Hey everyone... I'm hoping the maturity I've seen on this board the last year will keep this topic from spiraling too fast. I suspect that it will probably get locked, and I encourage that, actually. My intent is simply to inform people about what Google is doing, not discuss the topics in it, and talk about whether it's ok or not.
When a company is half or more of the countries source for searching, emails, and to a lesser extent texts & other things... do they really have the right to try an influence our election outcomes? When does a private company start being responsible to the public as a whole - do they ever? It's easy to side with them if they're on your side of a political agenda, but that may not be the case tomorrow - is that ok?
Here's the link, I don't think it'll inject itself into the media thing.
Personally I think once a company gets so large and integrated it needs to come to some terms as a public entity. It might be private, but it may as well also be considered a utility at some point. The internet is one of those things, we can't really do without it in the modern world - so I think that companies providing it should be regulated to not be skeezy scum bags who throttle you, misrepresent what you get, sell your information, prioritize anything but government traffic, etc... But I'm not sure where to land on the unanimous search and email system of the world. People can choose something else, but for most purposes Google has vastly out competed everyone else. The company does an amazing job of a plethora of things, there is no doubt, so where should a line be draw - should it? - between their dominance as a private company and the health of our countries integrity for checks, balances, democracy, so forth?
When a company is half or more of the countries source for searching, emails, and to a lesser extent texts & other things... do they really have the right to try an influence our election outcomes? When does a private company start being responsible to the public as a whole - do they ever? It's easy to side with them if they're on your side of a political agenda, but that may not be the case tomorrow - is that ok?
Here's the link, I don't think it'll inject itself into the media thing.
Personally I think once a company gets so large and integrated it needs to come to some terms as a public entity. It might be private, but it may as well also be considered a utility at some point. The internet is one of those things, we can't really do without it in the modern world - so I think that companies providing it should be regulated to not be skeezy scum bags who throttle you, misrepresent what you get, sell your information, prioritize anything but government traffic, etc... But I'm not sure where to land on the unanimous search and email system of the world. People can choose something else, but for most purposes Google has vastly out competed everyone else. The company does an amazing job of a plethora of things, there is no doubt, so where should a line be draw - should it? - between their dominance as a private company and the health of our countries integrity for checks, balances, democracy, so forth?