| count of monte cristo |
07-30-2009 09:12 AM |
google will become evil
For much of its history, Google has responded to most criticism with two words: Trust us. The company has repeatedly persuaded skeptics that its immensity is a mere byproduct of its altruistic mission and that the algorithms it uses to organize the Internet, while proprietary, are objective and benevolent. But in an economy destroyed by bad faith, secretive formulas, and complicated mathematics, trust is in short supply, and Google's assurances are losing their persuasive power.
This disconnect became particularly apparent in September when Schmidt met with Thomas Barnett, the DOJ's antitrust chief at the time, to defend the deal. Barnett was shocked when Schmidt made Google's character?its constitutional aversion to all things evil and its commitment to operating on a higher moral plane?a central part of his argument. The line of thinking resonated throughout the DOJ. Weeks later, in one of Barnett's final meetings with Google and Yahoo lawyers, he made it clear he had little patience for Google's "trust us" refrain. He ended one question by warning: "Please don't tell me the answer is, 'Because the parties wouldn't do anything wrong.'"
In and of itself, Google's size is not a legal problem. Varney herself has pointed out that, while Google may enjoy a monopoly in the search-ad business, the company acquired it legally by building better search products that competitors were simply unable to match. Lawyers and economists say that things get complicated, though, when Google moves beyond search and into Web services like online spreadsheets and video sites. Because its search and advertising algorithms are secret, there is no way for competitors or partners to know whether Google tweaks results to direct traffic to its own properties over theirs. Enter a street address into Google's search engine, for instance, and Google Maps tops the results. Type in "Britney Spears" and Google News comes up before People magazine or TMZ .com. (Google-owned YouTube tops the video results, above MTV and MySpace.) If Google is using its search position to promote its other businesses, that could leave it open to charges of illegal bundling and leveraging?the same charges that Microsoft faced for packaging its browser onto the Windows desktop. And even if Google is behaving honorably now, it is creating a system full of temptations should the company ever come under financial pressure. "When things get tight," one advertising partner says, "whose bottom line will get sacrificed first? The answer is self-evident."
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/maga...?currentPage=1
Because public companies are after the dollar and while they can have a good front, it disappears after a while. take microsoft as an example |
