Last week, when Microsoft’s attempt at buying Yahoo stranded, Steve Ballmer specifically mentioned Google, and how a possible deal between Google and Yahoo would limit choice and competition in the marketplace. Google explained yesterday how it would fend off possible antritrust concerns following an ad-sharing deal with Yahoo. In addtion, Google noted the irony in Microsoft’s complaints.Google co-founder Sergey Brin explained that advertising and internet advertising are much broader than just search advertising. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt added “It’s incorrect to assert there’s lock-in or opportunity for dominance in the ad space. Don’t map (computer) platform economics to ad economics.” Schmidt refused to comment on a possible Google-Yahoo deal.
The test Yahoo and Google performed, during which Yahoo showed Google text ads alongside Yahoo search results, was a success. “We had a really good dynamic. We were able to implement it quickly. The technology teams got along well. They were able to get the protocols working very easily and able to gain a lot of insights,” Brin said.
Google also criticised Microsoft for raising the antitrust concerns in the first place, stating that the company has used its Windows dominance to promote the use of its MSN Internet portal. “A lot of the traffic to MSN has come through bundling the operating system and the browser,” Page said.
Google has had a monopoly on search for quite awhile now, and has used their monopoly on search to gain market dominance in the internet ad market.
Just because they have been able to dodge the monopoly stick for this long doesn’t mean its not going to happen. They need to be very careful about moves like this, or they are going to learn how fun it is to gain monopoly status.
How are they a monopoly? A monopoly entails more than just having a large market share. You can get a large market share simply by being the very best at what you do. Monopoly is less about market share numbers and more about barriers to entry for other players. Unlike switching operating systems, switching search engines is trivial even for less savvy users. I see no real barriers to entry for the competition beyond having the ability to do a better job of search than does Google.
Most Windows PCs I encounter come with IE as the default browser and default to MSN for their home page. Vista let’s you click once on setup to choose Microsoft for all your online service needs, and (I believe someone counted and reported) 40 clicks and some know-how to actually set yourself up for non-MS services. (40 may not be exactly right, but I did take a glance for myself and it was a lot.) Even Microsofts desktop OS monopoly leverage has not been enough to counter Google’s advantage of quality and effectiveness.
Google does what they do very well. They have a large market share. But they are not a monopoly.
Edited 2008-05-09 12:37 UTC
That wholly depends on the definition you employ. I clearly remember my economics professor explaining that a company has a monopoly when it serves like 60% of the market or more (I forgot the exact percentage) – how a company uses that monopoly is irrelevant.
A monopoly does not imply malicious intent or abuse. It might, but it doesn’t have to.
Rather than focusing on definitions, and whether Google is or is not a monopoly as a matter of academics, perhaps we should focus on the same thing that anti-trust laws are supposed to: protecting the consumer through preserving market competition. In what way does Google’s success threaten competition, and thus the consumer? There are no artificial barriers to entry for other players, beyond having the resources to put an infrastructure into place which is massive and well designed enough to challenge Google for speed, ease of use, and quality. To me, that’s just good competition, and not a violation of anti-trust laws, in either letter or spirit. Not just anyone could challenge them, of course, in the same way that you or I would have a problem challenging Ford Motor Co. But money and brand recognition are what it takes to try, and Microsoft, e.g., has plenty of both of those. Note that I say that those things are enough to try. If they are not backed up by a superior search service, they will not dislodge the #1 player. And that is what has been the case, thus far, in the search market.
That’s all great, fine, and dandy, but that’s irrelevant. You said Google is not a monopoly, and I said that if their share of the market is large enough, they are a monopoly, whether they abuse that position or not. I just read their share is 53.6%, so I think that technically makes them a monopoly.
You may start talking about anti-trust and abuse and such, but that has nothing to do with being a monopoly or not. It has to do with abusing said monopoly.
Thom,
I suspect that you are misunderstanding me. The definition of monopoly which I find most useful regards barrier to entry to other players and other things relevant to preservation of competition. (These, more than market share, seemed to be the things that Thomas Penfield Jackson was interested in duing DOJ et.al. vs Microsoft.) If you prefer another definition, that is fine with me. I don’t really care that much about hammering out the definition of monopoly. I do care about whether Google’s position is anti-competitive or not. I do not see evidence that it is.
It is possible that I am reading too much into google_ninja’s post. But I read it as implying that Google has employed anti-competitive practices in the search market, and/or abused its market position. Those would be positions with which I would disagree.
