Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
As Google turns 20, questions are raised on its power, effect
SAN FRANCISCO — Twenty years after Larry Page and Sergey Brin set out to organize all of the Internet’s information, the search engine they named Google has morphed into a dominating force in smartphones, online video, email, maps and much more.
That resounding success now has regulators and lawmakers around the world questioning whether the company has become too powerful as its ubiquitous services vacuum up sensitive information about billions of people hooked on its products.
Google’s search engine remains entrenched as the Internet’s main gateway, and its digital advertising business is on pace to generate about $110 billion in revenue this year. Much of that revenue now flows through Google’s Android operating system, which powers 80 percent of the world’s smartphones. Google also runs the biggest video site in YouTube, the most popular Web browser in Chrome, the top email service in Gmail and the maps
that most people use to get around.
Not bad for a company that started 20 years ago Friday with an initial investment of $100,000. Google and its sibling companies operating under the umbrella of Alphabet Inc. are now worth $800 billion.
Although Google wouldn’t comment for this story, the company has repeatedly pointed out that its mostly free products are so widely used because people like them.
Google’s success often draws comparisons with Microsoft.
By 1998, the year Google started, U.S. regulators had become so concerned about Microsoft’s power through its Windows operating system that they had begun to explore a forced breakup. Although Microsoft remained intact, the multiyear battle with the U.S. government and other disputes with European regulators hobbled and distracted Microsoft, helping to propel the rise of Google and Apple.
Google is now confronting the same potential fate.
“Google is in the government’s cross hairs,” said Ken
Auletta, who was given inside access to the company while writing his 2009 book, Googled: The End of the World As We
Know It. “This company once had a certain glow to it, but it is losing its halo.”
Just this past week, Google raised hackles in Congress by refusing to send Page or its current Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai to a hearing on Russian manipulation of Internet services to sway U.S. elections. Instead of Page or Pichai, Google sent Kent Walker, senior vice president and general counsel of Google.
Senators from both major parties tore into Google on Wednesday, and staff members on the Senate Intelligence Committee set up an empty chair to represent Google’s absence from the hearing and placed it next to Facebook and Twitter executives, who vowed to fight against foreign agents’ manipulating their social media platforms.
“It’s an unsustainable approach for Google,” said Daniel Schuman, policy director at Demand Progress, a nonprofit group that lobbies on issues related to the Internet, civil liberties and government change. “They will not reap long-term benefits from being rude or not engaging with Congress.”
Google appeared to miscalculate legislative frustration even though it has a growing core of advocates seeking influence among legislators. Alphabet spent $11 million on lobbying through late July, says OpenSecrets, a group that tallies spending on lobbying.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee’s ranking member, said Google has much to answer for in regard to vulnerabilities on its platforms, such as why the company’s popular search engine “continues to have problems surfacing absurd conspiracies” and how Russian agents promoted divisive videos on the company’s YouTube platform.
“Given its size and influence, I would have thought the leadership at Google would have wanted to demonstrate how seriously it takes these challenges and to actually take a leadership role in this discussion,” Warner said.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., cast the tech giant as more loyal to its global business interests than to its homeland. He said that Google recently terminated a program with the Pentagon on artificial intelligence while cooperating with companies in China on similar plans in a move that would “privilege a hostile foreign power over the United States.”
“Credible reports suggest that they are working to develop a new search engine that would satisfy the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship standards,” Cotton said.
The European Commission already has imposed fines totaling $7.8 billion after concluding the company had unfairly used its search engine to highlight its own services and illegally bundled together its products in Android.
Google has denied any wrongdoing, but that hasn’t discouraged European regulators from looking into other possible abuses. President Donald Trump and some U.S. regulators are now raising the possibility of opening new investigations into Google’s business and privacy practices five years after the Federal Trade Commission decided the company was mostly complying with the laws.
It all paints a picture of a company that may spend the next decade fighting to protect the empire it built during its first two decades.