Does Google have too much power?
Whether intentional or not, Google has great power over the Internet. To a very considerable extent Google determines what gets seen on the Web. Unless a page is ranked pretty high by Google, chances are that most surfers will never find it. I have several Web sites and the statistics consistently show Google as the main referrer by far. There is a whole industry (Search Engine Optimization or SEO) devoted to designing Web pages so that they get ranked highly. Actual content often seems to take second place to key words, link building, and other ways of getting a high Google rank. An Internet business has no chance without high Google rank. For better or worse, Google has a big influence on the content of the whole Web.
Google is also a vast concentration of information. Think about how much information about you may reside at Google. It isn’t just that personal information is easily collected and correlated. An individual’s search patterns can be very revealing. There have already been several criminal cases where the prosecution used the nature of a defendant’s Web searches to help show criminal intent. Then there is all that email that is stored at Gmail. Google knows a lot about us.
Google is now a media and advertising power as well. BusinessWeek has an extensive article Is Google Too Powerful? An excerpt from the article:
That simple little search box we all use every day? As the place nearly 400 million people each month start on the Internet, it’s the No. 1 gateway to the Net’s vast commercial potential. With more data on what people are searching for, Google can serve up the most targeted and relevant advertisements alongside the results, drawing more clicks, more cash, more users—you get the idea. Consumers love Google’s simplicity and results, which is why it draws 56% of all searches. No wonder eager advertisers shoveled some $10.6 billion into Google’s coffers last year, up an astonishing 73% from 2005. If you can believe it, Google’s $144 billion market value tops that of Time Warner (TWX ), Viacom (VIA ), CBS (CBS ), ad agency giant Publicis Groupe (PUB ), and the New York Times Co. (NYT ) combined.
As Lord Acton said, “”Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Let’s all hope that Google lives up to its corporate motto, “Don’t be evil.”
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