6 ms·

Tell Google: Stop Killing Monopoly Research

190 points by kushti 9y ago

cartyboi29 9y ago
Google don't give a fuck they just want Young money cash money
2_listerine_pls 9y ago
If Google's doing something they don't want anyone to regulate, maybe they shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
- darawk 9y ago
  There are plenty of instances where someone may want to avoid regulation for purely legitimate reasons. Regulation is an added cost. Sometimes that cost is justified, sometimes it's not. But whether or not it is justified, the cost is present. So, it is perfectly possible and reasonable for a company to want to avoid being regulated without having malicious intent.
  - arctux 9y ago
    I think he's referencing >If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/
    - SoMisanthrope 9y ago
      Schmidt sounds Orwellian.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- kobeya 9y ago
  Regulation is not always beneficial.
- bobdole1234 9y ago
  You mean like running a wildly popular service that has technology nobody else has come anywhere close to matching? What a bunch of monsters.
  - musage 9y ago
    Since that was a rephrasing of Schmidt's > If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. let's apply your "rebuttal" to that then, too: He means like smuggling food to political prisoners in an oppressive regime? Like hiding Jews in Nazi Germany? An abused child writing a letter to the police? Or even just a desperate prisoner writing a secret diary to hang on to their sanity or memories? What a bunch of monsters. [super dramatic pause] Even if you restricted it to wanting "literally nobody" to know (which is nonsense, especially in the context of online communications, so that's just some sophistry on Schmidt's behalf to be corrected by the reader), there's plenty examples to be found. Compared to all that, bleh to a search engine. Yeah they're useful, but if I had to pick between either using only search, or only word of mouth, link lists and bookmarks, and having the comparison, I'd use the latter. There is no such substitute for privacy. I would even say your "right" to their services doesn't outweigh the actual rights of others and yourself to liberty and dignity. I'm not saying they necessarily clash, but insofar they do, those are the priorities. Wildly popular, schmildly schmopular. If what some people like is such a great measurement, why are they liking such bad things?
    - bobdole1234 9y ago
      I suspect you're too young to remember what searching was like before Google.
summer_steven 9y ago
Using government power to forcefully break up a publicly owned company is such a barbaric way of doing things. Here are some better suggestions: 1. Force government institutions to use alternative search engines 2. Have government institutions nominate a "search engine of the month" and all their employees must use that 3. Subsidize search engine research in the public domain 4. Determine if any search engine patents are blocking innovation, and invalidate those patents 5. Subsidize research into decentralized search engines
- MrTonyD 9y ago
  It isn't barbaric to break up a company - at all. Companies operate in our society, and they impact the citizens of our society. It is reasonable to directly stop a company when it is working against the shared values of our society. Really, I would argue that it is barbaric to force a society to live with a company which ignores the wider interests of society.
  - bigeasy 9y ago
    Silly use of persuasive words on the part of the OP. Barbarians don't have corporations nor anti-trust regulation. All of the "market forces" remedies that the OP suggest are just the sort of thing that monopoly power makes ineffective. If Google is a utility like the phone system circa 1970, then the solutions suggested are analogous to addressing AT&T's monopoly by forcing government employees to use ham radios one week and carrier pigeons the next. Monopoly power means that consumer choice has been reduced to the choice to take it or leave it and all the suggestions are simply that; take it or leave it.
  - kazinator 9y ago
    Maybe if you owned one you'd feel differently. Can I reach into your backpack and crush your bag of potato chips? What's the matter; all the baked potato material is still there!
    - mindways 9y ago
      If my bag of potato chips is demonstrably and deliberately harming the lives of many real live people, you are welcome to crush it. (Not that all corporations harm people. But some combination of "the way we tend to structure them" and "human behavior in large groups" seems to make them a lot more cavalier about collateral harm and negative externalities, particularly as they get big.)
melikeburgers 9y ago
I really don't understand why Google should fund this research. It's really not in their best interests. Why can't the Open Markets team just find new funders? With this type of publicity, I'm sure many corporations and even individuals would step up. I think the bigger problem is that the Open Market's team miscalculated that the New America foundation would have the flexibility and/or courage to stand behind this project vs stand up to Google. It just seems a bit entitled to ask Google to fund research that can hurt them as a company.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Well, Eric Schmidt/Google could of course stop funding of their own volition and simply go their own way, as you note. Perhaps it's more important to control institutions and the conversation.
