When the internet started to take off in 1994 and particularly when Google launched their search engine in 1998, the internet was seen as liberating technology.
The internet enabled real freedom of information. People could unite and publish what they wanted and the disconnectedness was amazing; let alone the sheer access of information that anyone could find.
You could study and learn anything from anywhere in the world and communication was starting be to truly international with the advent of email messaging.
Roll on more than twenty years and things are a little bit different! The internet is what we call in business a mature market. At the beginning of a new technology or product growth, an emerging market, there are often many small fast growing companies competing to be the dominant provider.
In the 90’s there were more than ten different search engines which some of you will remember: HotBot, Yahoo, Excite, Webcrawler, Lycos, Infoseek, and OpenText, to name a few.
It was a much better level playing field, now don’t get me wrong, Google was pissibly the best search engine at the time, so you could say “the best man won” as it were.
Google was the darling of the “geek shall inherit the earth” generation, (and how true were those prosaic words spoken in 1997 by a Zdnet publisher…) – who to quote their brand message of the new millennium: “do no evil”…
Of course, governments just let them pay NO TAX around the world while they own in the region of 40% of each countries advertising spend share! Governments just let them do this without any “kick back” of course..
Google’s advertising revenue in the US was $39.9 BILLION in 2018 and pay no tax???
Google also own a 30% stake in Facebook, and in the US, Facebook command an impressive 19.6% share in the advertising revenue, to the tune of $21 BILLION in 2018.
Collectively, in the US, Google and Facebook own a 60% share in the national advertising spend, some $60 BILLION PER YEAR AND GROWING!!!
THATS $182.9 per adult in the USA PER YEAR!!!! Or $15 a month.
$15 a month is what Google should be giving back to the people EVERY YEAR, especially people who are poor and starving…
Add this to the fact that Google and Facebook combined have more data on you than you have of yourself. Of course, this wouldn’t get into government hands, as rightful tax paying companies.
Thats right, Google and Facebook probably know more about your than you know about yourself, and they have kept all that data on you, while they earn a few hundred dollars of you every year!!!
Dylan Curran, writing a article posted on the Guardian website in March 2018 requested from Google to download all the data they had on him, it was 5.5GB approximately 3 million Word documents!!
Do you have this much on your computer of your own documents?
Facebook have approximately the equivalent of 400,000 word documents of data about YOU.
Guardian Article here.
This is not even including YOUTUBE which of course Google has a large share…
What is happening to all of this data and billions of dollars in revenue, where is it all going?? And Google pays no tax to support the communities it takes all their advertising revenue and personal data from??
What can be done with all this personal data, thousands of your likes, shares, event visits, friend connection, advertising clicks, picture uploads and physical positions and movements of where you go every day from every person in the whole world is absolutely mind boggling and very dangerous…
NOW TELL ME GOOGLE DOES NO EVIL???
So lets just sum this up, Google has squeezed out virtually all other means of information transference between people, controls everything you look for, knows everywhere you go AND earns $182 from you on average per year for the trouble…
Meanwhile, Facebook, of which Google owns a 30% share, knows all your friends, all the events you go to, has pictures of you from the last ten years, knows all your “likes”, can have access to your microphone and camera – I’m sure you’ve heard of Facebook delivering an advert about something you just spoke about? Yes it’s listening to you all the time…
And in return they pay no tax! Tax which supports our infrastructure, helps pay for resources, etc. They turnover over $60 Billion per year and pay no tax and have all this data on us, what is ti being used for?
If you still don’t think Facebook is not in the pockets of the CIA, NSA and basically all surveillance agencies for each country round the world, read this excerpt from an article on the Salon website:
The New York Times has reported that the US government has cozied up to tech companies for the purpose of aiding with surveillance; most companies happily and willingly offered to make it easier for the government to access their data, and in the case of Google and Facebook, even discussed building “separate, secure portals” through which “the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it.” Astonishingly, U.S. domestic mass surveillance programs have not pre- vented any domestic terrorist attacks, according to unclassified Department of Homeland Security documents obtained by The Intercept. “Even before [whistleblower Edward] Snowden, the NSA wasn’t able to provide a single substantiated example of its surveillance dragnet pre- venting any domestic attack at all,” wrote reporter Jenna McLaughlin.
