Poll: Is it time for the government to kill Google?

BrotherRool

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Kill= seperate into different companies.


(EDIT: The table of governmental data requests to Google for those who are interested, during a 6 month period in 2012
https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/countries/?t=table
Incidentally you may notice that Google are pretty good, about providing information on this and thats because they are one of the better companies at this. It's just unfortunate how much data they process and naturally Google can't turn down a request made by agencies empowered to make such a request. (also the EU kept hammering at them and threatening legislation if they didn't. And even then Google didn't fully comply
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/16/google-privacy-policies-eu-data-protection )

Google controls:
*50% of smart phone usage
*20% of web browser usage
*The majority of internet searches
*One of the biggest email providers in the world
*Pretty much all internet videos
*A large chunk of all advertising on the internet
*One of the largest providers of website statistics
*The most popular map/route making software
*A image map of the entire world
*A video map of large sections of all the streets in the world
*Their own social network
*Their own PC OS


On top of that, they have specialised in mining information from large chunks of data and finding correlations in data and behaviour patterns. Their business model revolves around accurately profiling people and then using that data to get a portion of all the people they reach to do something they wouldn't have done without Googles involvement

Every website with a +1 or a google ad, will send a message to Google to tell you you've visited it (unless you block it with an add-on)

(Incidentally if you use an app to stop Google tracking you from website to website, something you're legally allowed to do, they'll just pull their adverts all together and the creators won't get any money)

What I'm saying is, if the executive chairman ever turns round to the CEO and says 'Hey, how about for a laugh we take over the world?' the CEO's going to respond 'You mean you didn't know?'

It's anticompetitive, there are only a few companies left in the world who can hope to compete with Google in any business venture they decide on. Even without the money, Google is now big enough that they basically own a chunk of the brainpower of the world so big that no other company can be intelligent enough to compete.

Google use their position to further their gains. Right now youtube (in Germany at least) is flooded with adverts asking people to campaign against privacy laws that would restrict Google's operating.

And finally, I believe that people like the CIA can force Google to hand over any data they need. We're in a situation where intelligence agencies don't have to spy on people because Google has all the information they'd ever need.

So is it time to die? I'm okay with a company owning any one of the things that Google has, but all of them are too much. We would never trust a government with this much power, it can't be right to trust a private company with it.
 

thesilentman

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Jun 14, 2012
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I'm going to watch this thread with a big nice [citation needed] tag over here. While Google does have all that power, I don't see anything that leads evidence to them being a threat. YET. Certainly may happen in the future, which is when we ***** and tear Google to pieces, but nothing now.
 

Thaluikhain

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Jan 16, 2010
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Which government?

Google is international, it can happily move it's facilities away from any nation that doesn't like them, and fuck the search results of anything to do with that country.
 

Angie7F

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Nov 11, 2011
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Google is still outnumbered by yahoo users in Japan.
Even videos seems to be Nico Nico than Youtube.
 

Slitzkin

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Jul 3, 2011
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Sure why not? Let's smash every massive corporation into splinter companies.
MICROSOFT AND APPLE SHALL FEEL REGULATION OF THE STATE NEXT
CONTROL IS DESTRUCTION
FEAR IS POWER
PRIVACY IS FALSE
 

Zantos

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Jan 5, 2011
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No. The last thing we want to do in a time where someone can fuck everything up for everyone with the promise of a big bail out, is for a company that legitimately does well to be chased down on some hypothetical scenario based on wild speculation.

Google use their position to further their gains. Right now youtube (in Germany at least) is flooded with adverts asking people to campaign against privacy laws that would restrict Google's operating.
So? This is like complaining that in an election the candidates are advertising for you to vote for them. If they were paying off German officials to vote in their favour it would be a problem. If they're encouraging the people that use the service to appeal to allow them a better service, which they can ignore if they should so wish.

And finally, I believe that people like the CIA can force Google to hand over any data they need. We're in a situation where intelligence agencies don't have to spy on people because Google has all the information they'd ever need.
Firstly, citation needed. Secondly, the information you gave them willingly.

In short, we have a company that has managed to grow up to a huge, rich multinational. Unlike many other companies across many sectors in the world today, it has managed to do this all above board. And you want to punish them for it. No.
 

ComradeJim270

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Nov 24, 2007
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I don't think you're asking the right question, What you should be asking is "Should Google be charged with violations of anti-trust laws?" Otherwise you get stuff like:

Zantos said:
No. The last thing we want to do in a time where someone can fuck everything up for everyone with the promise of a big bail out, is for a company that legitimately does well to be chased down on some hypothetical scenario based on wild speculation...

