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Google’s New Business Profile: When Search Becomes a Political Tool

147 points by 1cvmask 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
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kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
What a silly article. It is not "nefarious" to enlist satisfied users of a product against legislation that could destroy the product. Again, a reminder that not all government legislation automatically good. And big corporations are also not automatically bad. Clearly the author of the article subscribes to a certain political ideology, but that doesn't make people with other convictions "nefarious". Maybe he should simply stop using Google, if he is unhappy with the way they conduct their business.
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  There is nothing wrong when you enlist satisfied users. It can become an issue when you start to penalize users who refuse to be enlisted.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    I have read nothing about Google penalizing users who don't enlist in the article? Clearly Google has taken a political stance and also adjusts search results to stir people into a certain political direction (ironically it seems to be the direction the author of the article actually favors). But that is not the subject of the article and not penalizing users, either. It is a good reason to stop using Google, but again, not subject of the article.
- dazc 5y ago
  'Maybe he should simply stop using Google, if he is unhappy with the way they conduct their business.' Which is exactly what some of us are already doing.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    Fine - I'm in the same boat.
- pmlnr 5y ago
  > satisfied users of a product LOL. Do you have a business listed on google? I'm yet to meet satisfied owners to be honest. For example: I rent a room for classes weekly, and I have no google sanction way to show that on the map, because I don't own the business location itself. All the structured data, the rich result, etc stuff from google is a mirage, and despite the fact the I can hand write the correct JSON-LD they want, it doesn't even make a dent in the search results.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    Sure, I also know people who have huge problems with their Google business listing. Nevertheless it is normal for a company to call its users to aid against government regulation that would harm the product. What other course of action would you propose for a company? Just give up and donate their business to the communist party? If most users are unhappy with the product, it just means they will be unlikely to follow the call for action, which makes it even less of an issue to worry about. What makes the article even more ridiculous, however, is calling on the statements by Yelp as witness for the evilness of Google. Yelp is actually known for shady business practices (asking for bribes to have bad reviews removed).
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      > What other course of action would you propose for a company? Just give up and donate their business to the communist party? just because businesses fight regulation, doesn't mean they're morally in the right. Car companies fought seatbelt regulation for years. They also convinced their users/drivers that this was operating in their best interests and tried to get them on-side to fight said regulation.
      - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
        "ust because businesses fight regulation, doesn't mean they're morally in the right." True, but they are also not automatically not morally in the right. The article cites "they oppose government regulation" as proof that they are evil, which is nonsense. There are many evil governments in the world, which to oppose would be the morally right thing to do. And many proposed legislations in the US are evil, too.
- travoc 5y ago
  I think it’s more than fair to highlight Google’s attempt to enlist thousands of users to lobby the government on its behalf. Why would a bit of transparency and exposure to this information bother you so much?
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    "transparency and exposure" - I don't think it is kept secret, according to the article, it is the first thing that Google shows to its users. I have nothing against commenting on that and writing critical articles. What bothers me is the framing as nefarious and evil, of a completely normal activity. Clearly Google has different interests than the author. That doesn't make them evil. Of course the author is also entitled to consider them evil. I merely point out that it is ridiculous, or at least the argument is it evil because they enlist their users is ridiculous. I am not even a fan of Google, I detest them for a lot of things.
    - leereeves 5y ago
      > I don't think it is kept secret, according to the article, it is the first thing that Google shows to its users. The first thing Google shows to users of Business Profile. Other people (which is most people) wouldn't know about it without articles like this. And does Google disclose that two of their three sources are funded by Google?
      - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
        As I said (maybe in another thread, I don't remember), I have nothing against reporting that this is happening. I take issue with the framing as nefarious, especially the argument that it is nefarious because they advertise to their own users. By all means, make it public. I personally don't see the huge issue. Of course they are against government regulation that would harm their business. In the same vein I don't think it is very newsworthy that they fund sources they cite. Why wouldn't they?
        leereeves 5y ago
- prepend 5y ago
  > Maybe he should simply stop using Google, if he is unhappy with the way they conduct their business. Sadly, I can’t. For a business user, there’s really no alternative to Google. 95% of my search and referral is through Google and Google maps. If I stop using them, I stop having businesses. I don’t think it’s nefarious, I just think it’s abuse of market position. Do you think it’s ok for a business to ask all employees to sign up for anti-union material. Every time they log in to their employee profile?
