While congressional hearings created a series of headaches after Facebook admitted issues with bias and Google proved search bias via Project Veritas’s recent expose, one thing that isn’t set to change anytime soon is their power. I’m the first to point out that in technology the mighty can fall and will quickly. For example, the first consumer internet company was Prodigy. The first browser, Netscape. The first dominate search engine, Yahoo. The dominate internet service provider, AOL. And, the first smartphone was Palm.
Even Jeff Bezos has suggested that tech titans have a lifespan that only lasts a few decades. If he’s right, that isn’t necessarily good news for Amazon, they’re now 25 years old. But as the companies were making their cases for why they should be left alone by regulators, the latest market share info demonstrates the consolidated power of the few, or should I say two based on worldwide market share.
- Browser: Google – 64%
- Search: Google – 93%
- Social Media: Facebook – 74%
Again, that’s worldwide market share! It’s arguable that Facebook and Google are more powerful with all of the information at their disposal than most governments around the world. After all, they hold the cards and the information. If absolute power corrupts, is this the technology equivalent? Google’s original mantra, “Don’t be evil” was eliminated years ago. What do they stand for? Can they be trusted? If they wanted to overthrow governments, could they? Isn’t that essentially what Project Veritas exposed recently?
To the point of Senator John Kennedy who said that Facebook already can’t be trusted with information let alone a cryptocurrency. It’s hard to argue the point.
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