- 2_listerine_pls 9y ago
  > I really don't understand why Google should fund this research. No. They didn't directly fund any research. Google funds the New America think thank, which houses a group that researches about monopolies. However, it seems that the problem started when one of the researchers wrote a press release celebrating a major antitrust loss for Google on Europe.
  - mozumder 9y ago
    > a Google-funded think tank This is why Google isn't going to fund this. Let Open Markets find another think-tank to get funding from. Remember kids, think-tanks are where corporations go to produce research reports supporting their position. They're not independent academic institutions.
- epistasis 9y ago
  I think the idea that Google would be opposed to this idea is in direct conflict with Google's past public image. That they are deciding that this is not the type of research that they wanted to fund is pretty clear step into the "evil" category of common corporate that they in the past have been admired for avoiding. This isn't news to me but it's probably news for a lot of people.
stephengillie 9y ago
Organizations should not accept funding from donors with incongruent philosophies, as this leads to conflicts of interest.
- bigeasy 9y ago
  Accepting funding from donors with congruent philosophies opens them up to the criticism that they are paid activists and not academic researches.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
ewjordan 9y ago
So...it's evil for Google to not want to fund a group that has people actively working towards hurting Google's business interests? Meh. Find a hand to feed you that's not the one you're currently trying to bite. There are plenty out there, you'll be fine.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Aron 9y ago
What's with the evil looking octopus?
- droopyEyelids 9y ago
  Octopuses have a long tradition of representing monopoly. They're a natural analogy for the way a monopoly's reach impacts different areas of life. http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/48508d5f59aa4bcaa900cb7da0d1c29f/political-cartoon-entitled-next-showing-a-standard-oil-tank-as-an-cwanj9.jpg http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/48508d5f59aa4bcaa900cb7da0d1c29f/p...
elefanten 9y ago
Getting really sick of this story. Open Markets really comes across sleazy when you read the emails published by New America. [1] Slaughter's second statement, via Medium, is also worth reading. [2] Combined with the fact that Open Markets has been publishing anti-Google stuff for years while Google funded New America, Barry Lynn's side of the story make no sense at all. Honestly, if you read some Barry Lynn and Matt Stoler and other people in that Open Markets crew... it's like 90% empty and loud rhetoric and maybe 10% cogent argumentation. It feels like a big circular link fest, takes so long to find something meaty. So much smoke and mirrors and equivocation on key terms... like, for example, "monopoly". I'm not saying there aren't good questions to raise about Google's power, Google's anti-competitive practices or Google's link to research. But the tone and quality of this public surge of the conversation driven by the Open Market 'scandal' seems highly manufactured and low quality. I can only assume some larger forces are throwing a ton of money in as well. But I guess that's how policy and economic talk tends to go when it hits the mainstream. Edit: have to admit it's also riling me up that the pretty-far-left progressives like Stoller are happily now joining up with Tucker Carlson and that ilk, who raking Google over the coals for the James Damore memo fallout. Stoller was on Tucker's show yesterday. High fives. [1] https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/press-releases/interest-transparency-new-america-releases-email-correspondence-barry-lynn/ https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/press-releases/intere... [2] https://medium.com/@slaughteram/when-the-truth-is-messy-and-hard-1655a36e313f https://medium.com/@slaughteram/when-the-truth-is-messy-and-...
- arctux 9y ago
  > Getting really sick of this story. Open Markets really comes across sleazy when you read the emails published by New America. [1] Slaughter's second statement, via Medium, is also worth reading. [2] Combined with the fact that Open Markets has been publishing anti-Google stuff for years while Google funded New America, Barry Lynn's side of the story make no sense at all. As far as I can tell, though, Slaughter doesn't contradict any of the facts laid out by Lynn. Also, I find this passage from [2] troubling: > On the contrary, Barry’s new organization and campaign against Google is the opening salvo of one group of Democrats versus another group of Democrats in the run-up to the 2020 election, at a time when I personally think the country faces far greater challenges of racism, violence, a broken political system, and geographic and partisan divisions so great that we are losing any common sense of what we stand and strive for as a country. Should we not pay attention to problems related to the growing power of large corporations and monopolies just because the US has other significant issues?
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
