Google: The search ends here

I magine the scenario where cars are zooming across the streets in your city
with 360 degree cameras mounted on top of them, visually capturing every nook
and corner of the town (including your apartment in one suburban neighborhood).
Not just that, these vehicles were also capturing snippets of citizens private
online activities on unencrypted wireless networks.

Your last online transaction with your bank, that intimate online tete-a-tete
with your girlfriend, the departmental wranglings with your boss last week over
emails, and details of all those exciting sites you visited last weekendall
these information got captured, thanks to these transactions happening over an
unencrypted WLAN. Big brother is not just watching, he has got the total dope on
whatever you are doing.

And, what really sends a chill down the spine is that this is for realdone
by Google in Hamburg, Germany, apparently inadvertently while collecting data
for its Street View program.

This scandal over Googles collection of private data via its controversial
Street View application is now occupying Germanys justice system. The public
prosecutors office in Hamburg, where Google has its German headquarters, is
investigating the company in the light of its admission that it accidentally
collected personal information sent over wireless networks.

While Google admitted that the Hamburg action was "a mistake and we are
profoundly sorry" and agreed to hand over a hard drive from the roving vehicles
it used to compile its 360 degree Street View photo mapping archive, the German
investigation has now opened the Pandoras box elsewhere too.

In the US, suits have been filed in Washington DC, California, Massachusetts
and Oregon by people who accuse Google of violating their privacy, because the
cars also collected data from open Wi-Fi networks.

While the Street View imbroglio sets a dangerous precedent about Google
becoming the biggest purveyor of private information, even worse is the growing
perception that Google is becoming the latest monopoly in the tech world. Many
analysts are even paranoid that the Google threat is even worse than Microsofts
monopoly threat about a decade back.

In fact, the advocacy group, Consumer Watchdog has already called on the US
Department Of Justice to launch a broad anti-trust investigation into Googles
search and advertising practices; and consider a wide array of penalties,
including possibly breaking the company up. The watchdog, along with a mobile
entrepreneur and two lawyers representing Google rivals, has called for an
investigation focusing on the number of issues, including Googles marriage of
search results with advertising and its book search service.

For most people around the world, Google has become the gateway to the
Internet, whether they like it or not. How it tweaks its proprietary search
algorithms can ensure a business success or failure. Its not just Consumer
Watchdog, several analysts, legal functionaries and privacy and anti-trust
advocates are criticizing several of Googles business practices, alleging that
they smack strongly of monopolistic trends. The close ties between Googles
search results and search based advertising also means that the neutrality of
the search results are bound to get compromized.

"Google has manipulated search and advertisement placement results to shut
out potential competitors who counted on Google results to drive traffic to
their sites," claims Joseph Bial, a lawyer at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft who
represents myTriggers.com and TradeComet.com. Both companies have filed
anti-trust lawsuits against Google alleging that the search giant shut out their
attempts to advertise on Google.com. Googles dominance in search and search
based advertising means that online and mobile advertisers have little choice
but to do business with them, alleges Simon Buckingham, the New York based
founder of Ringtones.com and Appitalism.

However, even before the US Department of Justice takes up the anti-trust
case against Google, the first salvo has been fired by the European Competition
Commission (repudiating Europes reputation as a more liberal, anti monopolistic
polity); it has started informally investigating Google taking serious
cognizance of three competitors complaints made by the UK price comparison
siteFoundem, French legal search engine called ejustice.fr and Microsofts Ciao!
from Bing. It is ironical to note Microsoft complaining about monopolies; how
tables have turned.

The allegations of monopoly had reverberated strongly in the last year too,
during Googles Book Search settlement. In the short run, the Google Book Search
settlement unquestionably brings about greater access to books collected by
major research libraries over the years. But, it is very worrisome that this
agreement, which was negotiated in secret by Google and a few lawyers working
for the Authors Guild and AAP has de facto created two complementary monopolies
with exclusive rights over a research corpus of this magnitude.

According to blogger, Joe Wilcox, Googles real monopoly began with its
DoubleClick acquisition in December 2007. The acquisition changed everything
about Googles search, advertising dominance and perceptions about the companys
growing status as gatekeeper to all online information.

Summing up the worry areas, it seems that Google is expanding a monopoly over
web search and arguably trying to extend it into several adjacent markets,
including display advertising, desktop operating systems, mobile operating
systems, mobile web applications and web browsers. It closely resembles
Microsofts antitrust problems about a decade back that started with leveraging
its Intel based desktop operating system monopoly into the market for web
browsers.

Googles free business model is disrupting many major established
informational industries by reducing their contents value to zerosubsidized by
search and adjacent services from which Google profits. That was the main grouse
over which Rupert Murdoch threatened to pull out all his publications out of the
ambit of Google search. While analyst estimates vary, the most reliable put
Googles online advertising share at about 90% in the European Union.

Recent Google activities like the Street View data collection fracas in
Hamburg and also in some US cities or the Buzz privacy settings raise serious
questions about trust. Can Google be trusted with all this information? Street
View seriously undermines privacy concerns and literally portrays a picture
Orwell predicted of the Big Brother in 1984and if the former communist
countries are ignored, then its not the state, but a corporate business entity
thats emerging as the Big brother. Todays economic realities? Buzz also
demonstrates Googles increased willingness to put its interests ahead of
customers. Likewise, ongoing tweaks to the search and keyword business model,
technology or terms of agreement put Googles interests before partners.

The US Justice Department went after Microsoft in May 1998 partly out of
fear, the company would become the Internets gatekeeper. That never happened
with Microsoft, but it most certainly is occurring with Google. Its business is
all about profiting from information. Many analysts argue that Google is not a
search company but rather an information company, with search being a means to
an endthe end being information around which the company sells keywords and
advertising. Googles search share reaches 70-80% or more in some geographies,
according to combined analyst reports.

Google doesnt just offer search, but advertising, keyword search and
demographic services around information; and businesses pay for this stuff.
DoubleClick has greatly enhanced the latter activity. Marketers are hungry for
demographic information, and they are willing to pay for it. Google provides the
door, checks whos coming inside and can pass that information onto marketing
paparazzi. Many fear that the temptation to mine the information will be huge,
and that temptation will increase as Google matures, its growth slows and its
stock falls.

Googles core business is about search and advertising, which relies on the
content of other people and businesses. Google doesnt own the information from
which it makes nearly all its revenue. Google is the middleman of the
information, which it takes for free. There is obviously serious potential for
harmful monopoly (some would say all monopoly is harmful), even worse than
Microsofts. At least, Microsoft produces software and makes money off the
licensing. Microsoft owns what it sells, but not Google.

Rajneesh De

rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in