.. title: The Case Against Google
.. slug: the-case-against-google
.. date: 2018-03-06 20:49:07 UTC+01:00
.. tags: google, society
.. category:
.. link:
.. description:
.. type: text
For some time now I have changed my default search engine to
`DuckDuckGo `_, but that was mostly the
result of my reflection on privacy issues. Everybody has already
witnessed, how even a single Google search can quickly "taint" the ads
presented on pretty much every subsequently visited web page.
Changing the default search engine and using open services like `Open
Street Map `_ instead of Google Maps
are easy steps to prevent every information flowing directly to this
omnipresent entity.
The New York Times article `The Case Against Google
`_
however looks at the dominance of Google from a completely different
angle and puts this in a very interesting historical context. The
question in a nutshell is - can Google prevent real competition by
simply excluding competitors from search results? Or put differently,
can an emerging new internet service be choked to insignificance by
not being visible on the first page in Google search?
.. image:: /images/books_toomany.png
:alt: Too Many Books To Read
:align: center
.. TEASER_END
As the article shows, this is clearly the case and has already
happened a few times. For example establishing new exciting map
services, based e.g. on the Open Street Map data, will certainly not
be visible in Google search, as it competes with the Google Map based
services.
The article does a good job of putting this dominance up for
discussion and by showing that similar things already happened more
than one hundred years ago. It is also interesting to read the
actions and results taken in those other cases. It is especially
interesting to read that Google itself could only grow as big as it is
today because of the antitrust proceedings against Microsoft in the
1990s.
There is a lot of food for thought in this article, so go and read it
for yourself.