[smc-discuss] Why we fear Google

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On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 5:05 PM, Pirate Praveen <praveen at debian.org> wrote:

> [with apologies for cross posting]
>
> It is quite long, but very important to our future, the future of
> humanity. It is extremely satisfying that I'm not using a google service
> to share this, neither did I find it using a google service (no not
> facebook either, I found it on diaspora https://poddery.com/posts/1081673
> ).
>
> Form today, I will actively migrate all user group subscriptions from
> gmail.
>
> An open letter to Eric Schmidt
> Why we fear Google
>
> 17.04.2014 · Here for the first time, a German manager confesses his
> company’s total dependence on Google. What publishers are experiencing
> today is a sign of things to come: We will soon all belong to Google. An
> open letter to Eric Schmidt. Von Mathias Döpfner
>
> Dear Eric Schmidt,
>
> In your text “Die Chancen des Wachstums” (English Version: “A Chance for
> Growth”) in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, you reply to an article
> which this newspaper had published a few days earlier under the title
> “Angst vor Google” (“Fear of Google”). You repeatedly mention the Axel
> Springer publishing house. In the spirit of transparency I would like to
> reply with an open letter to highlight a couple of things from our point
> of view.
>
> (Deutsche Fassung: „Warum wir Google fürchten“ - Mathias Döpfners
> offener Brief an Eric Schmidt)
>
> We have known each other for many years, and have, as you state, had
> lengthy and frequent discussions on the relationship between European
> publishers and Google. As you know, I am a great admirer of Google’s
> entrepreneurial success. In just a few short years, starting in 1998,
> this company has grown to employ almost 50,000 people worldwide,
> generated sixty billion dollars in revenue last year, and has a current
> market capitalization of more than 350 billion dollars. Google is not
> only the biggest search engine in the world, but along with Youtube (the
> second biggest search engine in the world) it also has the largest video
> platform, with Chrome the biggest browser, with Gmail the most widely
> used e-mail provider, and with Android the biggest operating system for
> mobile devices. Your article rightly points out what fabulous impetus
> Google has given to growth of the digital economy. In 2013, Google made
> a profit of fourteen billion dollars. I take my hat off to this
> outstanding entrepreneurial performance. Google doesn’t need us. But we
> need Google
>
> In your text you refer to the marketing cooperation between Google and
> Axel Springer. We were also happy with it. But some of our readers have
> now interpreted this to mean that Axel Springer is evidently
> schizophrenic. On the one hand, Axel Springer is part of a European
> antitrust action against Google, and is in dispute with them regarding
> the issue of enforcement of German ancillary copyright prohibiting the
> stealing of content; on the other hand, Axel Springer not only benefits
> from the traffic it receives via Google but from Google’s algorithm for
> marketing the remaining space in its online advertising. You can call it
> schizophrenic – or liberal. Or, to use one of our Federal Chancellor’s
> favorite phrases: there is no alternative.
>
> We know of no alternative which could offer even partially comparable
> technological prerequisites for the automated marketing of advertising.
> And we cannot afford to give up this source of revenue because we
> desperately need the money for technological investments in the future.
> Which is why other publishers are increasingly doing the same. We also
> know of no alternative search engine which could maintain or increase
> our online reach. A large proportion of high quality journalistic media
> receives its traffic primarily via Google. In other areas, especially of
> a non-journalistic nature, customers find their way to suppliers almost
> exclusively though Google. This means, in plain language, that we – and
> many others – are dependent on Google. At the moment Google has a 91.2
> percent search-engine market share in Germany. In this case, the
> statement “if you don’t like Google, you can remove yourself from their
> listings and go elsewhere” is about as realistic as recommending to an
> opponent of nuclear power that he just stop using electricity. He simply
> cannot do this in real life – unless he wants to join the Amish.