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    Yes of course it would be OK for a business to ask employees to sign up for anti-union material. Why not? I don't think it would be OK to demand businesses are pro union, or pro anything that endangers their business. Why would they be? Even if you feel you can't escape Google, I don't think it is abuse of market power if they advertise their interests. Maybe it is just market power, without the abuse part. You could campaign for people to stop using Google, if it means so much to you. Then businesses wouldn't rely so much on Google anymore. Edit: do you think it is OK for unions to abuse their power? They are essentially forming monopolies and then using their monopoly power to enforce things.
    - dvtrn 5y ago
      do you think it is OK for unions to abuse their power? They are essentially forming monopolies and then using their monopoly power to enforce things. Probably the first time I’ve heard someone describe labor unions as monopolies.
      - popcube 5y ago
        this sounds like the definition of government. country control all of power in one region in
      - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
        If that's the first time you have heard at, I suppose it discredits the whole field of economics. Of course they are a monopoly, or trying to form one, to enforce their demands.
- ballenf 5y ago
  The gut-level issue people have is a company gaining trust through creating a level playing field with algorithmic ranking, etc. and then slowly trading in that trust in order to create an ever larger moat around their monopoly. The nefarious part is that Google pretends to still be an uninterested referee on a fair playing field. All the revelations regarding back door deals and anti-consumer activity makes it clear that they abandoned those principles in order to cement their monopoly and raise their rents. And as for recruiting your happy customers into your cause -- there are many things we're fine letting non-monopolies do that make us very uneasy when monopolies do the same. Whether this should be one of those things is worth discussing and shouldn't be dismissed with an oversimplified straw man argument.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    "Google pretends to still be an uninterested referee on a fair playing field." It sounds to me as if they clearly lay out the disadvantages (in their view) to their users. That's pretty much all there is to it. I don't think they pretend to be "uninterested referees" in a call to action against certain legislation? Who would ever think that? Clearly they are "interested" in shooting down that legislation. As I said elsewhere, there is plenty to dislike about Google and their power. That article was not about that, though. The "monopolies" argument is just commie propaganda in my opinion. In general the "people with power" theory, which commies want to use to gain power over other people. If you don't like Google, again, don't use them. It is only the people giving it its power. Likewise, if your employer exerts "power" over you, look for another job. The people could stop using Google at any moment, taking away its power. Government regulations, on the other hand, are REAL tyranny as there is no way to opt out.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    When was the playing field level, I wonder? The entire point of algorithmic ranking is to bias some data over other data to maximize user satisfaction. Search engines have been creating winners and losers since day 1.
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
- einpoklum 5y ago
  > It is not "nefarious" to enlist satisfied users of a product against legislation that could destroy the product. You mean, like Tobacco companies encouraging smokers to complain about anti-cigarette legislation for example?
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    If that were the case, yeah, I don't think it would be nefarious. Lying about the unhealthy effects of smoking would be nefarious. But if people willingly decide they want to smoke, why wouldn't they be interested in preventing bans on smoking or whatever. I often wonder about it, as I can't stop eating chocolate. Would I prefer a world in which chocolate doesn't exist (and alcohol, and cigarettes)? I am not sure about that. All those things can be good in moderation (except perhaps tobacco, but I guess if I was a soldier maybe I would take up smoking, too, because why the hell not).
- nathias 5y ago
  > And big corporations are also not automatically bad. Yes, yes they are automatically bad when they make themselves into infrastructure. I can't avoid google, microsoft or amazon even if I go live in a cave.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    Of course you can avoid all those businesses. Plenty of people do. It would merely be inconvenient. There are many alternative search engines (granted, a lot of them powered by Bing, but at least you wouldn't submit their data to Microsoft - surely there are also some who have their own search corpus). Instead of Amazon, just use price comparison sites and order from other businesses (you may be surprised to find that Amazon does not always have the best price). Microsoft may be the hardest, but you can demand a Mac or a Linux machine at work and use LibreOffice. They are also not "infrastructure". Their crime apparently is to have created a product that is so convenient to use that everybody wants to use it. I don't think that is a healthy attitude for society.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      As a business, you can't avoid Google, or Facebook. Not having a presence on Google Maps/Google Search thing, or a page on Facebook, is severely limiting your reach
      - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