Edited 2008-05-09 13:56 UTC
I can very well call OSNews a butterfly, stating I don’t want to hammer out the definition of butterfly, but that still doesn’t mean OSNews magically becomes a butterfly.
Look, Google is a monopoly because it owns 53.6% of the online search market share. End of story. I know monopoly has a negative sound to it, and that’s probably the reason why people don’t want to call Google as such – since everybody loves Google and wants to hug and kiss it.
That’s a whole different story. If that’s what you mean, then say so, instead of coming up with new definitions or disregarding accepted ones. Personally, I don’t really care. At this point, Google is the best search engine there is, and that’s why I use it. If someone else comes along, and does search better than Google, I’ll be the first to jump ship.
I *really* couldn’t care less.
Edited 2008-05-09 14:01 UTC
But I *am* saying so. I thought that my original post was clear enough when I posted it. Your post alerted me to the fact that not everyone defines monopoly in the same way, so I clarified my intent.
If I may make an observation… sometimes it seems that no matter how careful one tries to be in posting here on OSNews, somebody always wants to turn it into a fight. I don’t see the utility in that. I know that you say that you don’t really care, but the tone of your words suggests otherwise. Or perhaps I am just misinterpreting the tone.
Edited 2008-05-09 14:10 UTC
It’s not about fighting, it’s about using the proper terminology. Google_ninja stated that Google are a monopoly, and you said they weren’t, because they do not abuse their position. I replied stating that abuse-or-not is irrelevant to the question whether somebody has a monopoly or not.
There’s nothing about fighting in there. I’m just trying to explain that a company can hold a monopoly without abusing that position. That’s all.
Perhaps this is part of the confusion. I did not state (or mean) that Google is not a monopoly because they do not abuse their position. I stated that I do not believe they are because, due to the nature of the online search business, as opposed to the desktop operating system busininess, the barrier to entry for competitors is no higher than simply doing a comparable job at online search. Those a very different things.
If, e.g. Microsoft did not abuse their monopoly powers, I would still consider them a desktop monopoly due to the fact (or my opinion, if you will) that a competitor’s having a superior product at a comparable price is not sufficient to dislodge them.
(Note: I would prefer not to go off on a tangent arguing about MS in a Google thread, but MS is the salient example that comes to mind to illustrate my point.)
Edited 2008-05-09 15:01 UTC
According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly):
Where does it talk about percentage?
I seriously don’t see how google fit this definition.
Nevermind this was argued for like 3 pages already.
Edited 2008-05-09 20:09 UTC
You are reading too much into my comments
A monopoly is the recognition that a company is dominating a particular market, and forces them to play by different rules so as to not crush innovation and competition in said market.
For example: MS is a monopoly, as such, bundling applications with its OS has a massive effect on competing applications. The act of bundling things like IE/WMP is not a problem, the fact that it is company under monopoly status is the one that is doing it is.
Personally, I buy into this system up to a point. Government regulation of the market has to be done very, very carefully, and with alot of thought and research.
For example, MS SMB protocols. On the one hand, you have a situation where the market is being harmed by the difficulty of other platforms to integrate with windows. On the other hand, there is innovation in SMB dealing with network noise and latency that you will be giving to MSs competition. When you do not allow for rewards for innovation, you end up killing it (as we have seen time and again), and doing things like this will reduce incentive to innovate.
I actually agree with the SMB decision the EU made (which is why I chose it for an example). In this case, I believe that it will do more good then harm to the market, and that Microsoft being in a monopoly position, should have been offering licensing programs for years. Because of their refusal to do so, forcing them to open the protocol is a fair punitive measure, which will give an additional advantage to the competition. This is the proper use of anti-trust law, a correction to the market when it has become unhealthy.
Another example would be Google’s complaints about the Search button in the start menu of Vista. MS has been almost a decade behind the rest of the world when it comes to desktop search, and WDS is far from an impressive product. But instead of competing, Google chose to file anti-trust suites instead. I read Atlas Shrugged as a teen when I was in the most liberal/socialist phase of my life, and thought the whole thing was a steaming pile. But this is exactly the looter mentality Ayn Rand was talking about. While I still think she built up alot of straw men to make her point, nowadays I do see that her point was a valid one, and I find it just as frustrating to see vultures manipulating governments to pull down people who are better then they are, rather then putting in the work to beat them fairly.
Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to clarify my views on the subject since they seemed to be very misunderstood. I don’t see monopoly as the same thing as being anti-competitive, and I don’t see anti-competitive in nearly the same black and white goggles as a lot of people do around here. Sometimes, an anti-competitive practice is a by product of offering a superior product. An example of this is the OSX/iTunes/iTMS/iPod/AAC stack. Sure, its lock-in, sure its anti-competitive, but it offers a fantastic user experience, and apple is not a monopoly.
No problem on the long post. It did a very good job of clarifying your position. Let me simply say that I agree with much of what you say. And that no matter how you slice it, there is much more to the matter of anti-trust than just “is a monopoly/is not a monopoly”. I would probably be a little quicker to say that taking anti-trust action would be appropriate with respect to MS. But I’m sure you realize that was pretty much a given to start with. 😉
No they are not. Your professor was either wrong or the dutch have a very different view on monopoly than everyone else.
You are confusing the political term with the economic. There are no artificial barriers favouring Google for entering the search business and there is no lack of substitute goods.
Equaling large market share to a monopoly is a political thing but it no more makes Google a monopoly than it makes you gay just because I say you are.
I think that if we continue to focus on the word “monopoly”, and not upon the nuts and bolts of exactly what Google’s effect upon the online search market really is, we are going to simply spin our wheels in this thread.
Good point. I dont even like Google but probably come across as I do.
I am generally pro-Google, for two reasons. First, they run an outstanding company and have assembled an awesome (and I use that word quite literally and appropriately here) base of employees. Secondly, I would have to admit to a sort of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” bias. On the other hand, the sheer power to control the dissemination of information that the company has gained so quickly can’t help but remind me of the ring of power. I’m not sure that we have a problem right now. But given time, I’m sure that something bad will *eventually* come of it. Then again, as I have noted before, changing search engines is trivial, whereas changing OSes is not.
That’s my point as well. But Google is branching out of search because they know it is easy for users to switch.
I am also trying to point out that blind hatred of MS shouldn’t cause us to turn a blind eye to Google and its actions.
Edited 2008-05-09 20:24 UTC
I would take issue with the term “blind hatred”. My hatred is 20/20 thankyouverymuch. 😉 But otherwise, point taken.
Edited 2008-05-09 20:38 UTC
I’d rather let Yahoo run with Google ads than let Microsoft have some about 500 milion public e-mail accounts, two mostly trafficked portals in the Internet, >80% dominance in desktop OS market and >70% dominance in web browser market all together. I suppose that Yahoo and Hotmail combined is more than 50% of all public accounts worldwide. So, this is ALSO a monopoly by your definition, with significantly higher entry barriers (or rather: exit barriers) and with more potential to lock-in.
I don’t care if someone has monopoly on something. I do care if I suffer of this. Given past “fair” business practices I’d rather trust Google than MS if I had only these two choices.
You cannot interchange easily market dominance and monopoly. These terms are of different meanings. FYI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_and_monopoly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_(economics)
Edited 2008-05-09 20:35 UTC
Now that apple is on x86 computers (which is what the monopoly ruling was on), MS has what, an 80% marketshare (as a very liberal estimate, i could easily argue for 75%)? What kind of marketshare does Google have on search/advertising? And does google leverage its search dominance to help its ad system?
Monopolies do not only exist for operating systems, and they have nothing to do with anything other then market dominance.
This is a bit off the topic, but can you back that up? I would be skeptical even if you include server machines. (How I wish that your estimates were correct!) However, the relevant market share category, IMO, is really desktop systems on any processor architecture.
Mostly pulled those numbers out of my ass, but typically (depending on the source) apple is put anywhere from 4%-20% of the market, and Linux is put at anywhere from 0.5%-5% of the market.
It depends on the study, the source, and whether we are talking about PCs, PC+Servers, or the home user market. I know from a personal point of view, I know alot of people who have macs nowadays, and from a professional point of view, there is very little more hip in the web world nowadays then RoR on OSX with Textmate and git source control. Not exactly scientific, but those are the trends I both have been seeing in marketshare reports and in the real world.
As you know, I am a fan of non-MS operating systems. But as much as I would like to believe it… Apple is nowhere near 20% and Linux is nowhere near 5% of the desktop market. If you include servers, it would help the Linux numbers, but don’t desktops vastly outnumber servers? So probably not by much. Looking around at the world around me here in Oklahoma, USA it is obvious that Windows is running on *well* over 90% of machines. I *very* rarely see OSX or Linux or anything other than Windows (mostly XP) outside of my own administrative domain.