...In short, we have a company that has managed to grow up to a huge, rich multinational. Unlike many other companies across many sectors in the world today, it has managed to do this all above board. And you want to punish them for it. No.
Nobody is going to seriously propose those things be done. That's not what we're talking about. But monopolies and the practices that allow them to be created are harmful to society, and should not be permitted, and if Google or any other company engages in such practices they should be dealt with accordingly. I'm not sure they have, but I'm not informed enough about Google or the relevant laws to really have a clear idea on that.
 

Zantos

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ComradeJim270 said:
I don't think you're asking the right question, What you should be asking is "Should Google be charged with violations of anti-trust laws?" Otherwise you get stuff like:

Zantos said:
No. The last thing we want to do in a time where someone can fuck everything up for everyone with the promise of a big bail out, is for a company that legitimately does well to be chased down on some hypothetical scenario based on wild speculation...

...In short, we have a company that has managed to grow up to a huge, rich multinational. Unlike many other companies across many sectors in the world today, it has managed to do this all above board. And you want to punish them for it. No.
Nobody is going to seriously propose those things be done. That's not what we're talking about. But monopolies and the practices that allow them to be created are harmful to society, and should not be permitted, and if Google or any other company engages in such practices they should be dealt with accordingly. I'm not sure they have, but I'm not informed enough about Google or the relevant laws to really have a clear idea on that.
But does Google actually have a monopoly on any of the things it does? Checking the list from first post

- Smart phones: No, possibly the most rapidly expanding, but nowhere near a monopoly.
- Web browsers: No. Growing in popularity, but again nowhere near.
- Internet searching: Maybe, it's popular, but there are certainly still competitors.
- E-mail provider: Popular in some countries, but as pointed out above severely lacking in others.
- Internet videos: Okay, probably this one, though again in some countries it has serious competition.
- Advertising: It advertises. That's how it makes it's money. It doesn't own advertising.
- Website statistics: It does a good chunk of it, but again it has it's competitors.
- Map and route making: It's popular, but there's still TomTom and Garmin holding a big chunk of the market, plus Apple is trying to get into the market.
- Whole world image map: It's the easiest available, but not the only, first, last or best. Offered for others to use and modify.
- Video map: If this is a thing I can't find it.
- Social Network: Oh god are they lagging behind with this compared to FB and twitter.
- Chrome OS: Nowhere near.
 

ComradeJim270

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Zantos said:
But does Google actually have a monopoly on any of the things it does? Checking the list from first post...
Probably not, and I already stated that I'm not only unqualified to say it does but lack the knowledge to even feel comfortable stating that it does or does not. What bothered me is you saying that what was being suggested was that Google should be punished for its success or "trying to take over the world" or something like that. As I read it, that's not what was being asked, and if it were I would be wholly dismissive of the idea.
 

Zantos

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ComradeJim270 said:
Zantos said:
But does Google actually have a monopoly on any of the things it does? Checking the list from first post...
Probably not, and I already stated that I'm not only unqualified to say it does but lack the knowledge to even feel comfortable stating that it does or does not. What bothered me is you saying that what was being suggested was that Google should be punished for its success or "trying to take over the world" or something like that. As I read it, that's not what was being asked, and if it were I would be wholly dismissive of the idea.
If the thread was about introducing external measures on large companies then I'd agree, however the thread title literally talks about killing Google. It finishes asking if it's time to die. To limit an international organisation's capacity to operate independently due to wild speculation that they might become too powerful in the future when it isn't really doing anything wrong, I interpret that exactly as wanting to punish it for doing well.
 

ComradeJim270

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Zantos said:
If the thread was about introducing external measures on large companies then I'd agree, however the thread title literally talks about killing Google. It finishes asking if it's time to die. To limit an international organisation's capacity to operate independently due to wild speculation that they might become too powerful in the future when it isn't really doing anything wrong, I interpret that exactly as wanting to punish it for doing well.
I actually agree with you, I'm just not sure that's actually what's being proposed, hence my comment earlier on how the wrong question is being asked here. I see your point regarding some of the language being used to describe the idea, though.
 

BrassButtons

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BrotherRool said:
What I'm saying is, if the executive chairman ever turns round to the CEO and says 'Hey, how about for a laugh we take over the world?' the CEO's going to respond 'You mean you didn't know?'
OK, I'll bite: how would Google take over the world? Or, if you mean they already have, in what way are they currently in control of the world? Please be specific.

It's anticompetitive, there are only a few companies left in the world who can hope to compete with Google in any business venture they decide on.
Why not? I have a feeling I know your reasoning, but want to be sure before I offer my argument.

Even without the money, Google is now big enough that they basically own a chunk of the brainpower of the world so big that no other company can be intelligent enough to compete.
Evidence?