Likewise, many tech companies are cozy with spy organizations because many of them sprang from the defense industry. The defense industry fueled much of the early development of Silicon Valley, as it needed microchips for the aerospace industry and computer networks for Cold War defense. Today, there are still startups and venture capital firms that either function as arms of the Defense Department or are deeply entwined. Peter Thiel, an infamous billionaire Silicon Valley investor and anti-democracy libertarian, was a cofounder of a venture capital firm named Palantir, named for the all-seeing orb in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. One of Palantir’s first investors was the CIA, and the company has former CIA agents on its employment rolls. Though notoriously secretive about its products – as many of their clients are agencies like the Department of Defense – it is well known that Palantir is used by law enforcement and military organizations to aid in surveillance; indeed, the American Civil Liberties Union has claimed that Palantir’s products “enable mass surveillance.” Thiel is on the boards of both Palantir and Facebook, an interesting coincidence given that the NSA makes use of Facebook information to keep tabs on people.
Full article here.
On this basis Snowden should be an international hero! Not a villain!!
Meanwhile Google and Facebook pile up profits and data on you while the cost of living goes up, the need to use Facebook or Google if you have your own business is of paramount importance, in fact its hard to have a business without using Facebook or Google. However I currently use www.ecosia.org and www.duckduckgo.com search engines and looking into Diaspora as an alternative social media platform.
It seems all the profits Google earn from us just go towards creating more products to bind us to them, like a fly caught in a spider’s web…
And what happens to the fly? Its insides get sucked from inside out, all its nourishment is sucked out of its body.
We are truly caught up in a world wide web, and who is the spider sucking all our resources dry?
This is not even including the current political climate – total rule and divide has happened – separatism, fragmentation and factionalism.
The title of Robert Anton Wilson’s last book “Everything is Under Control” is a mire drop in the veritable ocean of this internet age and we haven’t even discussed how this tech effects your political stance and what will happen once 5G comes in…
We are one global experiment in mind control and manipulation, to what end? At the beginning I used the phrase “Geek will inherit the earth” – but in reality it is now:
“Artificial Intelligence – Silicon, will inherit the earth” – and quite possibly destroy it, as it it happening now, unless we do something about it…
For starters use www.ecosia.org or www.duckduckgo.com as search engine. Ecosia will plant a tree for every search you do and duckduckgo.com protects your privacy much more.
Google is a massive monopoly that needs to be broken up before its too late. Sign this petition to start the process of breaking Google, Facebook & Amazon up.
ADD LINK HERE>>>
Sign the petition to lobby Google to pay taxes.
The basic fact that now more than ever technology is a huge money making and controlling scheme which comes way above health and quality of life, which we are all suffering from. So why suffer while all the big boys make billions out of your suffering join the band and break up these evil monsters before they suck us all dry like a small fly caught in evil Google’s web…
If you are still not convinced read this article about Google’s “FILTER BUBBLE” – where, even when you are logged out of Gmail and “Incognito private mode”, Google still filters your results – and this can massively affect your stance politiciall if you are undecidied who the vote for.
In this recent study by Duckduckgo.com, a more ethical search engine than Google, found that people searching “Obama” were getting more of the same results while people searching ” ” weren’t getting filtered results. This means that if you are undecided and Google is filtering your results to one bias then you may be more likely to vote for that person and not get a balanced view of the political landscape: https://spreadprivacy.com/google-filter-bubble-study/
Aside from this, who knows the Google Algorithm that influences everything from what you read to what you pay per click for an advert on Google search? Surely if no-one is bidding for a keyword-click it should be free?
How do we know what competitors to adverts are bidding? How do you know that Google isn’t making Billions or trillions more by skewing the bid price for a click on your advert? We need more transparency here…
It is just the same as someone telling you, when you are offered a car for sale: “Joe just offered me £1,500 for the car, so you’ll have to match that now…”; how do you know for certain Joe has offered the seller that price? Where is the evidence? Shouldn’t there be a third party who can see the bid price and confirm that it is correct? Otherwise Google could be making Billions out of us all by fixing the prices…
Google are also agreeing to enter the Chinese market once again, which would mean they agree to China’s strict vetting laws and data bias, how do we know they don’t do the same with our governments? And what controls are in place to prevent this bias? Sign the petition here to help stop Google “doing evil”…
You could quite literally be Scroogled…