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I'm generally very critical of Google, especially the search results page, but it's important to remember the background context to this article: https://www.t

I'm generally very critical of Google, especially the search results page, but it's important to remember the background context to this article: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/16/rupert-murdoch-newspapers-struggling-digital-age https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/16/rupert-murdoch... >Rupert Murdoch say News Corp is not looking to expand its newspaper empire, conceding digital advertising “has been tremendously damaging to print” and some of his papers were struggling. Over the next few years it will be interesting to see how successful the right wing anglosphere press is at getting governments to regulate Google. It's been building for a while now and not just from the Murdoch press. The Daily Mail in the UK has been campaigning against Google for a number of years now.

jacksmith21006 9y ago
Saw that Peter Thiel is funding some guy in Missouri to go after Google.
- abiox 9y ago
  out of curiosity, what service said he was "funding some guy"?
saas_co_de 9y ago
The NYTimes and Guardian have been as aggressive in attacking Google and Facebook as anyone (subjectively I would say more so) so I don't think this is just right-wing. It is more like the entire world has realized that having these monopolies control the flow of information is incredibly dangerous.
- jerf 9y ago
  From a very crass and cynical perspective, but probably accurate, as Google and Facebook become more powerful, they can and should expect opposition from all previously entrenched power centers. It would be a very, ah, Silicon Valley utopian nerd idea, for lack of a better phrase, that it could otherwise. And even if there are some ideological lines drawn, well, even people on the "same side" still jockey for position and work at cross-purposes at times. If Google and Facebook are agreed to skew left, yeah, you can probably expect a bit more vigor in the right side attacks if only because they have more operating space, but you can still expect plenty of left-wing "jockeying", and that the latter may even have a greater effect over time. (Could go either way, assuming you can even agree on a basis for measurement.)
- anon1385 9y ago
  Yes, it's fair to say that there's an increasing level of concern about social media and the influence it has from across the political spectrum (well, maybe not from the populist far right…). As well as the beginnings of an application of the impact on mental health. Those are things that certainly warrant concern. What I'm talking about is more things like the Sun (Murdoch tabloid in the UK) printing front pages about how Google helps terrorists build bombs.
dogruck 9y ago
You are unjustifiably attacking conservative politics. First, before he got busted for grabbing women, liberal Senator Al Franken was rallying the troops to against Google and FB: https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/09/al-franken-facebook-google-power-over-publishers/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/09/al-franken-facebook-goog... Second, liberal rags like the New York Times are scrutinizing the tech industry. Here’s a recent article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/opinion/academia-tech-algorithms.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/opinion/academia-tech-alg...
- anon1385 9y ago
  Sure, liberals have been criticising Google and Facebook recently over the Trump/Russia stuff and about their ability to influence elections, but only once Trump and Brexit happened. I'm not sure they cared all that much before, at least not beyond specific issues that were mostly confined to the tech sections of sites like the NYT or Guardian, or generic 'big corp' stuff like tax avoidance. The Daily Mail and the Sun have been running sensational front page stories about things like David Cameron having close links to Google or Google making it easy for terrorists to build a bomb for something like 5 years. The reason I mention right wing politics is firstly that they are the ones in power at the moment in the US/UK/Australia - Trump and May aren't going to care what the Guardian or NYT say and don't have any ideological reason to care about things like the immorality of online advertising or the affect of social media on mental health. Secondly, in the UK at least, the press as a whole is much more closely aligned to the conservative political parties. The UK press is divided roughly into right wing (Sun, Mail, Express, Telegraph, Times, Spectator), liberal (Guardian, New Statesman, FT, Economist) and left wing (Mirror, at times). The right wing outlets have vastly higher readership and reach. So if the media does have an influence on politics, it's going to be in one direction. But my point really was that it's interesting to me to see how much the papers are working for the right wing parties or how much the right wing parties are following the agenda set by the newspapers. That's probably not so much a thing in the US (although the same question about Fox might be), but it is in the UK, especially at the moment. E: also, to be clear, the same financial inceptives apply to the NYT and Guardian - online advertising is killing their revenue streams as well. It's just that as I said they have limited power at the moment (and it's arguable how much power they ever have - neither seems to have the ability to set the news agenda outside of the liberal middle class bubble, unlike the UK tabloids for example).

