Larry Page – Technology Liberation Front https://techliberation.com Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:44:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 6772528 review of Ken Auletta’s Googled: The End of the World As We Know It https://techliberation.com/2009/12/13/review-of-ken-aulettas-googled-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/ https://techliberation.com/2009/12/13/review-of-ken-aulettas-googled-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:41:11 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=24150

Auletta GoogledI just finished Ken Auletta’s latest book, Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, and I highly recommend it. Auletta is an amazingly gifted journalist and knows how put together a hell of good story.  It helps in this case that he was granted unprecedented access to the Google team and their day-to-day workings at the Googleplex. I’m really shocked by the level of access he was granted to important meetings and officials–over 150 interviews with Googlers, including 11 with CEO Eric Schmidt and several with founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.  That’s impressive.

The book shares much in common with Randall Stross’s excellent Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know, which I reviewed here earlier this year.  Both books recount the history of Google from its early origins to present. And both survey a great deal of ground in terms of the challenges that Google faces as it matures and the policy issues that are relevant to the company (privacy, free speech, copyright law, etc).

What makes Auletta’s book unique is the way we taps his extensive “old media” world contacts and integrates such a diverse cast of characters into the narrative — Mel Karmazin (former Viacom, now Sirius XM), Bob Iger (Disney), Howard Stringer (Sony), Martin Sorrrell (WPP), Irwin Gotlieb (Group M), and even the Internet’s “inventor”–Al Gore!   Auletta interviews them or recounts stories about their interactions with Google to show the growing tensions being created by this disruptive company and its highly disruptive technologies.  There are some terrifically entertaining anecdotes in the book, but the bottom line is clear: Google has made a lot of enemies in a very short time.

Indeed, the book is as much about the decline of old media as it is about Google’s ascendancy.  What Auletta has done so brilliantly here is to tell their stories together and ask how much old media’s recent woes can be blamed on Google and digital disintermediation in general. “If Google is destroying or weakening old business models,” Auletta argues, “it is because the Internet inevitably destroys old ways of doing things, spurs ‘creative destruction.’ This does not mean that Google is not ambitious to grow, and will not grow at the expense of others. But the rewards, and the pain, are unavoidable,” he concludes. Google is essentially just the tip of a giant wave of digital disintermediation that is tearing through the media landscape, Auletta argues. But because it is the biggest and most visible part of this wave, it invites greater scrutiny and scorn.  And then there are more profound questions about Google and the digital disintermediators: “What we don’t know is whether the new digital distribution systems will generate sufficient revenue to adequately pay content providers.”  Auletta isn’t just talking about old media giants, but about content creators in general. It’s the “digital sharecropper” concern that Nick Carr has articulated in his book about cloud computing, The Big Switch. [reviewed here]  In the relentless pursuit of greater efficiencies, do digital disintermediators destroy the cross-subsidization methods that have traditionally funded the creation of news, information, and entertainment? If so, are we better off because older, “less efficient” ways of doing business are replaced with better ones. Or are we instead left with less high-quality journalism and entertainment because of funding streams are drying up or being siphoned off by the new digital disintermediators?

Those are heated question frequently debated by Internet optimists and pessimists. It’s a great debate, and one that will no doubt continue to rage for many years to come. The problem for Google — as the interviews Auletta conducts with others in the book makes clear — is that it will increasingly become the scapegoat for every problem under the digital sun. “To blame Google is to prescribe a cure from the wrong illness,” Auletta notes.  Nonetheless, as the biggest and most visible of the digital disruptors, it’s clear the company will have a target on its back for many years to come.

Worse yet for Google, Aulleta states, is that the company is “waking the government bear,” not just because of its growing size but also because of the sheer amount of information it collects and puts at the world’s disposal.  Privacy, child safety, defamation, and copyright are just a few of the concerns raised by Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  Google has gone to great pains to address these concerns, but it’s unlikely to ever be enough to satisfy government officials, who will be fielding increasing complaints from disgruntled competitors and activist groups at the same time.

These concerns could play into the hands of those who think antitrust action against Google is needed. Indeed, I fear that’s on the way given the myopia of Washington. As I pointed out in my lengthy review of Gary Reback’s ode to antitrust regulation, Free the Market: Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive, the static competition, fixed-pie mindset that rules Washington leads many to support antitrust crusades against the tech giants of the day.  In the 70s it was IBM. In the 90s it was Microsoft.  In the next decade it will likely be Google.

