By now it is well known that the web search company Google is behind the massive "net neutrality" campaign. Based on the fear that consumers will be harmed if telecom and cable companies negotiate preferential arrangements to certain customers, the net neutrality campaign seeks legislation and regulation that would reduce Internet providers to a “dumb pipes” existence and would preclude them trying to provide value-added services to their customers.
There are any number of arguments against network neutrality regulations, and we’ve made them in the past. But what’s of most interest to us today is the hypocrisy of Google in the net neutrality campaign, arguing that other companies should not be allowed to do the very things that Google is already doing.
Google also has market power, as by far the largest search engine company. Indeed, so great is Google’s market power that “google” has become a verb in today’s society.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with that. Achieving market power and dominance should be the goal of every business. And Google has certainly achieved market power.
In fact, The Wall Street Journal has recently reported that some papers even train their journalists to write in a way that will result in making their articles more likely at appear given the algorithms used by Google for its search function.
In its use of its market power, Google feels free to make choices for its customers, and indeed sees such discrimination as a feature of its service, rather than a weakness. Google’s proprietary algorithms rank the results of web searches, and the results of Google’s algorithms can make-or-break a website.
Now Google has begun to more overtly wield their market power, blacklisting some sites. Google now is making a determination of whether a consumer is allowed to proceed unimpeded to a website based on its own evaluation, and in addition is labeling some sites as malicious. Priority treatment for Google “approved” content, and prejudicial treatment for other content. Indeed, Google is becoming less “neutral” every day.
There’s nothing wrong with market dominance, and there’s nothing wrong with using your market power to please customers and maximize profits. But there is something wrong with hypocrisy.
Google impedes people from getting to certain websites, charges fees for priority treatment, and enters into exclusive arrangements with service providers. Google is far from “neutral.” Yet Google is demanding that the federal government insist on regulations to prevent Internet providers from doing the very same things.
Oh, what a tangled Web they weave.