The editorial board of the Boston Globe is making the case to disband Google in an opinion piece published on Thursday.
In arguing for its breakup, the Globe also implicated Facebook, saying the two companies together dominate close to 75 percent of all online advertising while at the same time controlling the flow of information on the internet and acquiring massive amounts of user data.
‘Never in the history of the world has a single company had so much control over what people know and think,’ the piece starts.
‘Yet Washington has been slow to recognize that Google’s power is a problem, much less embrace the obvious solution: breaking the company up.’
The Boston Globe published an opinion piece by its editorial board on Thursday calling for the breakup of Google
The op-ed calls for the United States to follow in the steps of European countries which have been fighting for privacy rights and data regulation, and take up the charge to dismantle tech monopolies, and namely, Google.
‘Google is a monopoly because we’ve allowed it to become one,’ the article reads.
‘We’ve allowed it to grow at the expense of copyright holders. At the expense of rival search and advertising ventures. At the expense of startups that might someday challenge the giants. At the expense of a narrowing of the way a society acquires information. Today, the act of searching for an answer is synonymous with Googling. And the first answer for how to rein in this digital giant is also the best: break it up.’
The Boston Globe’s editorial team is headed up by managing Editor Brian McGrory (left), seen here listening as Oscar winning screen writer Josh Singer speaks about the film Spotlight in the newsroom of the Boston Globe in Boston on April 5, 2016
Marjorie Pritchard (pictured) is deputy managing editor of the Globe’s editorial page
What the board means when they talk about breaking up Google, specifically, is really breaking up Alphabet.
Alphabet is the holding company that was formed in October 2015 and owns Google, which makes up the largest piece of the overarching organization, by far.
The list of subsidiaries owned by Alphabet is long, but the board paid most attention to Google search, Android, YouTube, Google’s advertising units (DoubleClick and AdMob), and Google’s cloud services (Gmail, cloud storage, and maps).
The article notes that more than 80 percent of Alphabet’s revenue comes from advertising dollars, and Google controls 88 percent of the search advertising market, which is something its been able to achieve by not charging its users anything for using its platform to search the internet.
It’s been said many times that, ‘If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product,’ which has proved to be true, as Google continues to harvest much coveted user data from those who benefit from the convenience of its many services.
Google has then used that data to grow into the tech giant it’s become today. It’s also been accused of favoring promotion of its services other those of competitors, resulting in a $2.7 billion fine from European regulators in 2017.
‘A handful of people working at a handful of tech companies steer the thoughts of billions of people every day,’ former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris said.
What the board means when they talk about breaking up Google, specifically, is really breaking up Alphabet, the holding company that was formed in October 2015 and owns Google, which makes up the largest piece of the overarching organization, by far
The list of subsidiaries owned by Alphabet is long, but the board paid most attention to Google search, Android, YouTube, Google’s advertising units (DoubleClick and AdMob), and Google’s cloud services (Gmail, cloud storage, and maps)
It’s been suggested that Google ‘has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections in the world for several years now, with increasing impact each year as Internet penetration has grown,’ according to one study cited by the board, which surveyed 10,000 people from 39 countries.
Not surprisingly, the op-ed notes that publishing companies have suffered as Google has thrived in the advertising space, changing the way media outlets have had to allocate their budgets.
The board listed a few ways it would recommend breaking up the massive company, citing separating the advertising portion from Google search as the simplest and probably, most effective.
As alternatives to slicing and dicing Alphabet up, the Globe suggested different forms of increased regulation.
One approach mentioned holding Google accountable for copyright violations by its users, which create content where Google places ads and therefore makes money.
Another suggestion involved more oversight when Google attempts to purchase start-ups that have either been proven to be or might one day become competitors.
It accuses Google of ‘frustrating competition, discouraging innovation, punishing American business, and distorting the free marketplace of commerce and ideas,’ in part by acquiring much of its competition.
By this logic, the board also believes the disruption of Google would encourage human creativity, learning and competition, all of which are things the editorial board says Google once promoted, but now stifles.
Google was founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin (left) and Larry Page (right), who now serve as the president and CEO, respectively, of Alphabet
Finally, the Globe suggested the government might want to treat Google like a utility company, and force it to license its algorithms to upstarts, much like it did with the telephone industry in 1956, before ultimately forcing the Bell System to break itself up, some thirty years later.
In closing, the editorial board of the Globe brought up Microsoft and John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, noting that in the early days of those organizations, no one knew how much influence they would come to yield over the public.
The Boston Globe’s editorial team is headed up by managing Editor Brian McGrory.
Marjorie Pritchard is deputy managing editor of the Globe’s editorial page.
Google was founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who now serve as the president and CEO, respectively, of Alphabet.