>
> Google’s employees are always extremely friendly to us and to other
> publishing houses, but we are not communicating with each other on equal
> terms. How could we? Google doesn’t need us. But we need Google. And we
> are also worlds apart economically. At fourteen billion dollars,
> Google’s annual profit is about twenty times that of Axel Springer. The
> one generates more profit per quarter than the revenues of the other in
> a whole year. Our business relationship is that of the Goliath of Google
> to the David of Axel Springer. When Google changed an algorithm, one of
> our subsidiaries lost 70 percent of its traffic within a few days. The
> fact that this subsidiary is a competitor of Google’s is certainly a
> coincidence. Not only economic, but also political
>
> We are afraid of Google. I must state this very clearly and frankly,
> because few of my colleagues dare do so publicly. And as the biggest
> among the small, perhaps it is also up to us to be the first to speak
> out in this debate. You wrote it yourself in your book: “We believe that
> modern technology platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple,
> are even more powerful than most people realize (...), and what gives
> them power is their ability to grow – specifically, their speed to
> scale. Almost nothing, short of a biological virus, can scale as
> quickly, efficiently or aggressively as these technology platforms and
> this makes the people who build, control, and use them powerful too.”
>
> The discussion about Google’s power is therefore not a conspiracy theory
> propagated by old-school diehards. You yourself speak of the new power
> of the creators, owners, and users. In the long term I’m not so sure
> about the users. Power is soon followed by powerlessness. And this is
> precisely the reason why we now need to have this discussion in the
> interests of the long-term integrity of the digital economy’s ecosystem.
> This applies to competition, not only economic, but also political. It
> concerns our values, our understanding of the nature of humanity, our
> worldwide social order and, from our own perspective, the future of
> Europe. The greatest opportunity in the last few decades
>
> As the situation stands, your company will play a leading role in the
> various areas of our professional and private lives – in the house, in
> the car, in healthcare, in robotronics. This is a huge opportunity and a
> no less serious threat. I am afraid that it is simply not enough to
> state, as you do, that you want to make the world a “better place.” The
> Internet critic Evgeny Morozov has clearly described the position that
> modern societies need to take here: This is not a debate about
> technology and the fascinating opportunities it presents. This is a
> political debate. Android devices and Google algorithms are not a
> government program. Or at least they shouldn’t be. It is we the people
> who have to decide whether or not we want what you are asking of us –
> and what price we are willing to pay for it.
>
> Publishers gained their experience here early – as the vanguard for
> other sectors and industries. But as long as it was simply a question of
> the expropriation of content (which search engines and aggregators use
> but don’t want to pay for), only a few were interested. But that changes
> when the same thing applies to people’s personal data. The question of
> who this data belongs to will be one of the key policy issues of the
> future.
>
> You say in your article that those who criticize Google are “ultimately
> criticizing the Internet as such and the opportunity for everyone to be
> able to access information from wherever they happen to be.” The
> opposite is true. Those who criticize Google are not criticizing the
> Internet. Those who are interested in having an intact Internet – these
> are the ones who need to criticize Google. From the perspective of a
> publishing house, the Internet is not a threat, but rather the greatest
> opportunity in the last few decades. 62 percent of our corporate profit
> today comes from our digital business. This means that we are not
> talking about the Internet here, but only about the role that Google
> plays within it. The „fair criteria“ are not in place
>
> It is in this context that of the utmost importance are competition
> complaints submitted four years ago by various European publishers’
> associations and Internet companies against Google at the European
> Commission in Brussels. Google is a prime example of a market-dominating
> company. With a seventy-percent global market share, Google defines the
> infrastructure on the Internet. The next largest search engine is Baidu
> in China with 16.4 per cent – and that’s because China is a dictatorship
> which prohibits free access to Google. Then there are search engines
> with market shares of up to 6 percent. These are pseudo-competitors. The
> market belongs to a single company. Google’s share of the
> online-advertising market in Germany is increasing from year to year and
> is currently around 60 percent. For comparison: The Bild newspaper,
> which has been considered as market-dominating by the German Federal
> Cartel Office for decades (which is why Axel Springer was not allowed to
> buy the TV company Pro Sieben Sat.1 or regional newspapers), has a 9
> percent market share of printed advertisements in Germany. By comparison
> Google is not only market-dominating but super market-dominating.
>
> Google is to the Internet what the Deutsche Post was to mail delivery or
> Deutsche Telekom to telephone calls. In those days there were national
> state monopolies. Today there is a global network monopoly. This is why
> it is of paramount importance that there be transparent and fair
> criteria for Google’s search results.
