Is Google too powerful?

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elmo16

#1
#1
Is Google too powerful? Just consider, today if you want to look something up, get a fact, an opinion or almost any form of information, what do you do, you Google it.
If you want to buy something, you Google it. Need any kind of goods or services, well you know…

If you think about it, Google is more powerful than any news paper, politician, dictator, perhaps even the Pope.

Google tells you what to think, what to buy, what to eat, where to go on vacation, who to fuck.

Is anyone concerned? Does anyone think that there should be some sort of government oversight of Google?

The thing that truly sets Google apart, of which it has no equal in the corporate world, is the scope of its ambitions.
The company began in a rented garage in Silicon Valley, close to the Stanford University campus, where its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had been graduate students in computer science. Even then, Google's founders had immodest goals. The company mission, articulated in its first months, was to "organize the world's information."

Should we all be concerned?
 
billyS

billyS

Reign of Terror
#3
#3
Elmo, I think you are getting carried away here. It is a search engine. Before Google it was Yahoo. Someone will eventually build a better mousetrap. Also, once you enter the search criteria you get various websites. If Google tried to 'fix' what Web sites were being displayed then someone would call them on it. No I don't think Google is too powerful. No more then IBM was until Microsoft came along.
 
B

Bandaid

#4
#4
The thing that influences me is that Google never coerced the market or drove anybody out of business, the way Microsoft did. They just do what they do better than anybody else does it. Most of it they give away, and their ads are clearly marked. Should they be punished for their success?
 
D

DaveNJ

#5
#5
Besides, government "oversight" of the internet is for countries like China, and its more accurately called censorship.

This is one area where I think the free market will regulate itself much better than the government can. BillyS is right, if google tried to skew search results they'd get called on it and lose market share and billions of dollars. They'd never let that happen, so I think we're pretty safe the way things are.
 
B

Bandaid

#6
#6
DaveNJ said:
Besides, government "oversight" of the internet is for countries like China, and its more accurately called censorship.

This is one area where I think the free market will regulate itself much better than the government can. BillyS is right, if google tried to skew search results they'd get called on it and lose market share and billions of dollars. They'd never let that happen, so I think we're pretty safe the way things are.
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I agree totally that Google wouldn't skew search results. Talk about killing the golden goose and all that. With the financial crisis their earnings will take a hit, but they'll be fine in the end.
 
F

franca

<color=pink>Silver</color>
#7
#7
Are you kidding us, Elmo? Google just uses your search terms to call up whatever crap web site somebody has deemed worthy to publish on the World Wide Web. Governmental oversight? Of what, exactly? You want the government to "protect us" by censoring what we see on the web? And you want Google to willingly participate?
 
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Slinky Bender

Slinky Bender

The All Powerful Moderator
#10
#10
franca said:
I suspect you don't even understand how Google or search engines in general work. Reading this and this would be a good start.
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You can not belive ANYTHING Google says about how they operate. They are just like the IRS: they tell you what they want you to think about how they operate, but will never tell you the truth. Google's search algorithm has become more and more corrupt as time goes by, and the search results given are much less useful and much more about making Google money than their beloved "relevancy" mantra. They knowlingly commit fraud on their advertisers, have cut monopolistic deals with prefered allies, and all other sorts of malevolent business practices.
 
F

franca

<color=pink>Silver</color>
#11
#11
I know they lie. My point in posting those links, is that they don't actually have anything to do with the content on the web sites they call up. Elmo's post really had me wondering if he knew that.

Even if Google's claims about relevancy are complete BS, the technical explanation of how a search is performed is still accurate.
 
F

franca

<color=pink>Silver</color>
#12
#12
Anyway, if you don't like Google, there are other search engines out there. There is still Yahoo. A few more good ones:

http://clusty.com
http://www.exalead.com/search
http://www.alltheweb.com (owned by Yahoo)

Google's regular search engine has problems for sure. But some of their other tools are really good. I like Google Maps and Google Earth. Google Scholar is also a very useful tool. No, it's not the best index of scholarly research (it's not even an index), but if you find the article you need, Google links to it directly--including links to open access repositories and open access journals.
 
M

Monk

#14
#14
billyS said:
Elmo, I think you are getting carried away here. It is a search engine.
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No, they're much more than simply a search engine. They're, for all intents and purposes, a search advertising monopoly.

That's why, for example, the Chairman of WPP (which owns Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam, J. Walter Thompson and Grey Advertising, just to name a few of their agencies) earlier this year called Google a "frenemy." Google both owns their portal, google.com, and sells the advertising on it. Their sales arm will put together strategy and marketing documents for clients, operating the same way that media buying companies do in the rest of the ad industry space. So, no wonder the ad industry now sees them as a direct competitor. Their whole auction model for selling ad space was designed, essentially, to cut out the middle man (third party media buyers). The only problem is that third party media buyers are independent contractors that, in theory, put their clients' interests first. Google, since it's selling space on its own portal, puts its own interests first (despite what they may say otherwise).

