Is Google too big, too powerful, maybe dangerous?
People have been asking questions about Google’s effect for quite a while now but concern about the power that Google has over the Internet is reaching new heights. As posted recently, the Obama Justice Department may be taking a harder line. Sunday’s New York Times business section has an article, Everyone Loves Google, Until It’s Too Big. It begins:
The popularity of Google’s search engine in the United States just grows and grows. In the past three years, its market share gains have even been accelerating, making some people wonder whether the company will eventually obliterate what remains of its competition in search.
However, it isn’t just that Google dominates search. There is the very large question of what the company is going to do with the huge accumulation of information about us that it has built up. Back in July, 2008, I posted, What will Google do with our data? :
What many Internet users may not realize is how much Google knows about all of us. Google amasses truly huge volumes of data about Web users. It isn’t just clicks on search links that are in the data. SeoMoz has an analysis of all the ways that Google collects data. You’d be surprised at some of the ways. (Click here for a PDF of all the methods Google admits to. There may be others.) Already in 2006 Google had at least a petabyte (a million GB) of compressed data. To give you an idea of how big that is, the compressed database for this blog with every post and comment ever made, the list of subscribers, the list of topics, and the other blog data is about 900 Kb. The potential uses and misuses of Google’s store of information are staggering to the imagination. The ability to access and correlate so much information gives Google potential power that must be closely watched.
The massive size of the Google database elevates its power into an unprecedented realm. In July, 2008, I also posted How extremely large databases can have profound consequences.
I have no reason to doubt that the present management of Google has good intentions. But what about future executives and managers? There is nothing in history that suggests that ethical managers are always succeeded by other ethical managers. And there is always the problem described by Lord Acton, “”Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
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