So, I am supportive of Open Markets' goals and all, but "Tell Google: Stop Killing Monopoly Research" seems... mistargeted? If Google is the problem, we shouldn't be trying to tell Google to do something not in their own interests, we should be telling others, like regulators, to do something about Google. "Tell Google" is directing your complaint at the wrong party.
mncharity 9y ago
Two quick thoughts. I very briefly glanced under the technical covers of this campaign. For the curious, citizensagainstmonopoly.org was created 2017-08-10T18:56:36Z. The site was apparently written by middleseat.co - "Middle Seat is a digital marketing, media and organizing firm advocating for progressive candidates and causes." Its principals are the former Bernie Sanders digital and social media directors and advisor (Zack Exley, frm Wikimedia Foundation). Microsoft has a long history of funding, encouraging, and astroturfing opposition to Google. One easy approach to discouraging this behavior is to make sure Microsoft is mentioned whenever a Google "evil monopoly" campaign goes by. Especially if it mentions Facebook and Amazon as well, but leaves out Microsoft. So I mention it in passing here, mostly to illustrate the approach. I know of nothing connecting Microsoft with the current campaign. FWIW.
- tomjakubowski 9y ago
  > Microsoft has a long history of funding, encouraging, and astroturfing opposition to Google. What exactly have they done to this effect? The closest I can think of is Scroogled [1], which was pretty transparently a Microsoft marketing campaign. I would hardly characterize it as "astroturfing". [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130207164132/http://www.scroogled.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130207164132/http://www.scroog...
  - wdr1 9y ago
    Microsoft caught 'astroturfing' bloggers again to promote Internet Explorer http://www.pcworld.com/article/2365060/microsoft-caught-astroturfing-bloggers-again-to-promote-internet-explorer.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2365060/microsoft-caught-astr... Confirmed: Ben Edelman Paid by Microsoft, Attacks Google http://techrights.org/2011/08/30/ben-edelman-works-for-monopolist/ http://techrights.org/2011/08/30/ben-edelman-works-for-monop... Astroturfing Antitrust: How Microsoft is Crafting the Grassroots Case Against Google https://www.cbsnews.com/news/astroturfing-antitrust-how-microsoft-is-crafting-the-grassroots-case-against-google/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/astroturfing-antitrust-how-micr... Who’s Behind This Shadow Group Attacking Google? http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/google-transparency-project/ http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/google-transparency-project/
will_brown 9y ago
I am all for the little guy fighting the big guy...but this isn't it, this is the antithesis of it. What this is amounts to: You were getting millions of dollars from Google and only now that the money is gone you conveniently you have a bone to pick. If you really believed Google was evil as your website claims you wouldn't have been taking Google money until the day it was revoked. How long does this group need to perform research into Google's anti-competitive behavior and how much money do they need? It seems all you need to do is try to compete or happen to be a market leader where google decides to compete and you have all the evidence you need. Internet search market share = x% using that dominance and information on search terms and advertising dollars to determine what market to compete in next in how many occasions= x advertising costs increased when google began competing = x% # of companies that were advertising on google that shut down once google began competing = x What are the actual goals and what are the actual methods to achieve these goals other than asking for money to replace Google's money to conduct research? I have been talking about it for some time, it starts with empowering people, show people they can take on google and win. Start small, give the people a road map and execute. Try a google search boycott, inform the public when the boycott begins, inform the public how to set their devices/computers to a google competitor, and create your list of demands. My recommendation start small, but meaningful, give an achievable goal that is understandable to the public and sets the stage for the public to wake up and accept the facts that they wield all the power but also impacts googles pocket. Create a clear cut economic line in the sand, you are either on your side or on you are in Google's pocket, you pick. In short, highlight their tax avoidance scheme in Ireland, they are headquartered in the US right? But they claim to be headquartered in Ireland to avoid paying taxes in they very country they benefit from...boycott their search engine until they stop playing the tax game, make them sign a pledge or even contract agreeing to pay the US corporate tax, including, all back taxes. Is that fair to Google? Are they alone? Most assuredly not, but its not about Google, its about tearing back the veil on the perceived power struggle, does Google owe the people or do people owe Google?
perpetualcrayon 9y ago
"When our research team at the New America Institute criticized Google's monopoly practices..." I might be wrong, but this doesn't sound like research to me...

