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Consumer group calls for Google breakup
A US CONSUMER GROUP has penned a letter to the US Attorney General calling for Google to be broken up.
John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog urged him to begin a broad antitrust action against Google. He said that the outfit uses anticompetitive practices and monopolistic position in Internet search in ways that harm potential competitors and consumers.
Simpson pointed out that the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have taken a reactive approach to Google's activities. However his organisation was a little more pro-active and has taken Google to the cleaners over the proposed Google Books settlement.
Simpson said that the time has come to actively restrain Google's broad ability to abuse both users and advertisers. Such action could include breaking Google into multiple separate companies or regulating it as a public utility.
He said that with 70 per cent of the US market for Internet search, Google is the gateway to the Internet. How it tweaks its proprietary search algorithms can ensure a business's success or doom it to failure.
"Google's business practices to maximize its profits determine much of the Internet experience for most consumers by determining what they view," Simpson said.
He accused Google of manipulating search algorithms, engaging in conduct that trims its auctions or otherwise denies competitive alternatives, and said that users plainly are harmed because they will not even have the opportunity to experience such alternatives.
The letter suggests that the Department of Justice could break up Google into different companies devoted to different lines of business. Search could be separated from advertising. Gmail and its new social networking service, Buzz, could be spun off as a separate entity as could Youtube. Enterprise applications could be another separate business.
"Arguably Google's monopoly position and importance to the Internet means that the company should be regarded as a public utility and regulated," the letter concluded. µ
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Unlike Microsoft's well documented rise to notoriety, I'm not aware of Google doing anything to get to their present position other than developing a search engine that blew all the others out of the water and provided a neat, simple and functional frontpage to deliver it.
Nobody held a gun to people's heads forcing them to use Google to search, and their 70% market share is entirely well deserved. Similarly I find it amusing when companies complain that their rankings are being manipulated as though they have a specific RIGHT to be in a higher position or even listed at all.
Google have gone on to deliver great applications like GMail, Earth and Picasa and, again, nobody is forcing anyone to use these either.
However, what Google have been doing recently and where they go from here has me quite worried and I'm seeing them increasingly as a wolf in sheep's clothing. However, it's up to me to use any one of the miriad of alternatives if I don't trust Google to the extent I'd rather not use them.
Surely then the problem is that their users either don't care or don't realise what Google is capable of doing with all the information they're gathering? I hardly see that as justification for calling for their break up, more as a call for full transparency and disclosure. Even then I imagine most people probably don't care.
At the end of the day every single person using Google's products is doing so voluntarily and has alternatives.
If Google wan't what it is, we would still be using crappy search engines like eXcite and MSN. The only decent phone on the market would be the iPhone. Half the companies that exist on the internet now would never have been found because there was no good way to advertise.
They are the reason we are where we are, and they are also what will help us drive forward. I will admit it is a little scary that one company has so much power, but so far they are less corrupt than our government that we give even more power to.
Google's pagerank is no worse a custom than a realtor practises, and in many respects, more honouriffick.
MS anti-trust case should be re-opened and they should be broken up.
I can't say how I know, but he is spot on.
Even medium size biz have Google servers keeping an eye on things.
heh - what's in your data center? and do you really undersand what it does,,
I don't hate google, but if this supposed watchdog group wasn't privatly owned they would be going after NewsCorp first and formost, then trying to get the fed audited.
A sprawling monster already, into dozens of areas unrelated to internet, with apparently unlimited cash. How their company charter covers it all is a good question.
But a better question is whether go_ogle has tacit permission from DOJ because go_ogle is a cover for and supplier of data to various intelligence agencies. It's (still) illegal for gov't to snoop and track as go_ogle does, but gov't can then "buy" and use any info collected as a way around those pesky laws. Since that's a necessary condition for the surveillance security state, it's near certain that go_ogle won't be prosecuted let alone broken up.
Google will have it's following divisions separated into individual entities.
NSA
FBI
CIA
DHS
Secret Service
And some other group so secret it has no name.
Unfortunately, this "consumer watchdog" is a known Microsoft-backed astroturfer.