>
> However, these fair criteria are not in place. Google lists its own
> products, from e-commerce to pages from its own Google+ network, higher
> than those of its competitors, even if these are sometimes of less value
> for consumers and should not be displayed in accordance with the Google
> algorithm. It is not even clearly pointed out to the user that these
> search results are the result of self-advertising. Even when a Google
> service has fewer visitors than that of a competitor, it appears higher
> up the page until it eventually also receives more visitors. This is
> called the abuse of a market-dominating position. And everyone expected
> the European antitrust authorities to prohibit this practice. It does
> not look like it will. The Commissioner has instead proposed a
> “settlement” that has left anyone with any understanding of the issue
> speechless. Eric, in your article you talk about a compromise which you
> had attempted to reach with the EU Commission. What you have found, if
> the Commission does decide on the present proposal, is an additional
> model for Google of advertising revenue procurement. There will not be
> any “painful concessions” but rather additional earnings. A betrayal of
> the basic idea behind Google
>
> The Commission is seriously proposing that the infrastructure-dominating
> search engine Google be allowed to continue to discriminate against its
> competitors in the placement of search results critical to success. As
> “compensation,” however, a new advertising window will be set up at the
> beginning of the search list, in which those companies who are
> discriminated against will be able to buy a place on the list. This is
> not a compromise. This is an officially EU-sanctioned introduction of
> the business model that in less honorable circles is referred to as
> protection money – i.e. if you don’t want me to kill you, you have to
> pay me.
>
> Dear Eric Schmidt, You know very well that this would result in
> long-term discrimination against and weakening of any competition.
>
> Meaning that Google would be able to develop its superior market
> position still further. And that this would further weaken the European
> digital economy in particular. I honestly cannot imagine that this is
> what you meant by compromise. But I do not want to reproach you and
> Google for this. You, as the representative of the company, can and must
> look after its interests. My criticism is directed at the European
> Competition Commission. Commissioner Almunia ought to reflect once again
> on whether it is wise, as a kind of final official act, to create a
> situation that will go down in history as a nail in the coffin of the
> already sclerotic European Internet economy. But it would above all be a
> betrayal of the consumer, who will no longer be able to find what is
> most important and best for him but what is most profitable for Google –
> at the end a betrayal of the basic idea behind Google. A remarkably
> honest sentence
>
> This also applies to the large and even more problematic set of issues
> concerning data security and data utilization. Ever since Snowden
> triggered the NSA affair, ever since the close relations between major
> American online companies and the American secret services became
> public, the social climate – at least in Europe – has fundamentally
> changed. People have become more sensitive about what happens to their
> user data. Nobody knows as much about its customers as Google. Even
> private or business emails are read by Gmail and, if necessary, can be
> evaluated. You yourself said in 2010: “We know where you are. We know
> where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”
> This is a remarkably honest sentence. The question is: Are users happy
> with the fact that this information is used not only for commercial
> purposes – which may have many advantages, yet a number of spooky
> negative aspects as well – but could end up in the hands of the
> intelligence services and to a certain extent already has?
>
> In Patrick Tucker’s book The Naked Future: What Happens in a World that
> Anticipates Your Every Move?, whose vision of the future was considered
> to be “inescapable” by Google’s master thinker Vint Cerf, there is a
> scene which sounds like science fiction, but isn’t. Just imagine, the
> author writes, you wake up one morning and read the following on your
> phone: “Good morning! Today, as you leave work, you will run into your
> old girlfriend Vanessa (you dated her eleven years ago), and she is
> going to tell you that she is getting married. Do try to act surprised!”
> Because Vanessa has not told anyone yet. You of course are wondering
> just how your phone knew that or whether it’s a joke, and so you ignore
> the message. Then in the evening you actually pass Vanessa on the
> sidewalk. Can competition generally still function in the digital age?
>
> Vaguely remembering the text from the phone, you congratulate her on her
> engagement. Vanessa is alarmed: “‘How did you know I was engaged?’ she
> asks. You’re about to say, ‘My phone sent me the text,’ but you stop
> yourself just in time. ‘Didn’t you post something to your Facebook
> profile?’ you ask. ‘Not yet,’ she answers and walks hurriedly away. You
> should have paid attention to your phone and just acted surprised.”
