The Google Hypocrisy

The Google Hypocrisy


The word google is a verb, but it used to be a noun. It means “to search for information on the Internet, esp. using the Google search engine “according to Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.6). It is also a publicly company traded company (NASDAQ: GOOG). They also have a nice and catchy corporate motto: Don’t Be Evil. Google represents the power of the Internet; a couple of graduate students go from obscurity to billionaires in just a few years (Larry Page and Sergey Brin). The question is why are they concerned with evil at the corporate level?

The basis of the Google search engine is simple and democratic. Web sites that are searched for, and then navigated to, through the Google search engine are stored and page rank is determined by the open and democratic system of voting by clicking through. This is an easy algorithm to subvert. Google cannot make users click through, it is a voluntary action. To subvert just type the URL presented and do not click through, and a page rank scoring event will not occur. The people at Google are counting on the laziness of users to not do this and click through instead. It’s a lot easier, and saves millions of lost man hours per year from typing in URL’s by the action of clicking through.

Google has also built a tremendous revenue stream from the model by becoming the dominant competitor in this market segment. The verb to Google has come into the contemporary lexicon. Many people develop the Google reflex; just hit the Google web site when you want to find something.

The free services Google offers, searching, web services, toolbar, gmail, froogle, to name a few and offer a great deal of utility for users based upon their algorithm and the faith advertisers place in it, thus providing the revenue stream. What is less clear is what they are doing with all of this data. Lots of privacy concerns have arisen from a variety of sources.

Hypocrisy has always been a concern for Americans. We have recognized that hypocrisy is often at the root of political misbehavior. This is embodied in the slogan the “don’t do as I do, do as I say”. It is toward this end that concern about the power of the Google search engine has arisen. Google has raised hackles around the world when they blackballed a firm (CNET) from the using their search engine after publishing results about the Google CEO using Google searches.

As a strident believer in free markets, I think this behavior is reasonable, even if it is poor public relations. The broader concern is that if they do this once, what is to prevent them from doing it again? Google is building the world’s largest private network graph of what is communicated to whom by whom, who searches for what, and who clicks through. If the eye seeks what the heart desires then Google has a window on user’s collective psyche. If you do not like this behavior, the simple solution is to not use their service which is, after all, voluntary. The market has the capability to take away their power.

Corporations are risk averse when it comes to endangering their revenue streams and profits. The Congressional record is littered with firms and their lobbyists seeking legislative relief from this danger. This is the territory where the free market becomes hindered by pubic interaction with private and powerful parties seeking the power of the state to provide preferential treatment.

The hypocrisy comes when the world largest search engine feels they have a legitimate right to search and index other people’s freely available information, but then denies that right to others. The hypocrisy is codified in their terms of service where they deny the right of automated queries to users, but the basis of their technology is automated queries of others’ data. This policy in and of itself, is meaningless, as it is not possible to make a manual search of Google, since it requires a computer interface to the Internet to accomplish this task. Most reasonable people would argue, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this is the essence of an automated query.

The days of anonymity on the Internet are largely gone. The technology, and its’ usage, renders this a nearly impossible task for the average user. Be warned that powerful and hypocritical corporate entities and their public sector friends may have interest in your data, which once recorded will be stored for a long time to come. Laws are fungible, data today is evidence tomorrow. This brings about the original question as to why they have a corporate motto “Don’t be evil.”  Shakespeare addressed this long ago in his saga about the wishy-washy Hamlet: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."