190 points by kushti 9y ago

cartyboi29 9y ago

Google don't give a fuck they just want Young money cash money

2_listerine_pls 9y ago

If Google's doing something they don't want anyone to regulate, maybe they shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

darawk 9y ago
There are plenty of instances where someone may want to avoid regulation for purely legitimate reasons. Regulation is an added cost. Sometimes that cost is justified, sometimes it's not. But whether or not it is justified, the cost is present. So, it is perfectly possible and reasonable for a company to want to avoid being regulated without having malicious intent.
- arctux 9y ago
  I think he's referencing >If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/
  - SoMisanthrope 9y ago
    Schmidt sounds Orwellian.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
kobeya 9y ago
Regulation is not always beneficial.
bobdole1234 9y ago
You mean like running a wildly popular service that has technology nobody else has come anywhere close to matching? What a bunch of monsters.
- musage 9y ago
  Since that was a rephrasing of Schmidt's > If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. let's apply your "rebuttal" to that then, too: He means like smuggling food to political prisoners in an oppressive regime? Like hiding Jews in Nazi Germany? An abused child writing a letter to the police? Or even just a desperate prisoner writing a secret diary to hang on to their sanity or memories? What a bunch of monsters. [super dramatic pause] Even if you restricted it to wanting "literally nobody" to know (which is nonsense, especially in the context of online communications, so that's just some sophistry on Schmidt's behalf to be corrected by the reader), there's plenty examples to be found. Compared to all that, bleh to a search engine. Yeah they're useful, but if I had to pick between either using only search, or only word of mouth, link lists and bookmarks, and having the comparison, I'd use the latter. There is no such substitute for privacy. I would even say your "right" to their services doesn't outweigh the actual rights of others and yourself to liberty and dignity. I'm not saying they necessarily clash, but insofar they do, those are the priorities. Wildly popular, schmildly schmopular. If what some people like is such a great measurement, why are they liking such bad things?
  - bobdole1234 9y ago
    I suspect you're too young to remember what searching was like before Google.

summer_steven 9y ago

Using government power to forcefully break up a publicly owned company is such a barbaric way of doing things. Here are some better suggestions: 1. Force government institutions to use alternative search engines 2. Have government institutions nominate a "search engine of the month" and all their employees must use that 3. Subsidize search engine research in the public domain 4. Determine if any search engine patents are blocking innovation, and invalidate those patents 5. Subsidize research into decentralized search engines

MrTonyD 9y ago
It isn't barbaric to break up a company - at all. Companies operate in our society, and they impact the citizens of our society. It is reasonable to directly stop a company when it is working against the shared values of our society. Really, I would argue that it is barbaric to force a society to live with a company which ignores the wider interests of society.
- bigeasy 9y ago
  Silly use of persuasive words on the part of the OP. Barbarians don't have corporations nor anti-trust regulation. All of the "market forces" remedies that the OP suggest are just the sort of thing that monopoly power makes ineffective. If Google is a utility like the phone system circa 1970, then the solutions suggested are analogous to addressing AT&T's monopoly by forcing government employees to use ham radios one week and carrier pigeons the next. Monopoly power means that consumer choice has been reduced to the choice to take it or leave it and all the suggestions are simply that; take it or leave it.
- kazinator 9y ago
  Maybe if you owned one you'd feel differently. Can I reach into your backpack and crush your bag of potato chips? What's the matter; all the baked potato material is still there!
  - mindways 9y ago
    If my bag of potato chips is demonstrably and deliberately harming the lives of many real live people, you are welcome to crush it. (Not that all corporations harm people. But some combination of "the way we tend to structure them" and "human behavior in large groups" seems to make them a lot more cavalier about collateral harm and negative externalities, particularly as they get big.)

melikeburgers 9y ago

I really don't understand why Google should fund this research. It's really not in their best interests. Why can't the Open Markets team just find new funders? With this type of publicity, I'm sure many corporations and even individuals would step up. I think the bigger problem is that the Open Market's team miscalculated that the New America foundation would have the flexibility and/or courage to stand behind this project vs stand up to Google. It just seems a bit entitled to ask Google to fund research that can hurt them as a company.