“Today, Google appears impregnable,” Auletta notes, “But a decade ago so did AOL, and so did the combination of AOL Time Warner.”  Indeed, I have written extensively about that deal and many others that critics predicted would bring on a techno-apocalypse.  Of course, we know how the story ended in those cases. Markets and technologies evolved while the old giants rested on their laurels. Dynamic competition and innovation are the rule; the static mindset crowd that pretends today’s giants are the end of the story just don’t have history on their side.

But that doesn’t mean Google will be able to avoid a massive regulatory onslaught. In fact, I have pending bets going right now with several friends that, before the Obama Administration leaves office, it will launch the biggest, most costly antitrust jihad in U.S. history against Google.  I can’t tell you how much I am hoping to lose those bets.

P.S. I have enjoyed many of Auletta’s earlier articles and books, especially Backstory: Inside the Business of News (2003),  but I highly recommend that you check out the latest essay he posted on his blog about “Media Maxims.”  Outstanding insights.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2009/12/13/review-of-ken-aulettas-googled-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/feed/ 26 24150 What #googlefail Tells Us About Markets https://techliberation.com/2009/05/18/what-googlefail-tells-us-about-markets/ https://techliberation.com/2009/05/18/what-googlefail-tells-us-about-markets/#comments Mon, 18 May 2009 21:51:23 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=18397

Google recently experienced failures of its core services — a phenomenon that quickly spawned the hashtag “googlefail” on the popular social networking platform Twitter.  These failures show that a company once thought of as the odds-on favorite for dominating the global market in all things web — the monolith of Mountain View — is looking more and more like a search-only player.

Big firms consistently fail to use their “market dominance” to take over adjacent markets, something that should give antitrust warriors in the Obama administration reason for pause.  The renewed call for tough antitrust enforcement comes at a time when Google, a poster-child for market dominance, simply can’t leverage its position at all.

Google Apps Google’s most recent outages, along with past outages of Google’s “GMail” email service, show that Google is not yet in a position to use its popularity in search to take on the likes of Microsoft Office and other productivity suites.  Only last year outlets such as USA Today, ABC News, and PC World speculated that we may see a war between the GooglePlex and Redmond over the productivity space.  Continued outages, not to mention the failure to improve Google Apps functionality, makes this seem very unlikely today. #dominancefail

Streaming Video YouTube was also part of today’s #googlefail.  When Google bought YouTube in 2006 the purchase had to be approved by the FTC.  Looking back, this seems just silly.  Not only has YouTube failed to become a money-making behemoth, it’s failed to make a money at all.  It seems clear now that while consumers absorb a lot of YouTube clips, the real money — the only money — is in premium content such as Hulu’s ad-supported video, iTunes’s piecemeal sales, or Netflix’s  subscription model.  While Hulu’s profitability is unknown, none of these competing video sites seem to be as incredible a loss-leader as YouTube.  The FTC may have approved the Google-YouTube merger more quickly had it known YouTube would turn into a video money pit — one that could be seen as a competitive disadvantage to Google. #dominancefail

Smart Phones While not part of the recent #googlefail problems, the G1 phone has failed to become a strong competitor to RIM’s Blackberry line or the iPhone.  Granted, RIM has been around for years and the iPhone has been on the market for nearly two full years, yet the G1 has still experienced dismal sales considering Google’s considerable clout and credit with the tech set.  Piper Jaffrey projects that iPhone sales will top 45 million units this year.  Compare that to the G1 — heralded as the first of many phones using Google’s Android operating system — which is trailing at a distant 5th in the smart phone sales rankings. #dominancefail

Google’s failures aren’t the result of failings specific to Google, but rather evidence that companies that become excellent in one field aren’t necessarily capable of achieving excellence in another.  Rewiring even a portion of a multi-billion dollar company to provide a totally new product is a near impossible task.  The incentive structures, hiring practices, corporate culture and myriad other factors necessary to be world-class in one endeavor may be very different for another.  In short, market advantage is not much of an advantage in today’s economy, but instead can prove to be an incredible hindrance to expanding into new markets.

This is especially true in the tech industry where barriers to entry are low, investor eagerness is high, and new competitive spaces are opening constantly.  This is why big players emerge so quickly — like Google — and fade so fast.  Think AOL, AltaVista, Compuserve, etc.

