Over the years, Google has been inspected for potentially violating anti-trust laws, and many company want to take them down. Google is able to make companies "disappear" by placing their website on the 10th page of searches if they feel like it. Google knows that most people won't look past the 2nd page of searches. Many accused Google of using algorithms which hid companies that would be competitors to Google's services, even though Google denied these claims.
For most of us, Google is our default search engine, so most of us wouldn't go out our way to type in "Yahoo.com or Bing.com", when Google gives us the fast and accurate results we want. Although their techniques may not be harming the user, we may be missing out on an better experience that we didn't even know we had because Google doesn't want us to find it. For example, we learned about the website Foundem.com, which provides better results that are more tailored to what the user is searching. Of course, since Foundem would take away people from using Google searches, Google hid their website so that it would be hard to find, and therefore take away the competition.
However, Google is now able to control all aspects of our life from social media through Facebook, entertainment with buying YouTube, and finally our school life with google drive and classroom. Google is constantly collecting our data from every search we do, this allows them to produce advertisements that pop up on other websites we use like Facebook and YouTube. This, in-turn, brings in more money to their company, because each click on a Google owned website, makes Google a little richer.
Although Google is a part of our everyday lives, even in ways we may not realize, we are attributing to their growth and success every time we use its services, which may allow them to turn into a monopoly.
This was a very interesting thing to blog about, Katherine! I think it is cool to think about Google, something that we oftentimes consider a "given" in our lives, from a monopolistic standpoint. Prior to reading the article in class and discussing, I had no idea how large Google's reach was. The fact that they set up a parent company called Alphabet and made themselves and several other companies a part of the conglomerate makes me feel like Google definitely is a Monopoly, and that was their attempt to hide it.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a lot of interesting points in this blog post. Living in the Silicon Valley, I think we all know how powerful and influential Google truly is in all of our day to day lives. The idea of a monopoly is that it does not satisfy the consumer; it will actually hurt them. Yet, looking at Google, most people would argue that they are very beneficial to our lives, making things much more efficient and accessible. Yet, I think it is still a good idea to keep a close eye on Google to prevent them from continuing to expand.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really insightful take on Google's monopolistic behavior! Google in itself exists in nearly every facet of our lives, from education, to jobs we have, and especially with search itself. But perhaps the most startling thing is the fact that there has yet to be a single substantial antitrust/monopoly case brought against Google. And even more broadly, there hasn't been a single case on a scale this large since the US v. Microsoft case that was a claim made that a company's monopoly stifled innovation in the marketplace. Who knows whether we will ever see a case like that, especially with recent business deregulation, but let's remain hopeful that one day, if Google is indeed found out to be a monopoly, that there is proper repercussions for their actions.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://www.forbes.com/sites/washingtonbytes/2018/10/05/the-future-of-antitrust-do-higher-profits-merit-the-retirement-of-the-consumer-welfare-standard/#1e5fa8947af6
This brings up a really interesting concept: how companies are able to grow and usurp power to the point at which they control the market. It is interesting how Google has been branching out into other sectors, such as entertainment and education, in the pursuit of greater control. You bring up a really good point by talking about how we may be missing out on greater innovations due to the lack of competition.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed this read, thanks for the post Katherine! When it comes to big dogs like Google, there are algorithmic consequences to its lack of transparency as you pointed out. Building on the violations with the anti-trust laws, Google also fails to respect our user privacy by selling our data to third parties (as does facebook). Your conclusion got me thinking about what we as consumers can do to not uphold or support abusive monopolies, especially when they’re so engraved in our lifestyle. I think we can start by lessening our reliance or dependence on them that could hopefully lead to an attrition of power gradually. There are substitutes out there for search engines, I personally really like “Ecosia” as an alternative—they plants trees!
ReplyDeleteEveryone should download it too! You can add it as a chrome extension here:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ecosia-the-search-engine/eedlgdlajadkbbjoobobefphmfkcchfk?utm_source=inline-install-disabled
I think this is a really great post. Your last two paragraphs really made me think about how much Google is actually involved in my life. I've never really realized that everything I do in my life is run by Google. It really makes you think about just how much they do in our everyday lives yet they have ruined some other companies. When you have that much power, I guess you can do whatever you want and get away with it.
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