Different tech companies pose different kinds of threats. I’m focused here on Google, which I’ve been studying for more than six years through both experimental research and monitoring projects. (Google is well aware of my work and not entirely happy with me. The company did not respond to requests for comment.)
Google is especially worrisome because it has maintained an unopposed monopoly on search worldwide for nearly a decade. It controls 92 percent of search, with the next largest competitor, Microsoft’s Bing, drawing only 2.5%.
Fortunately, there is a simple way to end the company’s monopoly without breaking up its search engine, and that is to turn its “index” — the mammoth and ever-growing database it maintains of internet content — into a kind of public commons.
There is precedent for this both in law and in Google’s business practices. When private ownership of essential resources and services—water, electricity, telecommunications, and so on — no longer serves the public interest, governments often step in to control them.
An interesting idea, certainly one worthy of further discussion.
Doesn’t Google already share its index with everyone in the world? Yes, but only for single searches. I’m talking about requiring Google to share its entire index with outside entities — businesses, nonprofit organizations, even individuals — through what programmers call an application programming interface, or API.
Perhaps we’d all be better off if our laws caught up with the times and required companies like Google to make certain information available through APIs, just as public agencies must provide records in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.