Reading 2

Unit 8- Reading 2

Page 121

Google controversies

When Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin began their quest for the perfect search engine at Stanford University in the mid 1990s, they had a lofty goal—to make all the information in the world available online for free.

Within a few years, they had achieved much of that goal and were able to bring vast amounts of information to anyone with access to the Internet. “Google it” is now a common phrase in many of the world’s languages.

Google has an unusual company motto: Don’t be evil.

Most people familiar with Page and Brin’s achievements would likely agree that the two have improved the world and lived up to that motto. But Google’s astounding rise from a start-up company working out of a garage to one of the most recognized brand names in the world has naturally attracted scrutiny. And there are many who have raised questions about the ethics and legality of Google’s business practices.

One early complaint was “click fraud.” Advertisers make bids to place ads along the top and

right-hand sides of Google search result pages. When potential customers click on an ad, Google collects a fee ranging from a few pennies to $30 or more, depending on how high the bidding went. Advertisers worry that dishonest businesses click on a competitor’s ad to drive up their advertising costs.

Non-Google websites can also cheat advertisers. To extend its advertising reach, Google allows websites to display Google ads and split the fee when a visitor clicks on an ad. Google prohibits website owners from clicking on an ad they host, but there is still room for mischief if a website owner uses different IP addresses to make fraudulent clicks.

Google obviously wants advertisers to continue buying ads and recognizes that advertisers will need to lower their bids in order to offset losses due to click fraud. To reduce complaints, Google has continually improved its ability to spot fraudulent clicks and remove them before they are charged to the advertiser. But critics contended that Google did not make a big enough effort to police click fraud and made huge profits from these clicks.

The most complicated issue from a legal standpoint is copyright law. In the United States, for example, any book published after 1923 is protected by copyright laws. Printing and distributing copies of the work requires permission of the copyright owner, and copyright owners often demand a royalty payment. In 2004, Google began scanning and digitizing millions of books in order to host them online in a searchable format.

The value of such an enterprise is undisputed. Scholars will have easy access to rare books and all books will be forever in print. Many authors believe Google Books will provide free publicity and a new avenue for sales. But others worry that Google will use their works without paying royalties.

Google has addressed this fear by touting Google Books as a book marketing program, in which authors sell their works, not an online library. Google also allows authors to remove their books from Google Book Search if they wish. Despite these assurances, the legal challenges from authors and publishers continue.

Google’s acquisition in October 2006 of YouTube, the popular Internet video download site, also raised unresolved copyright issues that should keep courts around the world busy for years to come.

Many of Google’s services raise privacy Issues. Gmail, Google’s free email service, pays for itself by inserting click-through ads into emails that Gmail account holders receive.

To target the ads toward the interests of the user, Google analyzes the content of incoming email to search for keywords that will trigger the ads. If these were generic ads placed in all emails automatically, few would complain. But scanning content strikes some as an invasion of privacy.

Google defends the practice by saying that the emails are only read by computers, not people, for the purpose of ad placement and that many email services do the same thing in order to detect spam. Critics, however, feel Google should not analyze the email from non-Gmail accounts unless it gets the sender’s permission first.

An even bigger privacy surprise for Google involved reaction to Google Street View.

Tied to its Googte Earth and Google Maps services, Street View hopes to provide 360° photographs of every street in the world. Who could object to such an ambitious and amazing undertaking? Google soon found out when entire countries as well as individual citizens complained. Many people simply did not want to be in these pictures. Google naturally sought a technological solution— creating software algorithms that blur faces and car license plates.

Several countries worried about security threats if bad guys had access to free pictures of every building.

Another fear is that governments can use Googte to invade privacy. Google has huge data collections that it uses to improve its searches and select ads. This information could potentially be seized by governments and analyzed at relatively little cost. In the

past, collecting data on, let’s say, people who had read or purchased a controversial book would require an army of investigators to search through library records and bookstore sales. It is hard to imagine a government even bothering. But data mining through a single database could quickly yield leads if Google has access to library records and has copies of emails sent between online booksellers and customers.

As Google extended the scope of its operations overseas, questions concerning freedom of speech arose. In its early days, Google saw itself as operating outside of government control and offering an unrestricted freedom in finding information. But when Google looked to expand its Web services into China, Google faced its first decision with major political implications. Could Google accept restrictions imposed on political content by the Chinese government without compromising its values?

Google did not want to lose the Chinese market and agreed to China’s terms. It hoped to lessen criticism by better clarifying the meaning of its noble “Don’t be evil” principle. As CEO Eric Schmidt tells it, Google used an “evil scale” to weigh its decision. Living with the Chinese government’s restrictions is less evil than not serving Chinese users at all. And less profitable, critics might add.

Google’s decision led to bad press around the world and requests for hearings in the U.S. Congress. In 2010, controversy over apparent government hacking of Google accounts within China prompted Google to reduce significantly its presence in China. Google ended up losing most of the Chinese market while tarnishing its image.

Despite these legal and ethical issues, Google remains an extremely popular company. After all.

most of its services are free, and the public appreciates the company’s engineering genius. Yet some inside Google complain that a company that always looked ahead to see how it could improve the world has, to quote a Google engineer, started “chasing taillights.”

Google, it seems, did not foresee the rise of online social networks such as Facebook or Linkedln and worries these services will draw advertising revenue away from its search engine. Google wants to be in that market, but can it do so without chasing taillights?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin want to use Google’s immense resources and talents to design better, more profitable products, but others worry that the company will become self-protective and survive by crushing or absorbing innovative competitors. And that, they warn, would be…evil.