Google use their position to further their gains. Right now youtube (in Germany at least) is flooded with adverts asking people to campaign against privacy laws that would restrict Google's operating.
So companies can't advertise for things that would be in their best interest?

And finally, I believe that people like the CIA can force Google to hand over any data they need.
Evidence?

So is it time to die? I'm okay with a company owning any one of the things that Google has, but all of them are too much. We would never trust a government with this much power, it can't be right to trust a private company with it.
Considering that Google came into that power legally, without any use of force, I have no problem with it. I've never agreed with the idea that a company that does everything by the book, but then is good enough at what they do to become "too big", should suddenly be in legal trouble.
 

OniaPL

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BrotherRool said:
*Pretty much all internet videos
THEY CONTROL ALL THE CAT VIDEOS! QUICKLY, GO GET THE GOVERNMENT!

But in all seriousness, why do you believe that Google is a threat? And what is this "government"? The world still doesn't have a single unified government, I believe.
 

BrotherRool

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thaluikhain said:
Which government?

Google is international, it can happily move it's facilities away from any nation that doesn't like them, and fuck the search results of anything to do with that country.
EDIT: Misread, I assumed it was the data requests thing =D And you don't think that Google not being able to be controlled by any government isn't too powerful :p I gave my approximation of an answer to the last person I quoted below
Zantos said:
And finally, I believe that people like the CIA can force Google to hand over any data they need. We're in a situation where intelligence agencies don't have to spy on people because Google has all the information they'd ever need.
Firstly, citation needed. Secondly, the information you gave them willingly.
Sorry you're right, I should have been posting the information up. They are transparent about it, Google are working hard to keep within privacy laws of countries, it's just those privacy laws aren't very tight.
https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/countries/?t=table
For the people who don't want to glance at it, during the period from July to December 2012 there were requests on 14 000 users from the US government, 2500 from the Brazillian government, 4000 from the Indian government and 2000 users for the French government, as the big requests.

And it's not completely information we give voluntarily. As I said, every site with a +1 or a google ad automatically logs your presence (they do it to better target advertising). But if it wasn't, can you really not use youtube and still enjoy internet videos? There are competitors but no-one uses the competitors, if we left on mass it would be fine, but as it stands all the videos are on youtube. There are a couple of reviewers you could watch on Blip and thats about it.

Also since you were asking for citation, I presume you didn't know that Google will give your user information to if the government of your country were to request it.

This is probably the big point for me, I'm actually not so much afraid of Google, but that the information they have can be taken freely by the appropriate authorities and I don't think it's right for a government to have that much information on it's citizens. Apart from that, there would be the concern that if Google were to have a corrupt employee somewhere fairly high up, they could access a lot of information on someone.

ComradeJim270 said:
I actually agree with you, I'm just not sure that's actually what's being proposed, hence my comment earlier on how the wrong question is being asked here. I see your point regarding some of the language being used to describe the idea, though.
Zantos said:
No. The last thing we want to do in a time where someone can fuck everything up for everyone with the promise of a big bail out, is for a company that legitimately does well to be chased down on some hypothetical scenario based on wild speculation.
Hopefully they wouldn't lose out on money because the services would be used to the same extent, just not under the control of one company (which is what I meant to propose although clearly I screwed that one up =D). I agree the timing is very unfortunate.


Zantos said:
Google use their position to further their gains. Right now youtube (in Germany at least) is flooded with adverts asking people to campaign against privacy laws that would restrict Google's operating.
So? This is like complaining that in an election the candidates are advertising for you to vote for them. If they were paying off German officials to vote in their favour it would be a problem. If they're encouraging the people that use the service to appeal to allow them a better service, which they can ignore if they should so wish.
Thats true, it's no worse than other lobbying, lots of big companies spend money to try and get the laws changed to suit them more favourably. But I would argue that most other lobbyists don't have a database of the interests of a significant percentage of all internet users, nor the power to broadcast their message on such a widespread level. Technically I guess they're losing advertising revenue they would otherwise gain, so maybe that just works out as them having more money to lobby with than other people



Zantos said:
In short, we have a company that has managed to grow up to a huge, rich multinational. Unlike many other companies across many sectors in the world today, it has managed to do this all above board. And you want to punish them for it. No.
I didn't propose it to punish them so much =D I just feel there should be a limit to how powerful a corporation is allowed to come and that that limit is more important when the company trades in human data. Maybe if I believed that better legislation would restrict that appropriately, but the EU did 'recommend' privacy legislation and Google was naturally resistant in complying and the decision is still going on (hence the advertising)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/15/google-privacy-policy
Since Google refused to heed the EU's prior warnings that changing its privacy policies may violate data protection laws it would not surprise me if restrictions are placed on how Google may utilise the user data profiles it has created since the new policies went into effect. This [EU] decision may restrict Google's ability to fully monetise its users' personal data across its platforms and may cost Google tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17205754
(this was the resistance part)

But even if the EU legislation comes into place and Google don't circumvent it, governments will still be able to request that data

OniaPL said:
BrotherRool said:
*Pretty much all internet videos
THEY CONTROL ALL THE CAT VIDEOS! QUICKLY, GO GET THE GOVERNMENT!

