Standing up to Google
The head of one of Europe’s largest publishers has written an open letter to Google boss Eric Schmidt arguing that the grossly unequal balance of power must be confronted. Would the clever way forward for the search giant be to opt for voluntary self-restraint? Raymond Snoddy investigates.
It was a German theologian Martin Luther who inspired the Protestant Reformation by publishing his 95 theses against Papal abuses and the sale of indulgences.
Mathias Döpfner, chief executive of Axel Springer is no Luther and he has only a few multi-faceted theses, but they amount to a closely argued manifesto against the abuses of the company which only wants to make the world a better place – Google.
Everyone involved in the media, or the future of both communications and the transmission of political power, should take the time to read the Döpfner Manifesto – actually a closely argued, almost understated, open letter to Google boss Eric Schmidt.
In it Döpfner does something that few media executives are prepared to do, confess that Axel Springer is afraid of Google – its power, its market dominance, its cleverness and its “speed to scale.”
Nothing short of a biological virus can scale so quickly, so effectively, so aggressively, the German company believes.
The fear, of course, is combined with dependence. Axel Springer, like every other publisher, has to use Google if it is to maintain any semblance of digital reach for its information. After all Google has a 91.2 per cent search-engine market share in Germany.
There really is no alternative. Removing yourself from Google listings in protest is the equivalent of telling nuclear power opponents to stop using electricity and instead join the Amish.
As the Internet critic Evgeny Morozov has argued, this is not a debate about technology and the opportunities it offers.
“This is a political debate. Android devices and Google algorithms are not a government programme. Or at least they shouldn’t be. It is we the people who have to decide whether or not we want what you are asking of us – and what price we are willing to pay for it,” Döpfner recounts.
The case against Google is set out layer by layer from the market dominance and the expropriation of content of the aggregators, through use – or misuse – of personal information to the corporations alleged fixation with the creation of large offshore floating entities.
This, Döpfner warns, is to do with escaping into international waters so that Google could, at least in theory, break free from the shackles of regulation and control.
They could then go unfettered where their imagination and ideas take them.
Of these, market dominance and associated abuses are the easiest to get a handle on, and is something that the European Commission has been working on for the past four years.
The Google search engine has a 70 per cent global share – the next largest, Baidu in China, has 16.4 per cent, but only because free access to Google is prohibited in China.
Axel Springer says it found first-hand about the power of Google when an algorithm was changed and one of its subsidiaries lost 70 per cent of its traffic within a few days. The fact that the company was a Google competitor was “certainly a coincidence.”
The unfairness, according to Döpfner, arises because Google always lists its own products higher than those of its competitors. This happens even when it receives fewer visits than a competitor so that eventually it will receive more visits.
The “settlement” produced by the Commission has, according to Döpfner, left anyone with any understanding of the issue “speechless.”
The discriminatory practices will not be prohibited, instead a new window will be opened up at the beginning of the search list where those discriminated against will be able to buy a place on the list. More money for Google – or as the Axel Springer executive calls it “protection money – i.e. if you don’t want me to kill you, you have to pay me.”
A modern, secular form of indulgences.
And then there is the privacy of data – or lack of it – something that has taken on a whole new meaning courtesy of Edward Snowden and NSA.
As Eric Schmidt himself said in 2010 of Google data handling powers: “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”
According to Döpfner, Schmidt has also said that if you have something that you don’t want anyone to know maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.
That, and similar comments by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, could have come from the head of the East Germany or any other secret police in service of an dictatorship, argues Axel Springer.
By contrast, the essence of freedom is the right not to have to disclose everything and even to have secrets.
Döpfner argues that you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to worry about Google apparently being behind a number of planned enormous ships and floating working environments that can cruise and operate in the open ocean.
As Google founder and major shareholder Larry Page put it last year, there are many exciting things you could do that you just can’t because they are illegal.
“We should have some safe places where we can try out some new things and figure out what is the effect on society, what’s the effect on people, without having to deploy into the normal world,” said Page.
Does this mean, the Axel Springer executive asks, that Google is planning to operate in a legal vacuum without anti-trust authorities or data protection?
If this is a misinterpretation then Schmidt is invited to clear it up. And why exactly has Google bought the drone manufacturer Titan Aerospace?
Yet while it is easy to set out the scale of the problem, what can actually be done about it?
Döpfner believes it would be in Google’s long-term interest to “set a good example” – though here, perhaps, optimism overreaches reality.
He does, however, have at least four theses:
– Create transparency by providing search results to clear quantitative criteria
– Disclose all changes to algorithms
– Automatically delete cookies after each session and only save consumer behaviour when requested to do so
– Explaining and demonstrating what it intends to do with its floating group headquarters and development labs.
The clever way forward for Google would be to opt for voluntary self-restraint.
“Is it really smart to wait until the first serious politician demands the break-up of Google? Or even worse – until the people refuse to follow? While they still can. We most definitely no longer can,” argues Döpfner.
Or as Luther famously said: “Here I stand I can do no other.”
Pictured top: Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google.
Pictured centre: Mathias Döpfner, chief executive officer of German media group Axel Springer SE.
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