Recently, to try and allay fears in the ad industry, they have begun to roll out a dog and pony show, visiting individual ad agencies and meeting with their key people. No one knows exactly what they're up to and there's a lot of suspicion and rumors floating around. They claim that they're just trying to network and build ties with the industry. We'll see.
 
E

elmo16

#15
#15
Slinky Bender said:
You can not belive ANYTHING Google says about how they operate. They are just like the IRS: they tell you what they want you to think about how they operate, but will never tell you the truth. Google's search algorithm has become more and more corrupt as time goes by, and the search results given are much less useful and much more about making Google money than their beloved "relevancy" mantra. They knowlingly commit fraud on their advertisers, have cut monopolistic deals with prefered allies, and all other sorts of malevolent business practices.
Click to expand...
I’ve had the strangest feeling that someone is watching me through the web cam built into my laptop. I guess I should stop surfing in the nude.
 
E

elmo16

#17
#17
franca said:
Anyway, if you don't like Google, there are other search engines out there. There is still Yahoo. A few more good ones:

http://clusty.com
http://www.exalead.com/search
http://www.alltheweb.com (owned by Yahoo)

Google's regular search engine has problems for sure. But some of their other tools are really good. I like Google Maps and Google Earth. Google Scholar is also a very useful tool. No, it's not the best index of scholarly research (it's not even an index), but if you find the article you need, Google links to it directly--including links to open access repositories and open access journals.
Click to expand...
The point of this post is that there is no other search engine anywhere near as powerful as Google, and with that power comes the ability to control and manipulate our daily lives in many subtle (and not so subtle) ways.
 
Slinky Bender

Slinky Bender

The All Powerful Moderator
#19
#19
Monk said:
No, they're much more than simply a search engine. They're, for all intents and purposes, a search advertising monopoly.

That's why, for example, the Chairman of WPP (which owns Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam, J. Walter Thompson and Grey Advertising, just to name a few of their agencies) earlier this year called Google a "frenemy." Google both owns their portal, google.com, and sells the advertising on it. Their sales arm will put together strategy and marketing documents for clients, operating the same way that media buying companies do in the rest of the ad industry space. So, no wonder the ad industry now sees them as a direct competitor. Their whole auction model for selling ad space was designed, essentially, to cut out the middle man (third party media buyers). The only problem is that third party media buyers are independent contractors that, in theory, put their clients' interests first. Google, since it's selling space on its own portal, puts its own interests first (despite what they may say otherwise).

Recently, to try and allay fears in the ad industry, they have begun to roll out a dog and pony show, visiting individual ad agencies and meeting with their key people. No one knows exactly what they're up to and there's a lot of suspicion and rumors floating around. They claim that they're just trying to network and build ties with the industry. We'll see.
Click to expand...
It's even worse that that. Google gives "tools" to their "clients" which are supposed to help them, but in reality offer 'solutions" which are substantialy sub-optimal and solely designed to fleece the advertiser. They also do something which is, in my mind, a totlly monopolistic practice: if you have an ad campaign which follows ALL of their guidelines, they will raise the minimum price for you on a keyword to force you to bid higher than others for the same word. Note that I'm not saying that they shouldn't have the right to place your ad based on quality as well as payment, but what they do is force you to bid high enough that you can ONLY bid for the top spot, and then they give you the top spot. Well, if your ad quality is low, and they tell everyone th eplacement is based on relevancy, how does making you pay for the top spot make your ad more relevant? If your ad has poor relevancy, it should be the other way around: no matter HOW MUCh you pay you shouldn't get the top spot. but instead, they force you into that spot, sp they are FOS no matter how you slice it.

I could give a dozen or more similar examples, but a good one is: how is it that certain advertisers come up as "super relevant" when they don't even offer the product being searched for? there is all sorts of stuff you search for and Target (used to be eBay before they had their falling out) comes up as the top or near top ad, but when you go there, they don't even carry the item. How is that "relevant"?

Also, Google is big one pushing all of the ebooks and get rich quick programs that tell you how to make money on AdWords. most of them violate their terms of service and if you tried to post the exact same ad but sell the same product for Yahoo search (or selling other things), they wouldn't show up at all.
 
Slinky Bender

Slinky Bender

The All Powerful Moderator
#20
#20
elmo16 said:
The point of this post is that there is no other search engine anywhere near as powerful as Google, and with that power comes the ability to control and manipulate our daily lives in many subtle (and not so subtle) ways.
Click to expand...

let's make this more simple: take a look at what has happend to first IBM and then Microsoft (well, it needs to happen to MS more). The monopolistic practices being perpetrated by Google, and it's market share, and evey other test which should be used to determine such things...... well, it's there.
 
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