Google: The Virtual Dictator of the Digital Economy - by Miachael Gray

At the surface it seems such a simple question to answer. However, to find the answer we need to dig a little deeper and understand the complexities of the modern internet and electronic commerce.

Google’s dominant share of the search landscape puts it in a unique position. For many consumers, Google is the internet, or at the very least Google is the start page of the internet and doorway to the rest of the virtual world. For most web publishers and site owners, Google is responsible for the lion’s share of their traffic. In some cases Google can account for 60-90% of a website’s overall site visitors. For an ecommerce website getting traffic from Google can be the difference between making a healthy profit or going out of business.

Google has cornered the market on traffic. They control who is listed on the organic side and set pricing, some times at astronomically uncompetitive levels, for paid advertisers. It has become a Google world and there wasn’t anything you could do to change it. Google operates in a market without government intervention, oversight or regulations.

Google is taking very aggressive steps to retain the market share that they fought to achieve. By giving away free services like GMail, Google Reader, and Google Analytics, they price competition out and keep users locked into their offerings and their integrated search engine.

But Google isn’t stopping there. Now they want all your data.

New initiatives like personalized search, and web history seek to gain a deeper level of access to your private world and all of the websites you visit. Google ‘bookmarks’ gives them access to the sites that you think are important, noteworthy or worth revisiting. Simply put - Google wants to mine your personal data and life to find out as much as it can about you. They want to learn how to market to you more effectively, and how they can extract the most profit from you.

While they may not have set out with this goal in mind, for many people Google knows more about them than the government.

While Google may be too powerful they’ve crafted a public image that is exactly the opposite. With their college-campus-like work environment, bean bag chairs, 6o’s throwback lava lamps, the image they created goes hand-in-hand with their “do no evil motto”. Google is too powerful, they know it, and that’s why they are willing to give you so much for free. The less attractive and harder they make it for you to change, the more they have you tucked neatly into their back pocket.

Note EU-Digest: Even though the above report dates back to 2007 it has become more actual than ever.

A recent proposal by Google which would give them the digital rights to millions of hard-to-find books has not only Google rivals but also consumer watchdogs, academic experts, literary agents, state governments and even foreign governments up in arms.

In an opinion filed by the US government it states they believe a proposal to give Google the digital rights to millions of hard-to-find books threatens to stifle competition and undermine copyright laws. The justice department also raised concerns that Google's partnership with the participating US publishers could turn into a literary group that would wield too much power over book prices. Judge Chin has scheduled a hearing for February 18 to consider approving the class-action settlement.

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