wavefunction 9y ago
Well, Eric Schmidt/Google could of course stop funding of their own volition and simply go their own way, as you note. Perhaps it's more important to control institutions and the conversation.
2_listerine_pls 9y ago
> I really don't understand why Google should fund this research. No. They didn't directly fund any research. Google funds the New America think thank, which houses a group that researches about monopolies. However, it seems that the problem started when one of the researchers wrote a press release celebrating a major antitrust loss for Google on Europe.
- mozumder 9y ago
  > a Google-funded think tank This is why Google isn't going to fund this. Let Open Markets find another think-tank to get funding from. Remember kids, think-tanks are where corporations go to produce research reports supporting their position. They're not independent academic institutions.
epistasis 9y ago
I think the idea that Google would be opposed to this idea is in direct conflict with Google's past public image. That they are deciding that this is not the type of research that they wanted to fund is pretty clear step into the "evil" category of common corporate that they in the past have been admired for avoiding. This isn't news to me but it's probably news for a lot of people.

stephengillie 9y ago

Organizations should not accept funding from donors with incongruent philosophies, as this leads to conflicts of interest.

bigeasy 9y ago
Accepting funding from donors with congruent philosophies opens them up to the criticism that they are paid activists and not academic researches.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

ewjordan 9y ago

So...it's evil for Google to not want to fund a group that has people actively working towards hurting Google's business interests? Meh. Find a hand to feed you that's not the one you're currently trying to bite. There are plenty out there, you'll be fine.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Aron 9y ago

What's with the evil looking octopus?

droopyEyelids 9y ago
Octopuses have a long tradition of representing monopoly. They're a natural analogy for the way a monopoly's reach impacts different areas of life. http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/48508d5f59aa4bcaa900cb7da0d1c29f/political-cartoon-entitled-next-showing-a-standard-oil-tank-as-an-cwanj9.jpg http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/48508d5f59aa4bcaa900cb7da0d1c29f/p...

elefanten 9y ago

Getting really sick of this story. Open Markets really comes across sleazy when you read the emails published by New America. [1] Slaughter's second statement, via Medium, is also worth reading. [2] Combined with the fact that Open Markets has been publishing anti-Google stuff for years while Google funded New America, Barry Lynn's side of the story make no sense at all. Honestly, if you read some Barry Lynn and Matt Stoler and other people in that Open Markets crew... it's like 90% empty and loud rhetoric and maybe 10% cogent argumentation. It feels like a big circular link fest, takes so long to find something meaty. So much smoke and mirrors and equivocation on key terms... like, for example, "monopoly". I'm not saying there aren't good questions to raise about Google's power, Google's anti-competitive practices or Google's link to research. But the tone and quality of this public surge of the conversation driven by the Open Market 'scandal' seems highly manufactured and low quality. I can only assume some larger forces are throwing a ton of money in as well. But I guess that's how policy and economic talk tends to go when it hits the mainstream. Edit: have to admit it's also riling me up that the pretty-far-left progressives like Stoller are happily now joining up with Tucker Carlson and that ilk, who raking Google over the coals for the James Damore memo fallout. Stoller was on Tucker's show yesterday. High fives. [1] https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/press-releases/interest-transparency-new-america-releases-email-correspondence-barry-lynn/ https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/press-releases/intere... [2] https://medium.com/@slaughteram/when-the-truth-is-messy-and-hard-1655a36e313f https://medium.com/@slaughteram/when-the-truth-is-messy-and-...

arctux 9y ago
> Getting really sick of this story. Open Markets really comes across sleazy when you read the emails published by New America. [1] Slaughter's second statement, via Medium, is also worth reading. [2] Combined with the fact that Open Markets has been publishing anti-Google stuff for years while Google funded New America, Barry Lynn's side of the story make no sense at all. As far as I can tell, though, Slaughter doesn't contradict any of the facts laid out by Lynn. Also, I find this passage from [2] troubling: > On the contrary, Barry’s new organization and campaign against Google is the opening salvo of one group of Democrats versus another group of Democrats in the run-up to the 2020 election, at a time when I personally think the country faces far greater challenges of racism, violence, a broken political system, and geographic and partisan divisions so great that we are losing any common sense of what we stand and strive for as a country. Should we not pay attention to problems related to the growing power of large corporations and monopolies just because the US has other significant issues?