And yes, it pains me deeply to have to say that.
Edited 2008-05-09 15:59 UTC
A deal with google and yahoo would make google a monopoly. Google has 59% and yahoo 21% share of the online search market. People didn’t start hating Microsoft until they became a monopoly and started doing things to maintain it.
What do you think the barrier to entry is for people who go against Google and are better. Think youtube and google video. What did Google do? They bought them out because google video couldn’t compete.
Google couldn’t effectively do graphical banner ads so they just bought double click. Embrace and extend any one.
I disagree Google is powerful enough to just buy out a competitor and they have done that in the past. Now Google is everywhere and they have also made sure desktops ship with Google toolbar and desktop by default.
Not yet but their behavior as of late mimics Microsoft. Competition is good. Yahoo and Google together would stifle that. The barrier to entry will be that no one will be able to fund a search engine to effectively compete with google. If Microsoft can’t fund and attract talent to compete with google how would a start up.
Thank you for addressing such relevant points. Google is indeed big, these days. Their market cap is $180 Billion. Thats about 2/3rd of Microsoft’s $274 billion, and larger than IBM’s. Google’s price earnings ratio is over double that of MSFT, but still, that does give them tremendous buying power. In my opinion, Google has done a pretty good job of not being evil. But that much power concentrated in one place is an open invitation to abuse. Even Gollum did not become so corrupted overnight. It takes time.
I would disagree with your use of the phrase “embrace and extend”, but that is only a quibble. I would agree that purchasing competitors is a practice worth noting in the context of judging the health of competition in that (non-search) market. And one which I had not considered, since my focus was on the search market.
I would point out that, to my knowledge, Google has not bought out any major competitors in the search market, and that there are no artificial barriers to entry, currently, in that market. If Google did start buying out major competitors in the search market, I would be gravely concerned.
Edited 2008-05-09 16:17 UTC
Google isn’t buying a competitor but Yahoo outsourcing that part of the business if pretty damn close. While it isn’t an outright buy out such a deal should be blocked. The bottom line is user base. If Google has the combined user base I would be very worried.
Remember Microsoft got into trouble over IE for using their desktop monopoly to influence the spread of IE. I don’t see much difference with Google using their dominance in search (which means revenue from Ads) to stifle competition or play high stake games.
For example, the 700Mhz auction. Google would never have that much influence if it were not for the money it makes with search. Imagine what Google would be able to influence if it had more. I don’t buy the “do no evil” mantra. Getting free access to a spectrum only so that Google may enter it with android to sell more Ads while another company foots the infrastructure costs, seems like a smart business move on the surface but it is down right scary to think google can manipulate things like that with its might. All the while pretending to be good.
Somehow people are willing to have Ads shoved down their throats tracked by usage patterns for free access. What will happen eventually is you will pay for the service just like for cable TV and still have Ads showed down on your throat. There is nothing to stop Google from charging monthly fees once they have tapped out their revenue stream from the free service if they have the monopoly control over the market. Remember they have been buying fiber left, right and center. Once they have more money they can buy out carriers too.
There is a reason why companies like NetZero that used ads to provide cheaper service failed. Now somehow it is ok because it is Google.
Google’s Ads are getting more in your face. For example, YouTube has display ads during the clips now. Google just announced that it is going to start putting display ads on google.com. Their initial philosophy was never to be in your face with ads. If that can change I can’t imagine the “do no evil” one changing.
Remember “Power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
All this might sound overly paranoid but I believe that the bottom line is no one company should ever be as powerful and history has thought us that time and again.
Edited 2008-05-09 16:44 UTC
Alright, I can understand caution when seeing these types of deals, but this is crazy.
Other people footing infrastructure costs? Bullshit, we’re being raped by telcos with what are true monopolies and obvious malicious intent. You’re claiming Google is a monopoly because they’re promoting fairness?
Microsoft has used its monopoly status to maintain dominance in anything computer related that MS is interested in. You think Google is a monopoly protecting itself from a company that will use every possible trick to get what it wants?
I say put MS out of business, and hopefully people won’t vote retards in to office that don’t want to enforce anti-competition laws so we’ll actually address new problems when they actually come up.
No I am claiming Google is promoting fairness that in the end only means a way for it to enter that market. Google is only promoting fairness where it sees a future business.
I don’t see Google doing anything different and how they are dealing with Verizon. They tried to trick them and the FCC now they are whining in court because Verizon tricked them back.
