realistically just hire more workers to make the job more reasonable? It's all good because the exercise of constantly running for your job is good for you!
This is rationalisation, not reasoning - so there's little point trying to argue further because it's possible to make an excuse for basically anything in this manner.
It's not like I can't sympathise - I went through a libertarian phase myself and trotted out similar arguments. It was only when I tried to address the counter-arguments on a consequentialist and empiricist level, and simultaneously had started studying some theories of causality that also had sociological implications (cybernetics and systems theory), that I realised that my arguments to agency didn't hold up, because we do not have perfect agency - our actions and choices are constrained by our circumstances and responsibilities, beliefs, values and whatnot, and that an ideal economic system would be able to allocate labour in such a way that maximum meaningful work is performed while retaining human dignity. Capitalism, especially unrestrained, fails miserably at both of these.
Google lets anybody "suggest" that your opening and closing hours are different than what you, the owner, have set them as. Enjoy receiving calls from irate customers because Big G decided that 'customer feedback' knows better than you do about when the store is open. Fix it, and Google will put it under 'manual review' so the incorrect hours continue to be shown for 2-3 more days.
There are a million other problems with GMB, but this is by far the most glaring.
Yes, yes they are automatically bad when they make themselves into infrastructure. I can't avoid google, microsoft or amazon even if I go live in a cave.
They are also not "infrastructure". Their crime apparently is to have created a product that is so convenient to use that everybody wants to use it. I don't think that is a healthy attitude for society.
Their crime is breaking anti-trust laws, for which they should have been disbanded a long time ago. I don't find them convenient in any way.
I know there was a time when Microsoft pressured vendors to only sell bundles with Microsoft Software. Even then, there was already Linux, and other vendors.
Having said that - what the article describes does seem like a transition step from more back-room dealings by Google and its lobbyists to trying to create astro-turf public campaigns. Sigh.
> "The word is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; it sold the shares in 2005 for $336 million."
> "As of September 24, 2019, PageRank and all associated patents are expired."
Another option is to require Google to expose their algorithm to their clients and in particular publicly describe the bias weight system they apply to their page rank scores, which they might very well be deliberately modifying as a mechanism for social manipulation and political influence.
Give me a break. Sure the company removing the words blacklist and whitelist from all of their products is "right leaning". What a crock.
The irony in this author pointing about propaganda...
It's obvious everyone dislikes google but I just find it totally strange that left leaning individuals somehow twist things to make it seem like these massive silicon valley companies are right leaning. They cater to everything on the left.
People need to focus on the real issue which is they are too big and too powerful, regardless of which side they currently bend to.
Nobody honestly expects Google not to have an opinion on preserving its dominant market position; the use of that position, to further that position, however, arguably crosses a line from "we're big because we're so good at providing services that it is a natural monopoly" into "we're big because we've convinced you we have to be big".
The former "feels" good: we're big because we're good at our jobs.
The latter "feels" icky: we're big because we're good at convincing people we're good at our jobs.
If Google was split into four companies with three or four viable competitors, might not those new competitive marketplaces contain some companies that conservatives prefer, some that liberals prefer?
If Instagram was a separate site from Facebook, might they not organically develop different internal policies to encourage new customers to choose them over competitors?
Accepting your premise Google "so clearly do everything in their power to censor right wing people at every turn", would not creating a market for Google-provided services be the most market-driven way to explore alternatives?
The only alternatives I see are "Communism of the Media", with extra steps.
Also, just spitballing here, but in a world where Left and Right agree that bigness is bad, we can write new laws prohibiting should the existing ones prove insufficient in practice.
Crazy!