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Posted by Mark Vanderbeeken | 5 Apr 2009
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The launch of Google StreetView in the UK, with photos that are much more detailed than those in the US, has touched a raw nerve, and is now creating a backlash for the company as a whole.
Here is an excerpt from a much commented Observer piece by Henry Porter:
"Despite its diversification, Google is in the final analysis a parasite that creates nothing, merely offering little aggregation, lists and the ordering of information generated by people who have invested their capital, skill and time. On the back of the labour of others it makes vast advertising revenues - in the final quarter of last year its revenues were $5.7bn, and it currently sits on a cash pile of $8.6bn. Its monopolistic tendencies took an extra twist this weekend with rumours that it may buy the micro-blogging site Twitter and its plans - contested by academics - to scan a vast library of books that are out of print but still in copyright."
A contribution by John Lanchester of the London Review of Books is less polemic, but also he is concerned about the "utopian/dystopian issue [which] is a constant theme with Google's services" and is not amused by "how very free [the company] is with other people's intellectual property, while being highly protective of its own."
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Comments
Since your site has Google ads, I'm sure you've seen the new "directed" advertising program that goes into effect in four days. Adsense ads will be based on the tracking of the visitor's browsing habits, rather than related content.
I am amazed at the paranoia about Google, especially in England. Henry Porter's Op-Ed in the Observer shows him for the Luddite that he is. The world is changing, but people like Porter steadfastly are betting on a declining business model. Even Warren Buffett, well known for his disregard for technology could see that the business model of newspapers would be threatened by the Internet, and wondered how papers as we know (or knew) them would remain profitable. To see people like Porter rail against Google is to see someone who clearly doesn't get it. He is akin to a caveman yelling at an advancing ice sheet.
Truth be told, there is nothing illegal about Google street view. The company has always complied and allowed people to opt-out. It's not that technology is evil, as misguided people like Porter claim. Technology does not decide. Rather, the same technology that can enable business could equally be dangerous when used by terrorists, for example. And stopping something such as Google Maps could do far more harm than good.
Google is disruptive, but I wondered years ago why newspapers or Yellow Pages publishers did not see the changes coming. The record industry took a very wrongheaded approach to digital music, choosing to overcharge or punish customers. It was not until Steve Jobs showed what the iTunes Store could do that the situation was corrected for consumers, but record companies totally blew their chance at controlling electronic music distribution, to Apple's gain. (Truth be told, Apple deserves to be rewarded to their imaginative approach to the problem.) And what are the record companies doing today, now that it's dawned on them that they lost their opportunity? Why, forcing Apple and other music distributors to raise prices. Stupid.
Google has grown in the manner that it has because it solves problems for millions of businesses and people every day. That newspapers did not see this coming is sad, but it can be changed. Doing so will require newspapers changing their business model with the times, and realizing that their greatest asset is information and the means to report it, not the printing press. Instead of fighting Google, they should work closely with them. And newspapers should couple with companies like Apple to perfect micropayments and subscriptions, something for which they have utterly failed to date.
As for the British people terrified of Google, please know that your fears are unfounded. If someone wants to break into a home, they will do so regardless of whether Google ever existed or not. The benefits of what Google is doing with street view far outweigh any negative.