jacksmith21006 9y ago

Saw that Peter Thiel is funding some guy in Missouri to go after Google.

abiox 9y ago
out of curiosity, what service said he was "funding some guy"?

saas_co_de 9y ago

The NYTimes and Guardian have been as aggressive in attacking Google and Facebook as anyone (subjectively I would say more so) so I don't think this is just right-wing. It is more like the entire world has realized that having these monopolies control the flow of information is incredibly dangerous.

jerf 9y ago
From a very crass and cynical perspective, but probably accurate, as Google and Facebook become more powerful, they can and should expect opposition from all previously entrenched power centers. It would be a very, ah, Silicon Valley utopian nerd idea, for lack of a better phrase, that it could otherwise. And even if there are some ideological lines drawn, well, even people on the "same side" still jockey for position and work at cross-purposes at times. If Google and Facebook are agreed to skew left, yeah, you can probably expect a bit more vigor in the right side attacks if only because they have more operating space, but you can still expect plenty of left-wing "jockeying", and that the latter may even have a greater effect over time. (Could go either way, assuming you can even agree on a basis for measurement.)
anon1385 9y ago
Yes, it's fair to say that there's an increasing level of concern about social media and the influence it has from across the political spectrum (well, maybe not from the populist far right…). As well as the beginnings of an application of the impact on mental health. Those are things that certainly warrant concern. What I'm talking about is more things like the Sun (Murdoch tabloid in the UK) printing front pages about how Google helps terrorists build bombs.

dogruck 9y ago

You are unjustifiably attacking conservative politics. First, before he got busted for grabbing women, liberal Senator Al Franken was rallying the troops to against Google and FB: https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/09/al-franken-facebook-google-power-over-publishers/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/09/al-franken-facebook-goog... Second, liberal rags like the New York Times are scrutinizing the tech industry. Here’s a recent article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/opinion/academia-tech-algorithms.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/opinion/academia-tech-alg...

anon1385 9y ago
Sure, liberals have been criticising Google and Facebook recently over the Trump/Russia stuff and about their ability to influence elections, but only once Trump and Brexit happened. I'm not sure they cared all that much before, at least not beyond specific issues that were mostly confined to the tech sections of sites like the NYT or Guardian, or generic 'big corp' stuff like tax avoidance. The Daily Mail and the Sun have been running sensational front page stories about things like David Cameron having close links to Google or Google making it easy for terrorists to build a bomb for something like 5 years. The reason I mention right wing politics is firstly that they are the ones in power at the moment in the US/UK/Australia - Trump and May aren't going to care what the Guardian or NYT say and don't have any ideological reason to care about things like the immorality of online advertising or the affect of social media on mental health. Secondly, in the UK at least, the press as a whole is much more closely aligned to the conservative political parties. The UK press is divided roughly into right wing (Sun, Mail, Express, Telegraph, Times, Spectator), liberal (Guardian, New Statesman, FT, Economist) and left wing (Mirror, at times). The right wing outlets have vastly higher readership and reach. So if the media does have an influence on politics, it's going to be in one direction. But my point really was that it's interesting to me to see how much the papers are working for the right wing parties or how much the right wing parties are following the agenda set by the newspapers. That's probably not so much a thing in the US (although the same question about Fox might be), but it is in the UK, especially at the moment. E: also, to be clear, the same financial inceptives apply to the NYT and Guardian - online advertising is killing their revenue streams as well. It's just that as I said they have limited power at the moment (and it's arguable how much power they ever have - neither seems to have the ability to set the news agenda outside of the liberal middle class bubble, unlike the UK tabloids for example).