But in all seriousness, why do you believe that Google is a threat? And what is this "government"? The world still doesn't have a single unified government, I believe.
The US government has the most regulatory power of Google I believe. The EU are trying to restrict it's privacy policies, but I would imagine that when it comes into breaking up a company into smaller parts that the home country would be the one with that responsibility
 

mad825

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BrotherRool said:
*A image map of the entire world
You may want to do some research into that first before saying that [http://www.geoeye.com/GeoEye101/GeoEye-Google/Default.aspx]

I've never heard of Google sending their own satellite into space...Yet.
 

Lizardon

Robot in Disguise
Mar 22, 2010
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Since you put an xkcd comic in your OP, I'll respond with another.



The fact of the matter is that Google has done nothing wrong in the eye of the public, who hold the company in very high regard. Until they do something that really pisses people off, I'd say they will continue to operate as is.
 

Hoplon

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Mar 31, 2010
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BrotherRool said:
Kill= seperate into different companies.


(EDIT: The table of governmental data requests to Google for those who are interested, during a 6 month period in 2012
https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/countries/?t=table
Incidentally you may notice that Google are pretty good, about providing information on this and thats because they are one of the better companies at this. It's just unfortunate how much data they process and naturally Google can't turn down a request made by agencies empowered to make such a request. (also the EU kept hammering at them and threatening legislation if they didn't. And even then Google didn't fully comply
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/16/google-privacy-policies-eu-data-protection )

Google controls:
*50% of smart phone usage
*20% of web browser usage
*The majority of internet searches
*One of the biggest email providers in the world
*Pretty much all internet videos
*A large chunk of all advertising on the internet
*One of the largest providers of website statistics
*The most popular map/route making software
*A image map of the entire world
*A video map of large sections of all the streets in the world
*Their own social network
*Their own PC OS


On top of that, they have specialised in mining information from large chunks of data and finding correlations in data and behaviour patterns. Their business model revolves around accurately profiling people and then using that data to get a portion of all the people they reach to do something they wouldn't have done without Googles involvement

Every website with a +1 or a google ad, will send a message to Google to tell you you've visited it (unless you block it with an add-on)

(Incidentally if you use an app to stop Google tracking you from website to website, something you're legally allowed to do, they'll just pull their adverts all together and the creators won't get any money)

What I'm saying is, if the executive chairman ever turns round to the CEO and says 'Hey, how about for a laugh we take over the world?' the CEO's going to respond 'You mean you didn't know?'

It's anticompetitive, there are only a few companies left in the world who can hope to compete with Google in any business venture they decide on. Even without the money, Google is now big enough that they basically own a chunk of the brainpower of the world so big that no other company can be intelligent enough to compete.

Google use their position to further their gains. Right now youtube (in Germany at least) is flooded with adverts asking people to campaign against privacy laws that would restrict Google's operating.

And finally, I believe that people like the CIA can force Google to hand over any data they need. We're in a situation where intelligence agencies don't have to spy on people because Google has all the information they'd ever need.

So is it time to die? I'm okay with a company owning any one of the things that Google has, but all of them are too much. We would never trust a government with this much power, it can't be right to trust a private company with it.
If this is true of google, it's still true of Microsoft and certainly Apple in the mobile sectors
 

DoPo

"You're not cleared for that."
Jan 30, 2012
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Wait, is your entire argument "Google may be evil, so let's try and stop them from abusing their power"? And splitting them up would help...how? They would presumably still keep the ties to the company, maybe they'll have a bit more paperwork after but they'll operate the same way. I just can't figure out what you're trying to say. And then there is the part about Google giving away information - again, how would splitting them up help at all? It's actually the government agencies that ask for the data and they would still do the same. Also, they can and do go to the ISPs for more info and have been known to use...underhanded methods [http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=129236621626462&w=2] to acquire data, too. If you want privacy online, you need to limit them, not chop up Google.

All in all it's an interesting read but taken as a whole it does not make sense at all. And why Google, in particular, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle are also quite big and quite powerful companies, why did you choose Google over any of them? I am certainly less favourable towards Oracle being near me and restricting the open software, for example, however still I don't see why should they be restricted in their actions provided they aren't harming anybody (more than usual).