        So what? You are turning things on their head. Google is giving you reach that you wouldn't have had before they existed. They are not taking away reach from you, they are giving you additional reach. You absolutely can get by without Google, you just have to limit your reach.
    - nathias 5y ago
      I work in tech, I can personally not use any of it, but will be forced to use them for doing business. Their crime is breaking anti-trust laws, for which they should have been disbanded a long time ago. I don't find them convenient in any way.
- rchaud 5y ago
  Your comment tells me you have never used Google My Business. I cannot imagine it having even one satisfied user. Google lets anybody "suggest" that your opening and closing hours are different than what you, the owner, have set them as. Enjoy receiving calls from irate customers because Big G decided that 'customer feedback' knows better than you do about when the store is open. Fix it, and Google will put it under 'manual review' so the incorrect hours continue to be shown for 2-3 more days. There are a million other problems with GMB, but this is by far the most glaring.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    I don't care for Google My Business. If they suck, users will be unlikely to follow their support link, and the article has even less of a case.
amadeuspagel 5y ago
> Propaganda Plain and Simple > We are all used to Facebook crying wolf about how small businesses will be hurt by Apple's app-privacy initiatives. Now Google has apparently taken a page from Facebook's playbook. This paragraphs seems like a better example of propaganda then what it's critizising. "Crying wolf" is not simply an expression for "saying something you disagree with"[1]. And how does this paragraph look without that expression? "We are used to Facebook arguing that small businesses will be hurt by Apple's app-privacy initivatives. Now ..." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf
bsedlm 5y ago
new!? I'm sure they went into this "business" since Eric Schmidt took over.
einpoklum 5y ago
A publicly-accessible search engine is an inherently political endeavor. It determines, to a great extent, what web pages people will read as a function of their expressed interests; and indirectly, heavily influences not just people's views but their sense of reality, of what's physically and conceptually out there. Having said that - what the article describes does seem like a transition step from more back-room dealings by Google and its lobbyists to trying to create astro-turf public campaigns. Sigh.
verisimi 5y ago
Hmm... so when did search become a political tool anyway? Was it really 2021? lol. Or was it a political tool from the beginning? When In-Q-Tel helped create it? "In-Q-Tel sold 5,636 shares of Google, worth over $2.2 million, on November 15, 2005.[10] The shares were a result of Google's acquisition of Keyhole, Inc, the CIA-funded satellite mapping software now known as Google Earth." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
- ren_engineer 5y ago
  Larry and Sergey's initial funding for backrub when at Stanford was also from the NSA. Google doesn't exist without the military and intel community, who knew that one day they'd be able to seize information from these companies >The research arms of the CIA and NSA hoped that the best computer-science minds in academia could identify what they called “birds of a feather:” Just as geese fly together in large V shapes, or flocks of sparrows make sudden movements together in harmony, they predicted that like-minded groups of humans would move together online. The intelligence community named their first unclassified briefing for scientists the “birds of a feather” briefing, and the “Birds of a Feather Session on the Intelligence Community Initiative in Massive Digital Data Systems” took place at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose in the spring of 1995.
- cromwellian 5y ago
  The CIA didn't invent search engines or the idea of crawling and indexing, and these conspiracy theories are rather pointless. Completely open source, public, search engines would have existed. It's like saying, if the CIA funded a college department that invented USENET/UUCP, they then therefore had planned all along to create great online chat communities just so that they could easily mine it, a kind of uber honey-pot hypothesis. It could also be that the CIA just in general, funds lots of stuff, just like DARPA, just like the DOE, they hand out tons of grants because they are flooded with proposals, and they don't always have a master plan on what they think the outcome or use will be. Just like ARPA's work on the internet was motivated by nuclear war, but the outcome was not at all what the original envisioned use is. Sometimes, the government agencies are just conducting a kind of VC investing in academia and hoping something useful pops out. Maybe we can leave the Dr Joe Rogan MD conspiracies in the moon landing hoax bin in favor of simpler hypotheses.
deworms 5y ago
It's hilarious that the most liberal companies on Earth like Google or Facebook are so often accused of promoting "right wing" ideas too much, when they very clearly do everything in their power to censor right wing people at every turn.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  When we can’t agree on basic facts, we can accuse anyone of anything using whatever exaggerated terms we like. And your last phrase does seem exaggerated.
- pkilgore 5y ago
  Then is this not the perfect opportunity for right and left to agree that monopolies are the problem? If Google was split into four companies with three or four viable competitors, might not those new competitive marketplaces contain some companies that conservatives prefer, some that liberals prefer? If Instagram was a separate site from Facebook, might they not organically develop different internal policies to encourage new customers to choose them over competitors? Accepting your premise Google "so clearly do everything in their power to censor right wing people at every turn", would not creating a market for Google-provided services be the most market-driven way to explore alternatives? The only alternatives I see are "Communism of the Media", with extra steps.
