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Even if it started out idealistically, the company is becoming just another huge, opportunistic corporation.
Why can't we have a mature and informed discussion about regulation and responsibility of the Internet (or anything) in the United States? Alas, the prospects seem unlikely. One of the main reasons is that we operate under the absurd assumption that a "free market" exists in everything, everywhere. Worse, we have been snookered by the false promises of "corporate social responsibility" into believing that market actors can police themselves. Nowhere is that more evident than in how we view that omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent entity Google.
Despite its stellar reputation as a model company for which to work and one of the most highly regarded brands in the world, Google has had a very bad spring. In March alone, Google saw a federal judge deny a class-action settlement that would have allowed Google to have almost complete control over the price of electronic versions of most of the books of the 20th century; the European Union, responding to a Microsoft complaint that the search engine denies rivals access to important technologies, expanded its investigation into whether Google hurts competitors by downgrading their presence in search results; and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission punished Google for violating its own privacy policies.
Some academic authors and libraries breathed a sigh of relief when the judge recently blocked Google's settlement with big publishers and the Authors Guild to digitize books. Others bemoaned the delay. But few people really asked the question: How should we best regulate Google and search services generally?
The problem is that we have been fooled. The very idea that a company can actually pledge something like "Don't be evil," and that we believe it, has done us great harm.
At the 2009 Aspen Ideas Festival, the radio journalist Brian Lehrer asked Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google, about the potential for regulation: "Is there ever a point at which Google becomes so big that it's kind of scary and needs to be regulated as a public utility?" The meeting room filled with laughter before Schmidt could respond. So Lehrer, a knowledgeable and experienced interviewer, continued: "Seriously, literally, is there a point where you need to be regulated as a...