[smc-discuss] Why we fear Google

[jubin jose]

And.. I've received this discussion in ma gmail inbox..!

On 4/26/14, Kunjappu Abhijith.R <gadha1998 at gmail.com> wrote:
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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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>>
>>
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