  - CountDrewku 5y ago
    How do you stop them working in coercion when they are split? We've already seen FAANG band together when they want to be rid of something. I imagine they'll do similar if they're broken up.
    - pkilgore 5y ago
      The same Antitrust laws that you use to split them contain penalties for coercion after they are split, and have since they were written. Also, just spitballing here, but in a world where Left and Right agree that bigness is bad, we can write new laws prohibiting should the existing ones prove insufficient in practice. Crazy!
nyxaiur 5y ago
They are spreading FUD in their own community they are actively trying to scare people for their own cause. Insane that people around here are defending this.
CountDrewku 5y ago
>But to assure left-leaning businesses that Google doesn't just hang with the right politically, Google offers another "authoritative" source: the Chamber of Progress, a "coalition of technology firms that supports pro-business public policies and left-of-center cultural values." Give me a break. Sure the company removing the words blacklist and whitelist from all of their products is "right leaning". What a crock. The irony in this author pointing about propaganda... It's obvious everyone dislikes google but I just find it totally strange that left leaning individuals somehow twist things to make it seem like these massive silicon valley companies are right leaning. They cater to everything on the left. People need to focus on the real issue which is they are too big and too powerful, regardless of which side they currently bend to.
- sofixa 5y ago
  It's pretty disgusting for me that things like racism, inclusivity, climate change, not being an asshole, etc. are considered to be left or right issues in the US. It's inherent to the stupid two party model, but it remains atrocious.
tuxt 5y ago
Is nearmedia part of so called propaganda?
- pkilgore 5y ago
  I believe the OP was about the difference between having and sharing an opinion, and choosing the use dominant market position to push your position despite it not being necessary to service your customers. Nobody honestly expects Google not to have an opinion on preserving its dominant market position; the use of that position, to further that position, however, arguably crosses a line from "we're big because we're so good at providing services that it is a natural monopoly" into "we're big because we've convinced you we have to be big". The former "feels" good: we're big because we're good at our jobs. The latter "feels" icky: we're big because we're good at convincing people we're good at our jobs.
human 5y ago
As a business owner, I really don’t like how dependent I am on Google services. If I loose my Google Ads, I’m in trouble. I prefer the more decentralized world where one private entity does not have life or death impact on my business.
civilized 5y ago
This article doesn't really explain the wonderful wonderfulness of these bills that evil, evil Google is fighting by telling small business owners what it thinks about how these bills will affect them. It's just the flip side of Google's propaganda, no "morally better" than what Google is doing. Ticks me off when people talk as if any regulation is prima facie angelic and companies are evil to tell people they don't like it. Sorry, but I don't have a regulation fetish. Make the case!
- silexia 5y ago
  Government regulation by nature tends to be mediocre as it's written by politicians and bureaucrats who don't truly know the industry. Or worse, it is written by pawns of the biggest companies to prevent new competition. Government regulation is also nearly impossible to roll back even when it's universally acknowledged as bad. Government bureaucrats get no rewards for taking risks, but can be fired easily if the risks go wrong. So a government bureaucrat will never make a change like rolling back a regulation that exposes them to even a small bit of risk. We need a mechanism like bankruptcy for the private industry but for government agencies.
  - civilized 5y ago
    The pandemic really exposed the complete lack of cost-benefit analysis. The FDA and CDC prevented the country from properly monitoring COVID early, which contributed to the chaos of early 2020. It was worse than it would have been without these agencies.
    - aaxe 5y ago
      Uhhh - that was because of the people at the top, not the employees there. Hell, the USPS was going to mail everyone masks but someone nixxed that idea.
      - civilized 5y ago
        Sorry, I just don't see any evidence that Trump political officials, however awfully they handled everything, caused the FDA and CDC to keep everyone from doing disease surveillance. Those agencies' career officials made a plan of their own accord and botched it horribly. The NYT documented it meticulously and even they couldn't find a finger to point at Trump's people. Better leadership at the top might have scuttled that insanely awful plan, but the insanely awful plan was 100% the creation of FDA and CDC career bureaucrats. Everyone assumed they knew what they were doing, including Trump's people, but they didn't. At all.
photochemsyn 5y ago
PageRank's patent status expired in 2019 so perhaps some Google alternatives in the search space will appear. Helping that process out with government antitrust regulation seems like a good idea. According to wikipedia: > "The word is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; it sold the shares in 2005 for $336 million." > "As of September 24, 2019, PageRank and all associated patents are expired." Another option is to require Google to expose their algorithm to their clients and in particular publicly describe the bias weight system they apply to their page rank scores, which they might very well be deliberately modifying as a mechanism for social manipulation and political influence.
cromwellian 5y ago
I wonder if he had the same complaints when Google was using Search to fight SOPA and PIPA? Google's homepage was prominently warning these regulations could affect your usage of the internet, enlisting millions of users to help defeat these (IMHO, onerous) bills.