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

So, I am supportive of Open Markets' goals and all, but "Tell Google: Stop Killing Monopoly Research" seems... mistargeted? If Google is the problem, we shouldn't be trying to tell Google to do something not in their own interests, we should be telling others, like regulators, to do something about Google. "Tell Google" is directing your complaint at the wrong party.

mncharity 9y ago

Two quick thoughts. I very briefly glanced under the technical covers of this campaign. For the curious, citizensagainstmonopoly.org was created 2017-08-10T18:56:36Z. The site was apparently written by middleseat.co - "Middle Seat is a digital marketing, media and organizing firm advocating for progressive candidates and causes." Its principals are the former Bernie Sanders digital and social media directors and advisor (Zack Exley, frm Wikimedia Foundation). Microsoft has a long history of funding, encouraging, and astroturfing opposition to Google. One easy approach to discouraging this behavior is to make sure Microsoft is mentioned whenever a Google "evil monopoly" campaign goes by. Especially if it mentions Facebook and Amazon as well, but leaves out Microsoft. So I mention it in passing here, mostly to illustrate the approach. I know of nothing connecting Microsoft with the current campaign. FWIW.

tomjakubowski 9y ago
> Microsoft has a long history of funding, encouraging, and astroturfing opposition to Google. What exactly have they done to this effect? The closest I can think of is Scroogled [1], which was pretty transparently a Microsoft marketing campaign. I would hardly characterize it as "astroturfing". [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130207164132/http://www.scroogled.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130207164132/http://www.scroog...
- wdr1 9y ago
  Microsoft caught 'astroturfing' bloggers again to promote Internet Explorer http://www.pcworld.com/article/2365060/microsoft-caught-astroturfing-bloggers-again-to-promote-internet-explorer.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2365060/microsoft-caught-astr... Confirmed: Ben Edelman Paid by Microsoft, Attacks Google http://techrights.org/2011/08/30/ben-edelman-works-for-monopolist/ http://techrights.org/2011/08/30/ben-edelman-works-for-monop... Astroturfing Antitrust: How Microsoft is Crafting the Grassroots Case Against Google https://www.cbsnews.com/news/astroturfing-antitrust-how-microsoft-is-crafting-the-grassroots-case-against-google/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/astroturfing-antitrust-how-micr... Who’s Behind This Shadow Group Attacking Google? http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/google-transparency-project/ http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/google-transparency-project/

will_brown 9y ago

I am all for the little guy fighting the big guy...but this isn't it, this is the antithesis of it. What this is amounts to: You were getting millions of dollars from Google and only now that the money is gone you conveniently you have a bone to pick. If you really believed Google was evil as your website claims you wouldn't have been taking Google money until the day it was revoked. How long does this group need to perform research into Google's anti-competitive behavior and how much money do they need? It seems all you need to do is try to compete or happen to be a market leader where google decides to compete and you have all the evidence you need. Internet search market share = x% using that dominance and information on search terms and advertising dollars to determine what market to compete in next in how many occasions= x advertising costs increased when google began competing = x% # of companies that were advertising on google that shut down once google began competing = x What are the actual goals and what are the actual methods to achieve these goals other than asking for money to replace Google's money to conduct research? I have been talking about it for some time, it starts with empowering people, show people they can take on google and win. Start small, give the people a road map and execute. Try a google search boycott, inform the public when the boycott begins, inform the public how to set their devices/computers to a google competitor, and create your list of demands. My recommendation start small, but meaningful, give an achievable goal that is understandable to the public and sets the stage for the public to wake up and accept the facts that they wield all the power but also impacts googles pocket. Create a clear cut economic line in the sand, you are either on your side or on you are in Google's pocket, you pick. In short, highlight their tax avoidance scheme in Ireland, they are headquartered in the US right? But they claim to be headquartered in Ireland to avoid paying taxes in they very country they benefit from...boycott their search engine until they stop playing the tax game, make them sign a pledge or even contract agreeing to pay the US corporate tax, including, all back taxes. Is that fair to Google? Are they alone? Most assuredly not, but its not about Google, its about tearing back the veil on the perceived power struggle, does Google owe the people or do people owe Google?

perpetualcrayon 9y ago

"When our research team at the New America Institute criticized Google's monopoly practices..." I might be wrong, but this doesn't sound like research to me...