Tag: seo

Google Search and the Paywall: A consequence of near monopolistic power

Google is a company that has been controlling the search market in its grip for well over 20 years at this point. While the company offers many convenient services, it has also become a monopoly. Some people would disagree with that but the company is one and also is also dominating in mobile phones with the android operating system. There is a need for the internet to untangle from this monopolistic system that Google has made. Just for the interests of keeping the internet interesting and useful for many types of people, that is important. However, one of the main reasons why I am focusing on this issue is because of paywalls on news sites.

Paywalls used to be rarer in the past. Only really the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) had them in a significant way. However, as time has gone on and the internet went from a place for bragging rights to a necessity for someone to be able to have a journalism career, paywalls have been going up across cyberspace. The building of walls across the internet feels like an admission of failure of the internet’s ability to reduce the cost of producing news. I have seen it in real-time here; this is not a change that one sees through generations but it happened after 2008 and we have seen more and more paywalls.

Google’s inability to categorize paywalls is huge issue. Their unwillingness to categorize websites to make it more useful to the public shows their institutional inertia. The company makes billions upon billions of dollars on advertising, yet it is unable to even pay attention to its search engine that made it popular in the 2000s.

Why is Google so unwilling to change?

It’s because they are comfortable in taking ad revenue from sites. Changing that revenue stream would make them take a hit and they can only tolerate having more and more revenue streaming into it.

If Google was to take its search engine seriously, it would take a hit to its reputation. It would have to respond to all the calls about it having a monopoly on the internet and manipulating people’s minds. They would have to make the legacy outlets which seek to maintain their power have to play by the rules rather just allowing them to regurgitate what the ruling parties want to see.

Paywalled sites do need to not show up in the search results. Many of these sites are business sites that often hide their arcane language away from public view. The internet should be divided up into small kingdoms where you have to pay entry fees to get into the castle.

Google’s unwillingness to categorize such things show that monopolies that hold onto power for so long have a way of shaping the whole culture around them. The internet, once free and vibrant, is becoming yet another shopping mall where everything has a price.

Having free access to information on the internet isn’t a right but essential aspect to cyberspace.

Google is clearly a monopoly and the internet needs to change.

According to some judges in our judiciary, Google is a monopoly and has been manipulating the ad market in order to gain advantage. Another case is coming up where Google is in hot water regarding its Chrome browser.

Now, I am generally skeptical of the judiciary. They generally have spent most of their lives in a position that has no elections. They often hold such hearings without any public notice. It is among one of the most elite of branches in the government. However, I am inclined to believe that these judges are not being political for one or another party here. It is clear. Google needs to change its practices.

The internet should have never been allowed to have one company control so much of it. Instead of just having two search engines, we could have much more.

Google is not a company that I really trust anymore. It has been corrupting the internet for many years. Instead of making it a place where information can be traded with other individuals, it just become another shopping mall for consumers.

While shopping isn’t necessarily something that shouldn’t be on the internet, it has made the internet into a place to sell items rather than to trade ideas.

Google’s monopoly of advertising on the internet invites people to focus on monetary values.

AT&T was also a monopoly in a sense. However, the company was actually helping America. Universal Service was not merely a motto but something that they believed in. America was leading the way in the telephone industry. We had an impressive telecommunications system that was built early and helped our industries.

Google on other hand seems content with its control on the internet simply to rely on the advertising revenues. They do not even care about the quality of content on the internet. Their search engine props up establishment sources while in their earlier days, they were actually showing many sites of varying qualities.

Google has also been putting too many sponsored ads on the site. One cannot search for anything without seeing an ad for some product or another here.

I believe such a site is causing our internet to have only a resemblance to what it once was.

Things need to change.

Maybe Google will claw back in these battles. However, the internet needs warriors who will make free again. That creativity should not be stifled by a monopoly here.