147 points by 1cvmask 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

What a silly article. It is not "nefarious" to enlist satisfied users of a product against legislation that could destroy the product. Again, a reminder that not all government legislation automatically good. And big corporations are also not automatically bad. Clearly the author of the article subscribes to a certain political ideology, but that doesn't make people with other convictions "nefarious". Maybe he should simply stop using Google, if he is unhappy with the way they conduct their business.

1cvmask 5y ago
There is nothing wrong when you enlist satisfied users. It can become an issue when you start to penalize users who refuse to be enlisted.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  I have read nothing about Google penalizing users who don't enlist in the article? Clearly Google has taken a political stance and also adjusts search results to stir people into a certain political direction (ironically it seems to be the direction the author of the article actually favors). But that is not the subject of the article and not penalizing users, either. It is a good reason to stop using Google, but again, not subject of the article.
dazc 5y ago
'Maybe he should simply stop using Google, if he is unhappy with the way they conduct their business.' Which is exactly what some of us are already doing.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Fine - I'm in the same boat.
pmlnr 5y ago
> satisfied users of a product LOL. Do you have a business listed on google? I'm yet to meet satisfied owners to be honest. For example: I rent a room for classes weekly, and I have no google sanction way to show that on the map, because I don't own the business location itself. All the structured data, the rich result, etc stuff from google is a mirage, and despite the fact the I can hand write the correct JSON-LD they want, it doesn't even make a dent in the search results.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Sure, I also know people who have huge problems with their Google business listing. Nevertheless it is normal for a company to call its users to aid against government regulation that would harm the product. What other course of action would you propose for a company? Just give up and donate their business to the communist party? If most users are unhappy with the product, it just means they will be unlikely to follow the call for action, which makes it even less of an issue to worry about. What makes the article even more ridiculous, however, is calling on the statements by Yelp as witness for the evilness of Google. Yelp is actually known for shady business practices (asking for bribes to have bad reviews removed).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    > What other course of action would you propose for a company? Just give up and donate their business to the communist party? just because businesses fight regulation, doesn't mean they're morally in the right. Car companies fought seatbelt regulation for years. They also convinced their users/drivers that this was operating in their best interests and tried to get them on-side to fight said regulation.
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      "ust because businesses fight regulation, doesn't mean they're morally in the right." True, but they are also not automatically not morally in the right. The article cites "they oppose government regulation" as proof that they are evil, which is nonsense. There are many evil governments in the world, which to oppose would be the morally right thing to do. And many proposed legislations in the US are evil, too.
travoc 5y ago
I think it’s more than fair to highlight Google’s attempt to enlist thousands of users to lobby the government on its behalf. Why would a bit of transparency and exposure to this information bother you so much?
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  "transparency and exposure" - I don't think it is kept secret, according to the article, it is the first thing that Google shows to its users. I have nothing against commenting on that and writing critical articles. What bothers me is the framing as nefarious and evil, of a completely normal activity. Clearly Google has different interests than the author. That doesn't make them evil. Of course the author is also entitled to consider them evil. I merely point out that it is ridiculous, or at least the argument is it evil because they enlist their users is ridiculous. I am not even a fan of Google, I detest them for a lot of things.
  - leereeves 5y ago
    > I don't think it is kept secret, according to the article, it is the first thing that Google shows to its users. The first thing Google shows to users of Business Profile. Other people (which is most people) wouldn't know about it without articles like this. And does Google disclose that two of their three sources are funded by Google?
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      As I said (maybe in another thread, I don't remember), I have nothing against reporting that this is happening. I take issue with the framing as nefarious, especially the argument that it is nefarious because they advertise to their own users. By all means, make it public. I personally don't see the huge issue. Of course they are against government regulation that would harm their business. In the same vein I don't think it is very newsworthy that they fund sources they cite. Why wouldn't they?
      - leereeves 5y ago
prepend 5y ago
> Maybe he should simply stop using Google, if he is unhappy with the way they conduct their business. Sadly, I can’t. For a business user, there’s really no alternative to Google. 95% of my search and referral is through Google and Google maps. If I stop using them, I stop having businesses. I don’t think it’s nefarious, I just think it’s abuse of market position. Do you think it’s ok for a business to ask all employees to sign up for anti-union material. Every time they log in to their employee profile?
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Yes of course it would be OK for a business to ask employees to sign up for anti-union material. Why not? I don't think it would be OK to demand businesses are pro union, or pro anything that endangers their business. Why would they be? Even if you feel you can't escape Google, I don't think it is abuse of market power if they advertise their interests. Maybe it is just market power, without the abuse part. You could campaign for people to stop using Google, if it means so much to you. Then businesses wouldn't rely so much on Google anymore. Edit: do you think it is OK for unions to abuse their power? They are essentially forming monopolies and then using their monopoly power to enforce things.
