Google controls the media on the web and with this control comes an immense amount of power to control people and sway their opinions in its favour, if it like to. Apparently, Google has reached a point where it no longer allows opposition outside the company. We look at the Open Markets Case, it’s relationship with Journalism, the Transparency project because of this and if Google really did show favourable search results for the recent American election.
Googlolopy
It’s rather ironic now that we look at it but back in the 1990’s Google challenged Microsoft’s monopolistic ways, with others, and won the case. Now Google recently got fined pretty much in the same way Microsoft did all those years ago. It looks like Google was funding Open Markets (a group of people dedicated to exposing corruptions and “fixing” of markets) to get it support to go after major competitors like Microsoft.
However, when Google was fined by the EU, Open Markets decide to call Google out. According to Zephyr Teachout, Google just fired everyone.
The actual danger
Google being a monopoly isn’t the only danger we face. There is a pattern of them abusing power from strong political ties to the Obama Administration, the EU fine and recently eliminating the group that spoke out against it. They came under fire for altering search results in the recent American election in favour of Hilary Clinton (not that it helped much).
The Google Transparency Project is also questionable. Why have the need for something like this when you promise to be transparent anyway? Why have the need to prove that you give true search results? Google controls our primary source of information, they need to remain objective, and backing politics just for power gain is not the answer.
Google’s financial resources are unrivalled in their industry. In 2017, their parent company Alphabet surpassed a market value of $600 billion. It’s the second company to reach this value and is sitting just behind Apple. With this amount of money, they are able to control almost everything on the web, fund groups that might speak out against it and firing anyone who does speak out against the tech giant.
He who controls information controls the world
And if you control information, you have the power. We’ve seen this in the past with companies or individuals that manage to accumulate this massive amount of power, and it’s usually resulted in them forgetting why they started doing what they do in the first place. When Google started in the 1990’s their motto was “Don’t Be Evil”. Whilst they’re not entirely evil, the power that they have might make them.
Increasingly, the information we received is curated by others that want us to see it, so is it really information we want to see? Google may already be an international threat…