That has nothing to do with Google becoming too powerful and already demonstrating how it intends to use its power. I see a new MS in the making.
I’m sorry, but how does being bought out constitute a “barrier to entry”? Youtube could have easily resisted any attempt by Google at buying them out. Instead, due to the lack of a viable business plan they found that it was better to be bought out by a large company like Google. There is no barrier to entry there.
On the other hand, if Google had leveraged it’s dominant search engine position by refusing to index Youtube and thus preventing any Google user from ever discovering a domain called Youtube, you might have a leg to stand on.
Google does that with liveleak. May be not directly youtube. But Google pro actively refuses to index certain online video sites.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6a6_1176066336&c=1
Buy the biggest most popular competitor and don’t index smaller competitors seems like a “barrier to entry” to me. Especially when the site has tried everything to get Google to index them including contacting them multiple times.
Edited 2008-05-09 18:43 UTC
I am somewhat suspicious of that claim by liveleak. It seems exceedingly unlikely to me that Google would do something so obvious, even if they were into using their search prominence to put their video publishing competition at a disadvantage. A search on google for liveleak returns a healthy 2,370,000 results. The claim by liveleak smells a bit, IMO.
Actually most of those don’t link to their videos. Not like the videos from say YouTube.
Search “kobe bryant jump over aston martin video” and the only video links are youtube. Even though dailymotion and other video sites have the same videos. Infact, I can’t see any other competitive video sites in the first page.
I can’t edit the previous post so I have to add a reply.
I did the same search on Microsofts Live.com. Guess what the first link is.
It is a collection of all the videos sites where that video exists like MySpace, DailyMotion, Break, YouTube, Liveleak, revver and heavy.
I don’t buy that google isn’t purposely trying to steer people to youtube on video searches. If Microsoft can show all the sites, Google should easily be able to do it.
Google does that with liveleak. May be not directly youtube. But Google pro actively refuses to index certain online video sites.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6a6_1176066336&c=1
[/q]
Or perhaps there is another reason they are blacklisting sites such as liveleak. There are other concerns they may have too per Copyright laws.
Granted, YouTube (and Google Video!) both have some leaked materials on them; however, they have also both been taken to court and withstood site take downs since there is a policy in place for Copyright holders to have materials removed.
Just a thought
Read down the thread further as to how Microsoft’s live.com links to liveleak and other video sites.
Google doesn’t link to any of their competitors, period. Google is a search engine not be a copyright police. Their job is to index the web not censor it.
I don’t think copyright law has anything to do with it.
Edited 2008-05-12 20:22 UTC
I’ve certainly gotten to other video sites through searching Google and Google Video – including Yahoo’s Video site, so I’d hardly say that they don’t “link to any of their competitors”. I’ve even found it to be an annoyance from time to time as the formats are different (WMA) than what I’d like when they do come up in the search results.
And many companies do this, the startups i mean. Theycome up with an idea in order to sell it and then move on to creating the next idea.
IMO these companies don;t like the operative part of the task and just want to gt the concept going and well, as every company, the cash.
I used to work for a company that bought these ideas just to find out, in most cases, that they were crap(regarding software code and arch).
This is an interesting debate and I always thought anyone in an utterly dominant market position is a monopoly by basically establishing standards within that industry.
Alternatively the company which creates barriers to forestall the change in standards is not just a monopoly but stifler of competition.
I think thats where Google and Microsoft differ.
Here is the definition of Monopoly by Wikipedia: In Economics, monopoly (also “Pure monopoly”) exists when a specific individual or enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. [1] Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods. [2] Alternatively (a modern and less common usage), it may be used as a verb or adjective to refer to the process (see Monopolism) by which a firm gains persistently greater market share than what is expected under perfect competition. The latter usage of the term is invoked in the theory of monopolistic competition.
I am not an economist but Google does not have sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.
I love when I see people throw monopoly around. Monopoly by economic definition means ‘over whelming dominance of a given market’ – by a monopoly doesn’t necessarily mean that they gained it through anti-competitive means nor does it mean that it is maintained through anti-competitive means.
Now, as for Google – yes they are a monopoly, but that doesn’t mean that they gained or maintained their share through anti-competitive practices. Under US law, the issue isn’t the act of being a monopoly but how that position in the market place is actually used (or abused).