  - dvtrn 5y ago
    do you think it is OK for unions to abuse their power? They are essentially forming monopolies and then using their monopoly power to enforce things. Probably the first time I’ve heard someone describe labor unions as monopolies.
    - popcube 5y ago
      this sounds like the definition of government. country control all of power in one region in
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      If that's the first time you have heard at, I suppose it discredits the whole field of economics. Of course they are a monopoly, or trying to form one, to enforce their demands.
ballenf 5y ago
The gut-level issue people have is a company gaining trust through creating a level playing field with algorithmic ranking, etc. and then slowly trading in that trust in order to create an ever larger moat around their monopoly. The nefarious part is that Google pretends to still be an uninterested referee on a fair playing field. All the revelations regarding back door deals and anti-consumer activity makes it clear that they abandoned those principles in order to cement their monopoly and raise their rents. And as for recruiting your happy customers into your cause -- there are many things we're fine letting non-monopolies do that make us very uneasy when monopolies do the same. Whether this should be one of those things is worth discussing and shouldn't be dismissed with an oversimplified straw man argument.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  "Google pretends to still be an uninterested referee on a fair playing field." It sounds to me as if they clearly lay out the disadvantages (in their view) to their users. That's pretty much all there is to it. I don't think they pretend to be "uninterested referees" in a call to action against certain legislation? Who would ever think that? Clearly they are "interested" in shooting down that legislation. As I said elsewhere, there is plenty to dislike about Google and their power. That article was not about that, though. The "monopolies" argument is just commie propaganda in my opinion. In general the "people with power" theory, which commies want to use to gain power over other people. If you don't like Google, again, don't use them. It is only the people giving it its power. Likewise, if your employer exerts "power" over you, look for another job. The people could stop using Google at any moment, taking away its power. Government regulations, on the other hand, are REAL tyranny as there is no way to opt out.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  When was the playing field level, I wonder? The entire point of algorithmic ranking is to bias some data over other data to maximize user satisfaction. Search engines have been creating winners and losers since day 1.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
einpoklum 5y ago
> It is not "nefarious" to enlist satisfied users of a product against legislation that could destroy the product. You mean, like Tobacco companies encouraging smokers to complain about anti-cigarette legislation for example?
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  If that were the case, yeah, I don't think it would be nefarious. Lying about the unhealthy effects of smoking would be nefarious. But if people willingly decide they want to smoke, why wouldn't they be interested in preventing bans on smoking or whatever. I often wonder about it, as I can't stop eating chocolate. Would I prefer a world in which chocolate doesn't exist (and alcohol, and cigarettes)? I am not sure about that. All those things can be good in moderation (except perhaps tobacco, but I guess if I was a soldier maybe I would take up smoking, too, because why the hell not).
nathias 5y ago
> And big corporations are also not automatically bad. Yes, yes they are automatically bad when they make themselves into infrastructure. I can't avoid google, microsoft or amazon even if I go live in a cave.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Of course you can avoid all those businesses. Plenty of people do. It would merely be inconvenient. There are many alternative search engines (granted, a lot of them powered by Bing, but at least you wouldn't submit their data to Microsoft - surely there are also some who have their own search corpus). Instead of Amazon, just use price comparison sites and order from other businesses (you may be surprised to find that Amazon does not always have the best price). Microsoft may be the hardest, but you can demand a Mac or a Linux machine at work and use LibreOffice. They are also not "infrastructure". Their crime apparently is to have created a product that is so convenient to use that everybody wants to use it. I don't think that is a healthy attitude for society.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    As a business, you can't avoid Google, or Facebook. Not having a presence on Google Maps/Google Search thing, or a page on Facebook, is severely limiting your reach
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      So what? You are turning things on their head. Google is giving you reach that you wouldn't have had before they existed. They are not taking away reach from you, they are giving you additional reach. You absolutely can get by without Google, you just have to limit your reach.
  - nathias 5y ago
    I work in tech, I can personally not use any of it, but will be forced to use them for doing business. Their crime is breaking anti-trust laws, for which they should have been disbanded a long time ago. I don't find them convenient in any way.
rchaud 5y ago
Your comment tells me you have never used Google My Business. I cannot imagine it having even one satisfied user. Google lets anybody "suggest" that your opening and closing hours are different than what you, the owner, have set them as. Enjoy receiving calls from irate customers because Big G decided that 'customer feedback' knows better than you do about when the store is open. Fix it, and Google will put it under 'manual review' so the incorrect hours continue to be shown for 2-3 more days. There are a million other problems with GMB, but this is by far the most glaring.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  I don't care for Google My Business. If they suck, users will be unlikely to follow their support link, and the article has even less of a case.

