Target: Google

Remember the Clinton administration's hounding of Microsoft? Looks like the Bush administration has its eye on Google. This article is from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Click on the title for the whole article.

Target: Google

by William Anderson

[Posted on Tuesday, December 13, 2005] [To receive the Daily Article in your inbox, go to email services, and tell others too!]

It was only a decade ago that the Clinton Administration had decided that Microsoft was an Enemy of the People and tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to litigate the company into oblivion. While the principals in that set of lawsuits have gone on to other things, the "anti-monopoly" propaganda machines are turning their sights elsewhere. It seems that Google, the powerful and innovative Internet search engine, now enjoys the title of "Most Hated Company."

Now, if this were an article criticizing the 6.7 million "Hate Google" links that have sprung up (yes, you can use Google to find anti-Google sites ), it would be quite short. Those people who don't like Google can use Alta Vista, Yahoo, or some other search engine, and that should be the end of it. And if they wish to spend a good part of their day blasting Google on blogs or in emails, that is their business.

Google is no longer just a search engine of course. It offers premium email, instant messageing with voice, online books and media, maps and directions, web-use analytics, advertising programs, among a hundred other fast-changing, super-innovative ideas. For years now, it has been on the cutting edge, and the company shows no sign of slowing down. The competition seems constantly on the defensive. Many people believe that if the Windows OS is ever taken down a peg or two, it will be because of some Google innovation.

Its success is driven entirely by the consumer's evaluation of its quality. Google innovates but it is the market that renders the verdict.

When it comes to the law, however, I fear that we are not at the end, but rather the beginning, and the people at Google should be worried. If Microsoft's error was not being politically astute when the Clinton Administration took aim at the software company, then perhaps Google's big "mistake" is being aligned closely with the political party that happens to be out of power.

According to CNN, 98 percent of political contributions from Google employees went to candidates who were Democrats, and Google's search policies are decidedly left-wing. (For example, Google refused to run an advertisement for Candice E. Jackson's book Their Lives, which is critical of Bill Clinton's behavior toward women.)

In the libertarian view of things, Google has (and should have) the right to run those things they wish to run and extend its right of refusal to whatever it chooses. The politics of Google, its CEO, and its employees are irrelevant in the larger scheme of things and are private matters. However, politicians are not the sort of people to permit individuals to live and work as their conscience dictates, and I would not be surprised if the Bush Administration decides to use antitrust law (a term that in my view is an oxymoron) to punish the company.

Granted, the suit would have no legal or economic merit (although one can say that about any antitrust case), but searching 90-year-old grandmothers in wheelchairs who are trying to board planes has no merit, either, yet the government does it.

The vindictiveness against Google stems from the fact that people choose to use that particular search engine more than they do other searchers. Other people don't like the way that Google ranks websites, which means that a site that someone may think is the Most Important Website in the World is buried deep among the many other sites on the same subject.

But the biggest current complaint against Google is that it is just "too big." We hear things like "Google controls 80 percent of the market" for search engines, yet that statement is nonsense. Google does not "control" anything on the Internet. People have to choose to avail themselves of Google's services. No one is forced to use the Internet at all and, thus, can avoid Google altogether if that is their choice.

If the problem is that Google is just too big, then why not take a look at the size of our government? I think we could use a little anti-trust protection from a large and overbearing bureaucracy.

---Katie