As for Microsofts accusations. If we are really going to make stretches as Microsoft has made, then maybe we should also charge Adobe for collusion with Microsoft on the basis of making their products inferior on Mac OS X when compared to their Windows versions and failing to provide their software line on operating systems other than Windows on generic x86 hardware (Mac’s aren’t generic PC hardware as Mac OS X cannot be transferred to be run on a generic PC, thus, the two are locked) and thus supporting the Microsoft monopoly – thus, I want Adobe to be forced to port their applications to alternative platforms.
See how silly things become when people making imaginative stretches as what Microsoft is doing?
Monopoly indicates that your position in a market raises a significant or impassible barrier to entry in that market. It also implies that you can leverage that position in anti-competitive ways. It has nothing at all to do with popularity. As far as I can tell, it’s as easy as creating a server farm and coding up a few bots to become an online search engine – the fact that google does this best, or at least is the most popular in no way suggests that they are a monopoly.
Google has a monopoly in the online ads business, search is just a driving force.
Google is trying to increase that dominance by entering other services such as email, office suites, blogs, online video. To push that dominance in online Ads.
Facebook is gaining over orkut. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google made a bid to buy Facebook out eventually. Just like they did YouTube and DoubleClick.
Remember Google is an advertising provider and that is their core business. Search is the major interface people use the web and Ads are the major source of revenue derived from search. Why do you think MS wants a piece of that action?
No it doesn’t. There is nothing stopping you from starting your own online ads business, other than the fact that Google’s Ad Sense is most likely going to be superior to anything that anyone else can come up with.
The Google mafia aren’t going to come knocking on your door.
No it doesn’t. There is nothing stopping you from starting your own online ads business, other than the fact that Google’s Ad Sense is most likely going to be superior to anything that anyone else can come up with.
The Google mafia aren’t going to come knocking on your door.
You do realize that if someone has a monopoly it doesn’t mean no one else can start a similar business…? And note that being a monopoly doesn’t mean you use illegal business tactics either. Monopoly just means a business that has 60% or more coverage in some specific business area.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/monopoly
“An economic advantage held by one or more persons or companies deriving from the exclusive power to carry on a particular business or trade or to manufacture and sell a particular item, thereby suppressing competition and allowing such persons or companies to raise the price of a product or service substantially above the price that would be established by a free market.”
Not seeing it…
I think people are getting hung up on a (somewhat debatable) purely economic definition, when actually the stakes are much higher.
Google’s mission is: “(T)o organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”(http://www.google.com/corporate/). That sounds like domination to me, not just mere monopoly in a defined sector of the economy.
Not presenting barriers to other search companies (for example) does not undermine at all the central proposition of Google’s overweening ambition very actively to obtain, capture, hold, collate and index for its own corporate purposes vast amounts of information and knowledge, an aspiration which, if realized by, say, an agency of government or a supra-national body, rather than a certain commercial player in an apparently free market, would have many of us thinking more than twice. Much of the information is generated by and through the public purse, in the form of research outputs, information that Google, despite its vast spending power, could not conjure up on its own (in raw Dollar terms, perhaps, but it could hardly replicate the likes of NASA or the ESA to get the data it wants via http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/google-to-provi.html).
And then of course there is Google Print. Some of the original controversy over copyright, etc., seems to have died down, but there still appears to be something insidious going on here, in terms of compulsion in regard to how much control scholars actually have over the release or availability of works produced as part of their graduate education:
http://earthgoat.blogspot.com/2008/03/theses-and-google-print.html
There are bigger picture things here: the digital information revolution is having an incredible impact on what constitutes the very notion of formal education (can anyone imagine that Plato would have stopped, mid-stride, in the Academy, whipped out his wireless-enabled device and looked up something via Google, before proceeding with, say, the foundations of The Republic? But this is what in effect happens today in academe, at all levels).
Google to some extent is only the biggest symptom of this revolution. However, Google may have the motto of ‘don’t be evil’, but we all know how the road to Hell is paved (with good intentions).
Ironically, perhaps the free market may save us in the end, if recent stories about staff leaving Google as it becomes a seeming Behemoth are credible: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7389179.stm
But then again, I always liked being a bit of a doomsayer…
Edited for syntax – too late or early in the day
Edited 2008-05-10 02:32 UTC
I doubt many are missing the forrest for the trees here, but that’s not what the discussion is about. This is about as relevant to the discussion as the fact that youtube is mostly a sinkhole of useless shit which forces/uses a proprietary media format. Both things I’ve stated are either objectively or subjectively true, but neither address the subject matter.