amadeuspagel 5y ago

> Propaganda Plain and Simple > We are all used to Facebook crying wolf about how small businesses will be hurt by Apple's app-privacy initiatives. Now Google has apparently taken a page from Facebook's playbook. This paragraphs seems like a better example of propaganda then what it's critizising. "Crying wolf" is not simply an expression for "saying something you disagree with"[1]. And how does this paragraph look without that expression? "We are used to Facebook arguing that small businesses will be hurt by Apple's app-privacy initivatives. Now ..." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf

bsedlm 5y ago

new!? I'm sure they went into this "business" since Eric Schmidt took over.

einpoklum 5y ago

A publicly-accessible search engine is an inherently political endeavor. It determines, to a great extent, what web pages people will read as a function of their expressed interests; and indirectly, heavily influences not just people's views but their sense of reality, of what's physically and conceptually out there. Having said that - what the article describes does seem like a transition step from more back-room dealings by Google and its lobbyists to trying to create astro-turf public campaigns. Sigh.

verisimi 5y ago

Hmm... so when did search become a political tool anyway? Was it really 2021? lol. Or was it a political tool from the beginning? When In-Q-Tel helped create it? "In-Q-Tel sold 5,636 shares of Google, worth over $2.2 million, on November 15, 2005.[10] The shares were a result of Google's acquisition of Keyhole, Inc, the CIA-funded satellite mapping software now known as Google Earth." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

ren_engineer 5y ago
Larry and Sergey's initial funding for backrub when at Stanford was also from the NSA. Google doesn't exist without the military and intel community, who knew that one day they'd be able to seize information from these companies >The research arms of the CIA and NSA hoped that the best computer-science minds in academia could identify what they called “birds of a feather:” Just as geese fly together in large V shapes, or flocks of sparrows make sudden movements together in harmony, they predicted that like-minded groups of humans would move together online. The intelligence community named their first unclassified briefing for scientists the “birds of a feather” briefing, and the “Birds of a Feather Session on the Intelligence Community Initiative in Massive Digital Data Systems” took place at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose in the spring of 1995.
cromwellian 5y ago
The CIA didn't invent search engines or the idea of crawling and indexing, and these conspiracy theories are rather pointless. Completely open source, public, search engines would have existed. It's like saying, if the CIA funded a college department that invented USENET/UUCP, they then therefore had planned all along to create great online chat communities just so that they could easily mine it, a kind of uber honey-pot hypothesis. It could also be that the CIA just in general, funds lots of stuff, just like DARPA, just like the DOE, they hand out tons of grants because they are flooded with proposals, and they don't always have a master plan on what they think the outcome or use will be. Just like ARPA's work on the internet was motivated by nuclear war, but the outcome was not at all what the original envisioned use is. Sometimes, the government agencies are just conducting a kind of VC investing in academia and hoping something useful pops out. Maybe we can leave the Dr Joe Rogan MD conspiracies in the moon landing hoax bin in favor of simpler hypotheses.

deworms 5y ago

It's hilarious that the most liberal companies on Earth like Google or Facebook are so often accused of promoting "right wing" ideas too much, when they very clearly do everything in their power to censor right wing people at every turn.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
When we can’t agree on basic facts, we can accuse anyone of anything using whatever exaggerated terms we like. And your last phrase does seem exaggerated.
pkilgore 5y ago
Then is this not the perfect opportunity for right and left to agree that monopolies are the problem? If Google was split into four companies with three or four viable competitors, might not those new competitive marketplaces contain some companies that conservatives prefer, some that liberals prefer? If Instagram was a separate site from Facebook, might they not organically develop different internal policies to encourage new customers to choose them over competitors? Accepting your premise Google "so clearly do everything in their power to censor right wing people at every turn", would not creating a market for Google-provided services be the most market-driven way to explore alternatives? The only alternatives I see are "Communism of the Media", with extra steps.
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  How do you stop them working in coercion when they are split? We've already seen FAANG band together when they want to be rid of something. I imagine they'll do similar if they're broken up.
  - pkilgore 5y ago
    The same Antitrust laws that you use to split them contain penalties for coercion after they are split, and have since they were written. Also, just spitballing here, but in a world where Left and Right agree that bigness is bad, we can write new laws prohibiting should the existing ones prove insufficient in practice. Crazy!

nyxaiur 5y ago

They are spreading FUD in their own community they are actively trying to scare people for their own cause. Insane that people around here are defending this.