So, rather than focus on how to punish big players in a given market, the Obama administration should focus on how to free up capital markets to allow money to flow to the best technologies so that competition remains vibrant.  Repealing onerous regulations like Sarbanes Oxley that make it harder for companies to go public would be a good start.  Refraining from locking-up capital markets further by layering on morepseudo-accountability rules is also key.  Additionally, as the Cato Institute’s Jim Powell points out, allowing venture capitalists to do their jobs — something Mr. Obama’s budget discourages — is key for competition and furthering innovation.

If any additional evidence is needed that big firms don’t always stay big and can even fail, members of the administration need only visit Google News…if it’s up.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2009/05/18/what-googlefail-tells-us-about-markets/feed/ 10 18397 White Spaces Battle Heats Up as Broadcast Networks Seek ‘Time Out’ https://techliberation.com/2008/10/23/white-spaces-battle-heats-up-as-broadcast-networks-seek-%e2%80%98time-out%e2%80%99/ https://techliberation.com/2008/10/23/white-spaces-battle-heats-up-as-broadcast-networks-seek-%e2%80%98time-out%e2%80%99/#comments Fri, 24 Oct 2008 02:03:22 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=13438

Over at DrewClark.com, earlier today I reported today that television networks – which in recent years have had a strained relationship with local broadcasters on a variety of fronts – joined with the National Association of Broadcasters in calling for a time out on the politically simmering issue of “white spaces.” Here’s the start of the story, and you can read the full post at DrewClark.com

WASHINGTON, October 23 – The top executives of the four major broadcast networks on Thursday urged the head of the Federal Communications Commission to delay a vote on a politically simmering issue that pits broadcasters against Google and high-tech executives.

In the letter, the CEOs of CBS Corp., NBC Universal and Walt Disney, and the chief operating officer of News Corp., urge that the FCC exercise caution before taking irreparable action with regard to the vacant television channels known as “white spaces.”

Google and the other technology executives, including Microsoft, Motorola, Philips and others, want the FCC to authorize electronic devices that capable of transmitting internet signals over vacant television bands.

The network executives – CBS’s Leslie Moonves, Disney’s Robert Iger, NBC’s Jeffrey Zucker and Peter Chernin of News Corp. – want a time out.

They join their local broadcasting colleagues, as well as manufacturers and users of wireless microphones, like the National Football League and Boadway theater owners, who have been actively lobbying the issue.

[…]

Read the rest of the story at my blog, DrewClark.com – The Politics of Telecom, Media and Technology

]]> https://techliberation.com/2008/10/23/white-spaces-battle-heats-up-as-broadcast-networks-seek-%e2%80%98time-out%e2%80%99/feed/ 13 13438 Googlephobia: Part 5 – Google at Ten & Its Competition https://techliberation.com/2008/09/11/googlephobia-part-5-google-at-ten-its-competition/ https://techliberation.com/2008/09/11/googlephobia-part-5-google-at-ten-its-competition/#respond Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:30:51 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=12657

By Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer

As we noted in our intro to this ongoing series, Google’s tenth anniversary has passed with Googlephobia reaching new heights of hysteria.

But is Google really too big and dangerous, or are people just too lazy to find other alternatives to each of the wonderful services that Google offers?  If one is truly paranoid about the firm’s supposed dominance, it doesn’t take much effort to live a Google-free life. To prove it, we set out to find alternatives to each of the services that Google provides.  After awhile, we got a little tired of compiling alternatives in each category and just provided links for the additional choices at your disposal.  It’s tough to see what the fuss is about with the cornucopia of choices at our disposal.  If you don’t like Google, then just don’t use it or any of its services.  The choice is yours.

In each case, we’ve listed Google first, even though Google may not be the market leader ( e.g., Google’s relatively unknown social network Orkut).

