I’ve said for years, “Google is taking over the world.” I was half-kidding. Then, for a while, I thought Facebook was taking over the world. After reading this article, I’m back to thinking it’s Google.
In the article, author Kyle Smith details how far “in bed” Google and the Obama Administration are together. Let’s just say, they’re waaaay more, uh, friendly, than I’d thought they were, and Google is more powerful politically than I’d realized.
What’s scarier is what the future could potentially hold. “Google says that in the future, its determinations about what is true and what is untrue will play a role in how search-engine rankings are configured,” Smith writes.
Yikes. I don’t know about you, but no matter how much I love technology (and Google for that matter, because I am an avid user) and how “smart” it can be, I don’t think I want a company deciding what’s truth for me. That determination is supposed to happen between my ears. Worse still, Smith makes a good point that the company that could be deciding what you see/what you don’t see is the same company that “ranked second in all of corporate America in campaign donations to Obama.” Yeaaaah, that’s not neutral.
Our country was created with governmental checks and balances for a reason. Humans, quite simply, are flawed and can’t always be trusted. We need to be put in check. So where are those checks and balances for companies (run by flawed human beings) that get so big that the president is practically their puppet?
