Welcome to Google-world
Like probably most if not all web users Adam uses Google. Google seeks to create an image of a more caring corporate than say the image ‘enjoyed by Microsoft. Yet Google is as much a corporate behemoth as Microsoft. If not more so. Google is a business, a very big business. It makes a lot of money.
Consider the Google Mission Statement, reproduced below:-
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
from Google’s web-site
Naturally Google intends to make money from this. In fact in many ways Google has more of a monopoly than Microsoft has, if indeed Microsoft ever was a monopoly. Yet people continue to rail against Microsoft and various regulatory agencies still mutter darkly about Microsoft’s behaviour.
As an aside remember just how often Google turns up in the opposing camp to Microsoft.
Often quoted is this piece of Google-speak from their Ten things Google has found to be true list at their web-site
6. You can make money without doing evil.
This is supposed to demonstrate that Google is sensitive and caring!. Well read on, for the extract below is the text that follows that statement, which statement Adam has seen produced as some knid of talisman a number of times, to illustrate how ‘Google’ is different.
Google is a business. The revenue the company generates is derived from offering its search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on Google and on other sites across the web. However, you may have never seen an ad on Google. That’s because Google does not allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they’re relevant to the results page on which they’re shown. So, only certain searches produce sponsored links above or to the right of the results. Google firmly believes that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find.
Google has also proven that advertising can be effective without being flashy. Google does not accept pop-up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you’ve requested. We’ve found that text ads (AdWords) that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough rates than ads appearing randomly. Google’s maximization group works with advertisers to improve clickthrough rates over the life of a campaign, because high clickthrough rates are an indication that ads are relevant to a user’s interests. Any advertiser, no matter how small or how large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium, whether through our self-service advertising program that puts ads online within minutes, or with the assistance of a Google advertising representative.
Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link.” It is a core value for Google that there be no compromising of the integrity of our results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results. No one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust Google’s objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.
Thousands of advertisers use our Google AdWords program to promote their products; we believe AdWords is the largest program of its kind. In addition, thousands of web site managers take advantage of our Google AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to the content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenue and enhancing the experience for their users.
Nothing about evil there, is there! What we see here is Google saying it is a business and places adas in a way it considers to be highly effective and calculated to produce revenue and profit for Google. Yet the heading conveys a completely different concept to many people.
Google is branching out and not only seeking to take business from Microsoft, with applications, browsers and operating systems – of course only to support it’s mission.
A mission which sounds quite helpful and useful. Another crafty piece of Google-speak.
Take another look at that Mission Statement:-
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Then think about it. Think about it carefully.
There are Orwellian implications in that statement. If Google is successful in fulfilling its announced mission then who will:-
- determine what we read?
- how we read?
- the organization of content?
- the nature of content?
- who content is available to?
- the cost of content?
- the media we use?
- the means of access?
Far fetched, you might say.
Well please read the interesting and thought provoking article by Geoff Cummings in today’s NZ Herald. Adam had been aware of some of this, but had not read about the issue carefully enough.
Ask yourself how the behaviour of Google in this instance accords with :-
You can make money without doing evil
Ask yourself why Google is acting in such a high-handed manner and seeking, so it would appear to ride roughshod over property rights?
In short, it is time to understand that Google is in fact acting like the massive corporate behemoth that it is.
The issue we face is do we want Google to determine what we see, hear and read? Because for many that is what is happening.
Is it far fetched to liken Google in reach and influence as approaching in it’s sphere of operations as dominant a position as J D Rockerfeller and his Standard Oil Trust did?
Remember that the big ‘trusts’ were broken up by the US Government in the early 1900s.
Welcome to Google-world!!
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Wow..great information..Thanks for this sharing.
It is good to see some response here, thought Adam was on his own.
Adam you are too soft on these issues
From a history perspective see Chernow for example
Paul
Overall I think my view was more pro Microsoft than anti
Whilst appreciating the economic issue, which I think is massively misunderstood, there is a social issue as well.
“Is it far fetched to liken Google in reach and influence as approaching in it’s sphere of operations as dominant a position as J D Rockerfeller and his Standard Oil Trust did?
Remember that the big ‘trusts’ were broken up by the US Government in the early 1900s.”
For some actual information on the Standard Oil case and why it was a waste of time see “Predatory Price Cutting: The Standard Oil (N. J.) Case”, John S. McGee
Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 1. (Oct., 1958), pp. 137-169 and for a summary see here
And that breakup did a lot more harm than good. As did the anti-trust cases against IBM and Microsoft. An attack on Google will do no good either.
On “The Ghost of John D. Rockefeller” see here. Thomas J. DiLorenzo wrties,
“Microsoft’s critics are right. There are many similarities between Bill Gates’s company and the old Standard Oil organization.
Like Gates, Rockefeller was the victim of a political assault for the “sin” of rapid innovation, a vast expansion of output, and rapidly declining prices just the opposite of what the antitrust laws ostensibly police. As with Microsoft, the political attack on Standard Oil was launched by less-efficient rivals who wanted to achieve through the political process what they failed to achieve in the marketplace.
There is indeed a lesson to be learned from Rockefeller’s antitrust ordeal, but it is not the one Microsoft’s critics have in mind.”
As far as empirical evidence goes it tends to suggest that anti-trust policy does not improve consumer welfare by much. Robert W. Crandall and Clifford Winston look at the effects of antitrust enforcement in the US and ask Does Antitrust Policy Improve Consumer Welfare? And the short answer is, not much. Crandall and Winston write,
“In this paper, we argue that the current empirical record of antitrust enforcement is weak.”
and add
“We then synthesize the available research regarding the economic effects of three major areas of antitrust policy and enforcement: changing the structure or behavior of monopolies; prosecuting firms that engage in anticompetitive practices, namely, price fixing and other forms of collusion; and reviewing proposed mergers. We find little empirical evidence that past interventions have provided much direct benefit to consumers or significantly deterred anticompetitive behavior.”
The Robert W. Crandall and Clifford Winston paper is “Does Antitrust Policy Improve Consumer Welfare? Assessing the Evidence”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(4) Fall 2003.