>
> Google searches more than half a billion web addresses. Google knows
> more about every digitally active citizen than George Orwell dared to
> imagine in his wildest dreams in 1984. Google is sitting on the entire
> current data trove of humanity like the giant Fafner in The Ring of the
> Nibelung: “Here I lie and here I hold.” I hope you are aware of your
> company’s special responsibility. If fossil fuels were the fuels of the
> 20th century, then those of the 21st century are surely data and user
> profiles. We need to ask ourselves whether competition can generally
> still function in the digital age if data are so extensively
> concentrated in the hands of one party. There will be a winner
>
> There is a quote from you in this context that concerns me. In 2009 you
> said: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe
> you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” The only sentence that is
> even more worrying comes from Mark Zuckerberg when he was on the podium
> of a conference with you and I in the audience. Someone asked what
> Facebook thinks of the storage of data and the protection of privacy.
> And Zuckerberg said: “I don’t understand your question. If you have
> nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.”
>
> Ever since then I have thought about this sentence again and again. I
> find it terrible. I know that it was certainly not meant that way.
> Behind this statement there is a state of mind and an image of humanity
> that is typically cultivated in totalitarian regimes – not in liberal
> societies. Such a statement could also have come from the head of East
> Germany’s Stasi or other secret police in service of a dictatorship. The
> essence of freedom is precisely the fact that I am not obliged to
> disclose everything that I am doing, that I have a right to
> confidentiality and, yes, even to secrets; that I am able to determine
> for myself what I wish to disclose about myself. The individual right to
> this is what makes a democracy. Only dictatorships want transparent
> citizens instead of a free press.
>
> Officials in Brussels are now thinking about how the total transparency
> of users can be avoided by restricting the setting and storage of
> cookies on the Internet (with which it is still possible today to find
> out which website you clicked on at 10.10 a.m. on 16. April 2006), in
> order to strengthen consumer rights. We do not yet know exactly how this
> regulation will turn out, any more than we know whether it will do more
> good than bad. But one thing is already certain – if it comes to pass,
> there will be a winner: Google. Because Google is considered by experts
> to be the absolute leader in the development of technologies which
> document the movements and habits of users without setting cookies.
> Something the EU has so sorely missed in the past
>
> Google has also made provisions as far as the antitrust proceedings in
> Brussels on fair search are concerned. It is expected that the whole
> procedure will be decided in Google’s favor. But if not, it would also
> be safeguarded. Concessions and restrictions that have been wrung out in
> lengthy proceedings, limited to Google’s European domains, would be
> ineffective in an agreement because Google is able, using Android or
> Chrome, to arbitrarily determine that the search will no longer be
> carried out from a web address but by using an app. This means that
> Google will be able to withdraw from all the commitments it has given,
> which to this day are still bound to the Google domains such as google.de.
>
> Will European politics cave in or wake up? The institutions in Brussels
> have never been so important. An archaic question of power is to be
> decided. Is there a chance for an autonomous European digital
> infrastructure or not? It is a question of competitiveness and viability
> for the future. Voluntary self-subjugation cannot be the last word from
> the Old World. On the contrary, the desire of the European digital
> economy to succeed could finally become something for European policy,
> which the EU has so sorely missed in the past few decades: an emotional
> narrative. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist
>
> 16 years of data storage and 16 years experience by tens of thousands of
> IT developers has established a competitive edge which can no longer be
> offset with economic resources alone. Since Google bought “Nest” it
> knows in even more detail what people do within their own four walls.
> And now Google is also planning driverless cars, in order to compete in
> the long term with the car industry from Toyota to VW. Google will then
> not only know where we drive our cars but how we are occupying ourselves
> when we are in the car. Forget Big Brother – Google is better!
>
> Against this background it greatly concerns me that Google – which has
> just announced the acquisition of drone manufacturer “Titan Aerospace” –
> has been seen for some time as being behind a number of planned enormous
> ships and floating working environments that can cruise and operate in
> the open ocean. What is the reason for this development? You don’t have
> to be a conspiracy theorist to find this alarming, especially if you
> listen to the words of Google founder and major shareholder Larry Page.
