Google: A Money Diet Beats Keto
August 24, 2020
Google promised not to do any evil when it formed its company culture, but some consider a monopoly to be a capitalist evil because it limited the economy and hampers economic growth. Bloomberg explains that, “Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites Win Traffic.” Google’s search results have been plagued with ads since they added a fourth spot for ads at the top the results page. Employees opposed it, but Google had to please the investors.
Google has altered its search results page in efforts to organize the world’s information or so it claims, but the search giant’s monopoly is part of a bigger and growing gear of a complete monopoly:
“Debate over Google’s influence is gathering intensity as U.S. regulators prepare an antitrust case against the company in what will be one of the biggest legal clashes between the government and a corporation since the U.S. sued Microsoft Corp. in 1998. Google controls about 85% of the U.S. search market, and the changes it’s made have piled pressure on businesses to pay more to appear at the top of search results. That’s already a focus of regulators. Last year, David Cicilline, head of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, asked Google if a 2004 statement from co-founder Larry Page that the company wants to get users “out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible,” still described its approach. In a written response, Google simply skipped the question.”
Google’s search results used to be unpolluted and it drove people to Web sites. These Web sites were and are owned by small businesses. Google, however, is trying to keep more people on its own Web site. Google is posting information gleaned and copied from the trillions of data sources its algorithms crawl in search results. Users read this information, then are exposed to ads. Google is becoming more like Facebook and Amazon; it does not want people to leave.
Most of this information comes from Wikipedia. Wikipedia spokespeople say they have worked with Google for years so that Wikipedia’s information is correctly cited. If Google copies information from sources without proper credit it devalues the information quality, not to mention false information could be taken as fact. Google does pay for some of the information it copies, but not the majority of it.
Google is into money. Facilitating research, helping small businesses harmed by Rona, organizing the world’s information, and offering accurate search results are not priorities.
Whitney Grace, August 24, 2020
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