Google's Criticized Monopoly

As a dominant search engine, Google has revolutionized our culture and our habits as consumers. It also generates controversies each time it decides to expand its business or creates doubt regarding its respect for privacy, intellectual property and free press.

This week Google gained attention from those who accuse it of being a greedy monopoly after offering $12.5 billion to Motorola Wireless, the smartphone manufacturer. Google will need to defend this purchase to the regulatory bodies. But first, it will need to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee in a hearing scheduled for September 15, when they will be scrutinized based on their alleged unfair commercial and intellectual practices that have already resulted in hundreds of lawsuits due to censorship, invasion of privacy and copyright violation.

I find it hard to believe that Google can be accused of being a monopoly, despite all the projects that had to come to a standstill following legal agreements. Some examples of this are the disputes between the Authors Guild over the digitization of books or the publication of maps illustrating military encampments in war zones. Although the case with Motorola may have seemed to be a monopolistic expansion, in reality it dealt with the purchase of patents and was a strategic move forward for Google to manufacture its Android smartphone to compete with Apple, Microsoft and RIM. In fact, Google’s Android operating system is open source and it can be used by any phone manufacturer, which is the way that 39 other companies are currently doing it.

Since its inception in 1996 and with the goal in mind to “organize the world’s information and make it accessible and universally useful,” Google’s evolution has shown its rate of success and how it competes against existing entities like Internet Explorer and Firefox. Google has the power to acquire companies that in the blink of an eye make them leaders, as is the case with YouTube. It creates new services that help the spread of information, such as Google Maps. It invents products, such as the unique Chromebook personal computer, which uses “cloud” computing. Moreover, Google experiments with new gadgets like Google TV and recently launched Google+ (the social network prepared to compete with Facebook).

Even though it conceded to the Chinese government’s demands to block dissidents and information about Tibet, as far as censorship is concerned, Google has managed to unmask dictatorships and has served to expose much censored and unknown information.

In Argentina this past week, a court order was issued that forced Internet providers to block millions of blogs from their Blogger platform because the government considers these to be involved in the dissemination of classified information that concerns the nation.

However, among Google’s most serious deficiencies are the secondary effects of its digital sophistication that directly affect the right to privacy. Users’ personal information is left at the mercy of hackers, and they are forced to act in a certain way by governments who are basing themselves on anti-terrorist regulations similar to those outlined in the United States PATRIOT Act.

Google’s most vicious practices, however, are related to copyright. Newspaper editors as far as Berlin, New York and Bogotá have gathered to prevent their content from being accessed free of charge on the Internet.

Perhaps some of Google’s practices can be criticized; however, it would be unfair not to value the creation of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have based their success on competition and ongoing innovation that has revolutionized the information technology industry and has made the world a smaller place. If all of this is the definition of a monopoly, then this a healthy practice. In fact, mankind is better off with Google than without it.