Thought Provoking
So what's the solution?
A few days ago President Obama wrote a cheque he knew he couldn’t cash - and this week the European Parliament will write another. Reports suggest that the Parliament is drafting a motion calling for the break-up of Google and its ilk. Much like Obama’s net neutrality pledge, it’s meaningless, but even so, it’s still hugely …
But why a levy, which is chump change for Google, and not a property-based market for digital news?
Because there is no value for such a market. There are too many websites who are willing to let Google scrape all of their data in exchange of some traffic. The German publishers have clearly demonstrated recently, when they asked Google to show their snippets, even for free. In fact (though it will probably not come to this), the German publishers would probably be willing, on the contrary, to pay Google for showing their snippets. Quite a few websites do this; it is called online advertising, and Google has some experience on the topic.
The problem the publishers have is not that Google scrapes their data; it is that the Internet exists, and contains a lot of cheap competitors who are willing to whore themselves for clicks, and that search engines in general and Google in particular forces them to compete with all this competition. Would Google not exist, the publishers would be in practically the same situation with any number of other search engines, and those might even charge them for the privilege of giving them traffic.
So the levy is the only possibility that remains. It more or less amounts to declare that quality news publishing is not profitable, yet positive for the common good, and so must be subsidized by some kind of tax on businesses that are profitable.
"but thinks it can win them round with populist measures that require ad hoc intervention."
This points to the essence of the problem with socialist politics, and particularly the EU, many of the solutions require hard and difficult choices which they are afraid to put to the people.
The solution to the Google problem is to reduce the cost of living and remove red tape from small business so that more people can have a go at starting a small business not just the rich - free the people to come up with a solution and they will (you cannot force a horse to drink :-) )
I don't think Google have even flexed a tiny bit of political muscle, not say compared with the way that new papers do. Image if Google decided to "do a Daily Mail/Guardian/PaperOfChoice and have a go at some politico,
To start with all queries for them would return those foot in mouth and keep walking moments that most people manage at some point in their lives.
And that's before the fact that they probably have more info on everyone, politicians included, than even the most paranoid secret police ever gathered. Image a few well placed leaks about what they've been up to...
"I don't think Google have even flexed a tiny bit of political muscle"
Not overtly, but they don't need to. They fund 'independent' and 'grass-roots' organisations to be their sock-puppets, so their message goes out load and clear even though it 'seems' to be coming from other, independent sources.
The Obama administration's entire digital hierarchy are ex-Googlers with policy goals tightly aligned with Google's. I would be amazed if in European countries individually and at EU level there weren't many politicians supported by Google-financed foundations, and 'instructed' by these foundations on teh finer points of Internet policy (or Google's version thereof)
... politicians do know it controls access to what make them palatable to the citizens or not.
Actually Google could change what a search about a politician returns first - and make it a star or a no one. And meanwhile, it can inject a lot of funds in any "foundation" you like... so politicians will be very careful to take a stance against Google, especially since their spin-doctors will tell them not to do.
The monopoly Google has over Internet searches, and thereby the first "access" to Internet contents is far greater than those MS had simply controlling the browsing technology but not actually what the browser displayed - but it was enough to prompt the EU to take action against MS.
But no one cares, because MS is by default "evil" - because it asks you money for the products it sells-, why Google is "good" because it does't ask you money for the service it offers, just because too few understand those services are there just turn youn into a Google product being sold for money...
Errm... Google does NOT have a monopoly over search. For example, I have Duck Duck Go set as my default search engine on every single device I own, from my cell phones to my desktops. The _only_ Google service I use is gmail... and I use that for throw-away accounts, and never, ever, use the web interface after I've set the account up for IMAP. This means that I never see any googleads. And, as I only use it for throwaways, the info that Google gets from those accounts is both limited and highly misleading.
Nor MS had a monopoly over browsers. There were others, someone used them, many didn't and Windows never forbade to install them. If people didn't use them, nor used OS/2 or MacOS or Unix was not because MS forced any monopoly - moreover unlike Macs and some IBM using proprietary architectures, PCs run any OS you throw at them, as Linux rise shows very well.