> What impact does it have on our society?
>
> He dreams of a place without data-protection laws and without democratic
> accountability. „There’s many, many exciting and important things you
> could do that you just can’t do because they’re illegal“, Page said back
> in 2013, continuing „ ...we should have some safe places where we can
> try out some new things and figure out what is the effect on society,
> what’s the effect on people, without having to deploy kind of into the
> normal world.“
>
> Does this mean that Google is planning to operate in a legal vacuum,
> without troublesome antitrust authorities and data protection? A kind of
> superstate that can navigate its floating kingdom undisturbed by any and
> all nation-states and their laws?
>
> Until now the concerns were the following: What will happen if Google
> continues to expand its absolutely dominant market power? Will there be
> even less competition? Will the European digital economy be thrown back
> even further compared to the few American super corporations? Will
> consumers become even more transparent, more heteronomous and further
> manipulated by third parties – be it for economic or political
> interests? And what impact do these factors have on our society? It is
> not the fear of old analog dinosaurs
>
> After this disturbing news you need to ask yourself: Is Google in all
> seriousness planning for the digital supra-state in which one
> corporation is naturally only good to its citizens and of course “is not
> evil”? Please, dear Eric, explain to us why our interpretation of what
> Larry Page says and does is a misunderstanding.
>
> I am aware that the problems which are caused by new digital
> super-authorities such as Amazon and Facebook cannot be solved by Google
> alone. But Google could – for its own long-term benefit – set a good
> example. The company could create transparency, not only by providing
> search results according to clear quantitative criteria, but also by
> disclosing all the changes to algorithms. By not saving IP addresses,
> automatically deleting cookies after each session, and only saving
> customer behavior when specifically requested to do so by customers. And
> by explaining and demonstrating what it intends to do with its floating
> group headquarters and development labs.
>
> Because the fear of growing heteronomy by the all-determining spider in
> the web is not being driven by any old analog dinosaurs, who have not
> understood the Internet and are therefore afraid of everything new. It
> is rather the digital natives, and among them the most recent and
> best-informed, who have a growing problem with the increasingly
> comprehensive control by Google. Impressive and dangerous
>
> This also includes the fiction of the culture of free services. On the
> Internet, in the beautiful colorful Google world, so much seems to be
> free of charge: from search services up to journalistic offerings. In
> truth we are paying with our behavior – with the predictability and
> commercial exploitation of our behavior. Anyone who has a car accident
> today, and mentions it in an e-mail, can receive an offer for a new car
> from a manufacturer on his mobile phone tomorrow. Terribly convenient.
> Today, someone surfing high-blood-pressure web sites, who automatically
> betrays his notorious sedentary lifestyle through his Jawbone fitness
> wristband, can expect a higher health insurance premium the day after
> tomorrow. Not at all convenient. Simply terrible. It is possible that it
> will not take much longer before more and more people realize that the
> currency of his or her own behavior exacts a high price: the freedom of
> self-determination. And that is why it is better and cheaper to pay with
> something very old fashioned – namely money.
>
> Google is the world’s most powerful bank – but dealing only in
> behavioral currency. Nobody capitalizes on their knowledge about us as
> effectively as Google. This is impressive and dangerous. Is it really
> smart to wait?
>
> Dear Eric Schmidt, you do not need my advice, and of course I am writing
> here from the perspective of those concerned. As a profiteer from
> Google’s traffic. As a profiteer from Google’s automated marketing of
> advertising. And as a potential victim of Google’s data and market
> power. Nevertheless – less is sometimes more. And you can also win
> yourself to death. Historically, monopolies have never survived in the
> long term. Either they have failed as a result of their complacency,
> which breeds its own success, or they have been weakened by competition
> – both unlikely scenarios in Google’s case. Or they have been restricted
> by political initiatives. IBM and Microsoft are the most recent examples.
>
> Another way would be voluntary self-restraint on the part of the winner.
> Is it really smart to wait until the first serious politician demands
> the breakup of Google? Or even worse – until the people refuse to
> follow? While they still can? We most definitely no longer can.
>
> Sincerely Yours Mathias Döpfner
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