The first problem with the Google experience today is that the forced insertion of advertising through computer driven algorithms is overwelming and sharply lowers its usefulness.
Then they try to manage content easily driving out the good with the bad. Any real customer is looking for the obscure. That includes political product as well. Egregious material needs to be split out but never hidden. Thus at best, you label all such reports as moderate left or right and immoderate left or right. That is also good enough. The customer knows what he can handle.
The search engine aspect needs to be an utility. The targeted advertising needs to become a separate computer generated product itself. After all, they are trying to read your mind. It is time to present as such. Done correctly, such a product on its own will become indispensable.
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50 US States and Territories Launch Antitrust Probe Into Google
September 9, 2019 18:03,
Last Updated: September 10, 2019 9:50
Fifty U.S. States and territories, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have launched an anti-trust probe into Google
and the company’s “potential monopolistic behavior.” The investigation
is being led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who formally made the
announcement on Sept. 9.
The bipartisan probe from attorneys
general included nearly every state in the nation, except for California
and Alabama. President Donald Trump has increasingly called out Google
and other technology companies for suppressing conservative voices. In
August, Trump said on Twitter that his administration is “watching
Google very closely.”
The new probe follows existing
investigations at the federal level by the Justice Department and the
Federal Trade Commission, which are currently probing Facebook, Google,
Apple, and Amazon for potential violations of antitrust law.
Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said at a Washington press conference that the sheer number of attorneys general joining together sends a “strong message to Google.” A Google spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times on the new probe.
According
to a press release, the investigation will focus on Google’s “dominance
in the telecommunications and search engine industries” as well as the
“potential harm” the company may cause to consumers and the economy from
any anti-competitive conduct. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has a
market value of more than $820 billion and controls many facets of the
internet. Google’s dominance in online search and advertising enables it
to target millions of consumers for their personal data.
Paxton
said at a press conference that the states formally requested, on Sept.
9, documents from Google on its advertising business. Several of the
attorneys general at the announcement in Washington described the
investigation as “preliminary” but said they expected it would expand to
cover other issues, including data privacy.
Alphabet said Sept. 6
that the Justice Department in late August requested information and
documents related to prior antitrust probes of the company. The company
added in a securities filing that it expects similar investigative
demands from state attorneys general and that it is cooperating with
regulators.
In a Sept. 9 statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James said Google’s widening control could be a danger to consumers’ rights.
“Google’s
control over nearly every aspect of our lives has placed the company at
the center of our digital economy,” she wrote. “But it doesn’t take a
search engine to understand that unchecked corporate power shouldn’t
eclipse consumers’ rights.”
‘Significant Action’
Dr. Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the
American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, told The
Epoch Times the new probe is “quite important” because the United States
has done very little to keep companies like Google in check. Epstein
has spent more than half a decade monitoring Google’s influence.
“A
single lone state trying to fight Google is a great waste of time,”
Epstein said. “When you have so many states fighting, that’s a
significant action. There are nearly 800 attorneys
just in the attorney general’s office in the state of Texas. We are
talking about a lot of resources now being brought together going up
against Google.”
Epstein said he had been in regular touch with some of the attorneys general, in some cases going back several years.
“The
main thing they can do is to levy fines, and the problem is Google can
just brush off fines,” he said. “Google has been subjected to more than
$8 billion in fines by the EU in the last two years, approximately. But I
don’t think these fines will really have the impact that we need to
have on Google.”
According to Epstein, Google’s power needs to be
curtailed in three main areas: surveillance, censorship, and
manipulation. Epstein said he has spoken to various attorneys general
about these issues, but he wasn’t sure if they had the authority. He
said said Congress, the Justice Department, and the Federal Trade
Commission could take much more concrete action.
Epstein said that
even if Democrats swept the 2020 election—which he believed would end
the federal investigations—the attorneys general probe would almost
certainly persist. He said this was why the new probe is so important.
Epstein has discovered a dozen methods Google uses to manipulate public opinion or votes, including the search engine manipulation effect and search suggestion effect.
In 2016, Epstein conducted a secret monitoring project that showed that Google hid negative auto-complete search results for
Hillary Clinton months before the presidential election. His
peer-reviewed research found Google’s algorithms can easily shift 20
percent or more votes among voters and up to 80 percent in some
demographic groups.
Epstein, who considers himself a moderate who
leans liberal, warned that if Congress becomes controlled by Democrats,
“Google’s power in Washington will skyrocket.”
“This is exactly
what happened in Obama’s second term of office, where roughly 6 federal
agencies were being run by former Google executives,” Epstein said.
“Obama’s chief technology officer was a former Google executive.”
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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