Search Engines

eMail

Encyclopedia

Instant Messaging

Web Browsers

Social Networks

Mapping

Mobile Search / Portal Services

Video Hosting

Photohosting

Document / Spreadsheet Creation

Online File Storage

Blog hosting services

RSS blog feed aggregators

WebClipping Services

News Aggregators

Calendar Services

]]> https://techliberation.com/2008/09/11/googlephobia-part-5-google-at-ten-its-competition/feed/ 0 12657 Googlephobia: The Series https://techliberation.com/2008/09/11/googlephobia-the-series/ https://techliberation.com/2008/09/11/googlephobia-the-series/#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:51:49 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=12534

By Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer as part of an ongoing series

With Google celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, many panicky pundits are using the occasion to claim that Google has become the Great “Satan” of the Internet.  Nick Carr wonders what the future holds for “The OmniGoogle.” The normally level-headed Mike Malone worries that Google is “turning into Big Brother.”  And Washington Post’s Rob Dubbin says that he can’t escape Google’s “tentacles,” even for just 24 hours.  Meanwhile, speculation abounds that the Justice Department is preparing a major antitrust lawsuit against Google concerning its advertising partnership with Yahoo! or perhaps even a broader suit concerning Google’s “dominance” of online advertising generally.

Carr quotes Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s now-famous 2003 interview:

I think people tend to exaggerate Google’s significance in both directions.  Some say Google is God.  Others say Google is Satan.  But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines, unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine. People come to Google because they choose to.  We don’t trick them.

In the last five years, Google has become far more than just a search engine.  As Google’s suite of suite of complementary products continues to grow, so too does the specter of Google as an all-knowing and therefore all-powerful economic colossus.  Yet Google isn’t even close to being the sort of nefarious monopolist out to destroy user privacy at every turn, as some seem to imply—if not exclaim.  Indeed, in our view, the Net is overall a far better place because of the existence of Google and the many free services it provides consumers.

Our point is not that Google should be immune from criticism.  Indeed, healthy criticism of corporate actions plays a vital role in the free market by disciplining corporate policies and behavior—often thus providing an effective alternative to government regulation.  This is particularly important in the area of consumer privacy protection, as demonstrated by Google’s quick response to public concern about its Chrome EULA.

We hold no brief for Google and our aim is not to be Google apologists.  In fact, we’ve had more than a few run-ins with Google on many important policy issues in the past ( e.g., on net neutrality, spectrum policy, and the need for “baseline Federal privacy legislation”) and will likely continue to do so in the future.  We are always willing to engage serious, rational discussions about other policy issues involving Google, such as concerns about its alleged market power, but it seems to us that the hysteria about Google’s supposed dominance of the Internet is clouding rational discussion of the policy issues raised by Google, its innovations and its success.  Indeed, the creeping paranoia about all things Google-related that is most evident throughout the blogosphere (but that reaches far beyond it) has produced an environment that resembles nothing so much as a lynch mob:  Angry, short-tempered, out for corporate blood, and unwilling to engage in reasoned discussion.

Gates_of_BorgThe specter of Google’s market power driving—and confusing—so many of today’s Internet policy debates is reminiscent of the previous generation of conspiracy theories about how Microsoft, like the Borg (perhaps sci-fi’s scariest villains), would assimilate all in its path—forever controlling the digital revolution.  We don’t want Google to become the victim of the same regulatory & antitrust ordeal that Microsoft has endured over the past decade, with the kind of hysterical claims of Chicken Little-ism that drove a ten-year crusade against Microsoft.  Short-sighted, heavy-handed government intervention can cripple a creative company while doing little to actually benefit consumers because regulators cannot keep pace with technological change—perhaps the only constant fact in the every-changing digital world.

Of course, like all temporal things, Microsoft’s seemingly permanent “monopoly” has faded, and the bulk of the criticism it once faced has shifted focus to Google.  Microsoft continues to be the subject of many unfair attacks because of its success (a/k/a “dominance”) in the OS, office product, and browser markets.  Other companies have experienced similar attacks on a smaller scale:  Facebook and the once-angelic Apple have both been subject to increasing criticism for their success in certain sectors of the digital economy, customer complaints about openness ( e.g., “locked” devices or portability of social networking data) and privacy policies.  The hysteria surrounding Google is not unique in kind, yet it is clear that the mantle of “Great (digital) Satan” has clearly passed from Microsoft to Google.

Thus, we have decided to start a new series of essays on “Googlephobia” (a term that seems to have taken off in the spring of 2005, when the French government seriously proposed creating its own alternative to the Google search engine).  We’ve already penned a few essays on the topic here (as have a number of our TLF colleagues) and, therefore, our next installment in the series will be #5—in which we will outline the many competitors to Google’s many products.

But here are a few of our past essays on the topic, which clearly belong on the list even though they weren’t part of a series at the time:

And here’s an oldie on the same topic:

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