CountDrewku 5y ago

>But to assure left-leaning businesses that Google doesn't just hang with the right politically, Google offers another "authoritative" source: the Chamber of Progress, a "coalition of technology firms that supports pro-business public policies and left-of-center cultural values." Give me a break. Sure the company removing the words blacklist and whitelist from all of their products is "right leaning". What a crock. The irony in this author pointing about propaganda... It's obvious everyone dislikes google but I just find it totally strange that left leaning individuals somehow twist things to make it seem like these massive silicon valley companies are right leaning. They cater to everything on the left. People need to focus on the real issue which is they are too big and too powerful, regardless of which side they currently bend to.

sofixa 5y ago
It's pretty disgusting for me that things like racism, inclusivity, climate change, not being an asshole, etc. are considered to be left or right issues in the US. It's inherent to the stupid two party model, but it remains atrocious.

tuxt 5y ago

Is nearmedia part of so called propaganda?

pkilgore 5y ago
I believe the OP was about the difference between having and sharing an opinion, and choosing the use dominant market position to push your position despite it not being necessary to service your customers. Nobody honestly expects Google not to have an opinion on preserving its dominant market position; the use of that position, to further that position, however, arguably crosses a line from "we're big because we're so good at providing services that it is a natural monopoly" into "we're big because we've convinced you we have to be big". The former "feels" good: we're big because we're good at our jobs. The latter "feels" icky: we're big because we're good at convincing people we're good at our jobs.

human 5y ago

As a business owner, I really don’t like how dependent I am on Google services. If I loose my Google Ads, I’m in trouble. I prefer the more decentralized world where one private entity does not have life or death impact on my business.

civilized 5y ago

This article doesn't really explain the wonderful wonderfulness of these bills that evil, evil Google is fighting by telling small business owners what it thinks about how these bills will affect them. It's just the flip side of Google's propaganda, no "morally better" than what Google is doing. Ticks me off when people talk as if any regulation is prima facie angelic and companies are evil to tell people they don't like it. Sorry, but I don't have a regulation fetish. Make the case!

silexia 5y ago
Government regulation by nature tends to be mediocre as it's written by politicians and bureaucrats who don't truly know the industry. Or worse, it is written by pawns of the biggest companies to prevent new competition. Government regulation is also nearly impossible to roll back even when it's universally acknowledged as bad. Government bureaucrats get no rewards for taking risks, but can be fired easily if the risks go wrong. So a government bureaucrat will never make a change like rolling back a regulation that exposes them to even a small bit of risk. We need a mechanism like bankruptcy for the private industry but for government agencies.
- civilized 5y ago
  The pandemic really exposed the complete lack of cost-benefit analysis. The FDA and CDC prevented the country from properly monitoring COVID early, which contributed to the chaos of early 2020. It was worse than it would have been without these agencies.
  - aaxe 5y ago
    Uhhh - that was because of the people at the top, not the employees there. Hell, the USPS was going to mail everyone masks but someone nixxed that idea.
    - civilized 5y ago
      Sorry, I just don't see any evidence that Trump political officials, however awfully they handled everything, caused the FDA and CDC to keep everyone from doing disease surveillance. Those agencies' career officials made a plan of their own accord and botched it horribly. The NYT documented it meticulously and even they couldn't find a finger to point at Trump's people. Better leadership at the top might have scuttled that insanely awful plan, but the insanely awful plan was 100% the creation of FDA and CDC career bureaucrats. Everyone assumed they knew what they were doing, including Trump's people, but they didn't. At all.

photochemsyn 5y ago

PageRank's patent status expired in 2019 so perhaps some Google alternatives in the search space will appear. Helping that process out with government antitrust regulation seems like a good idea. According to wikipedia: > "The word is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; it sold the shares in 2005 for $336 million." > "As of September 24, 2019, PageRank and all associated patents are expired." Another option is to require Google to expose their algorithm to their clients and in particular publicly describe the bias weight system they apply to their page rank scores, which they might very well be deliberately modifying as a mechanism for social manipulation and political influence.

cromwellian 5y ago

I wonder if he had the same complaints when Google was using Search to fight SOPA and PIPA? Google's homepage was prominently warning these regulations could affect your usage of the internet, enlisting millions of users to help defeat these (IMHO, onerous) bills.