Google is Proving to be a Greedy and Evil Anti-competitor
Google promised before it went public to “not be evil.” But again and again, I am seeing signs that this monolith has decided that there is no limit to how much power they seek and it’s hitting up against public backlash that no, they can’t just have it all.
They started a social media platform to try and compete with Facebook, with its 800 million worldwide participants. Called ‘Google+’ it’s a lame attempt to capture yet another market that this tech company doesn’t understand. Most people go to their Google+ accounts and wonder why there are no new posts from their friends. So to try and boost their flagging endeavor the search giant made it mandatory that people who use Picasa, a very popular photo sharing site that Google owns, join Google+ if they want to view their friends photos. That’s evil. That’s unfair.
Today’s headline “Google Roils Travel” in the WSJ is a story I’ve been following for two years. I knew it would come down again, to a domination across the board, this time it’s travel. The company bought the biggest airfare search company, used by most of its competitors, called ITA software. Now, big surprise, when you do a search for airfare, every one of Google’s own new services comes up highest and wins the search competition.
It’s the same for many other businesses. Now when you search for a restaurant, or a club, the Google page for that business comes up, far ahead of any individual websites. They have created a gigantic series of pages that now end up being the top results in searches. So now they will make more money for these sites, and get the airline ticket commissions too.
When is too much too much? How many sectors of business does Google need to dominate and control? This is a case where the antitrust people should have said no. No, it’s not fair for one company, Google, to get all of the results and all of the cash. Enough is enough!