But we still blame MS for gaining a dominant position just adding a default browser to its OS, but Google brainwashing is very effective in denying the fact that for most users Google is the home page and effectively controls access to the Internet. Sure, a few users use other services (which could be just proxies for Google....), but like IE, most users do use Google, which is in the same position MS was years ago, and it's even worse because it doesn't control the technology, it does control the contents, something MS never achieved and wasn't its aim.
Not even 8 years ago, internet access cost $500,-, to be paid to the Wintel empire. Hardly any cheaper access method was available, with Wintel market share exceeding 95% at times. Guess what: not a word, except them cashing in on a fine for browser choice.
Now they go after google, with at least two significant competitors in search, offering a freedom of choice that was never there on 1995-2008 peak Wintel, this is unfair.
What "significant competitors in search"? Yahoo and BIng? They are as much competitive as OS/2, MacOS and Netscape and other browsers were, when action was taken against MS. The only real competitors are Yandex and Baidu for their respective language areas - just both outside EU boundaries and not used by EU citizens.
Nothing to say about that "hardware empire" lobby that still "fines" $$$$$ you for Internet access because you can't just plug your fingers into a wire connection, or tune your ears to wireless signals?
Or that "telecom empire" that still asks you money to use their cables and antennas to access the Internet because you can't access internet servers with your brain powers?
But you just show what the real issues was. People don't want to pay for software, and in exchange for what looks like "free" one are ready to sell their freedom.
As I sit munching, watching everyone popping rockets at the giant robot again, I can't help think back to all those Sci-Fi books and films that dreamed of a future where you'd talk to a computer, and it would understand you, and know you, and do what you wanted, and people *trusted* it.
That mechanism could only work with trust. Humans communicate by transmitting modifications to preloaded contexts of each others simulated persectives. The computer will need to know about the wants and needs of the human in order to carry out their will without needing the human to download a much larger temporary context instead, which humans can't be arsed with.
People don't trust Google, because of what Google could do or be doing, more than what Google have actually done. But.. *every* future that leads to the shiny robots and AI's everyone says they want involves making something with that same level of understanding of you.
So, if not Google... who? What? And how could anything with the necessary power not end up as feared as Google? Is there any route to 'the future' that does not end in the same batch of pitchforks? (Yes, we should all be running things locally under our own sole control, but we all know how few will want to do that)
Google makes money out of knowing what I like? So does my local fishmonger. The latter saves me from shipping out on an Icelandic trawler for weeks to get dinner, and the former saves me from camping outside the British Library for weeks to get information. Both provide my needs and I benefit from both knowing my needs.
So I am not entirely sure what the problem is here. Perhaps those who hate Google so much would prefer some sort of socialist search engine controlled by the EU, returning only results that "further the cause of European integration"; just as the diktats of its sleazy Kangaroo Court are instructed to do. Doubtless it would also track the whereabouts of anyone daring to criticise the EU or its self-anointed bosses.
Should Google ever become even half as overbearing, incompetent, corrupt and destructive of our freedoms as the EU we can just tell it to take a hike, without fear of being dragged off to a dungeon in Transylvania with no evidence of wrong-doing, no presumption of innocence, and no right to a trial. Such fear will soon be a reality in the EU.
Google may have its faults but do we really think an EU-devised 'solution' has even the remotest chance of resolving them? People who don't actually know what a web browser is are given half a dozen to choose from? Then faced with wondering why all those websites want to store American biscuits? My chickens would be embarrassed to be so stupid.
The only thing that trumps the EU's stupidity is its deceitful authoritarianism. I would put a lot more trust in Google, personally.
This could not be more to the point.
We can use google by our own choice, we can however not elect the European Commission, which is chosen the same way members of the Politbureau were appointed during the communistic era in the USSR.
Together with the attempt to censor google, " right to be forgotten", it shows how they want to limit access to information, unchecked by any democratically chosen body.