It's finally Google's day of reckoning
It's finally Google's day of reckoning
It's clear the Google reckoning is coming. The question
is why it took so long.
By: Molly Roberts 15 Sep, 2018 8:58am
If you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on
the menu - and if you have a seat but don't sit in it, you may be in just as
much trouble.
That's the lesson Google may have learned when
legislators, dissatisfied with the company's offer to send its lawyer instead
of a top executive to congressional hearings last week, theatrically answered
by installing an empty chair instead.
Google, which says Congress was content with
executive-less testimony until the last minute, has had an unpleasant few weeks
following a mostly pleasant two-decade relationship with Washington.
Though the company was implicated in the Russian election
interference operation as its cohorts were, it was social media sites such as
Facebook that sweated most under an unwelcome spotlight in the popular
narrative.
Now, having missed its chance to sit, Google is standing
center stage.
President Donald Trump tweeted unsubstantiated
accusations three weeks ago that the company "RIGGED" its search
results against conservatives. The right-wing internet apparatus followed up by
recirculating a recording of executives comforting employees after the 2016
election and expressing their own dismay at the result.
And Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, wants the government to
reopen an investigation into the site that closed five years ago with no
serious repercussions for the company.
It's clear the Google reckoning is coming. The question
is why it took so long.
One answer, as always, is money. Google is young enough
to have learned from earlier players like Microsoft and old enough to have put
down roots in Washington when many of today's other top companies were still in
the cradle. It knows how to spend its dollars, and it has a lot of them to
throw around: Last year, Google outspent every other company across all
industries on lobbying.
Yet there's more to it than that. Facebook and Twitter
have suffered more rhetorical wrath from legislators this year because, as far
as those lawmakers can tell, those are the companies Americans are most
concerned about.
And it looks as if they're right. Seventy-four percent of
Facebook users said in a Pew Research Center poll taken after the Cambridge
Analytica scandal that they had tweaked their privacy settings, taken a
reprieve from the platform or deleted its app from their phone in the past
year.
People in the United States have started to use Facebook
less and speak out against it more loudly. That isn't really happening to
Google. Cambridge Analytica explains a portion of the difference, but there's
also something bigger at work.
Facebook is personal, and Twitter is too. On each
platform, users present their friends, family and the public with a version of
themselves. Those versions of ourselves, once on the web, are vulnerable. We
yell at people and get yelled at. We like things and get liked in return. We
spill our innermost thoughts, or share pictures of grandparents or children or
pets or the first-place chili we stirred up for a Super Bowl cook-off.
Google, on the other hand, seems more distant. Americans
associate the company primarily with its search engine - and we associate
search engines with queries about weird rashes or whether it's OK to substitute
tapioca for cornstarch. We also don't really understand search algorithms,
which run on tracking keywords and links within Web pages.
Facebook's focus on user engagement is far easier for an
outsider to comprehend. The same goes for content moderation. It's clear when
Facebook is picking and choosing what content belongs on its site, but no
layman can get much of a handle on what Google's system prioritises and why.
Of course, Google owns lots of properties besides search.
Trump's tweet targeted its news service for privileging established outlets
that he and his allies see as biased toward liberals.
And YouTube's recommender has a tendency to fling
watchers into a vortex of conspiracy theorising. Still, until now, these sites
haven't sparked the kind of outrage that has been leveled at Facebook. We just
don't pour enough of ourselves into them.
Or we don't think we do. As lawmakers turn their
attention toward Google, everyday Americans may realise Google knows us very
well. It knows where we live and how far we travel every day to get to work. It
knows where we like to eat lunch. It knows, from the videos we view on YouTube
and the words we type into that little white bar every day, whether we're
single or listen to classical music or feel sad or anxious some days. It knew,
when a woman was arrested for her husband's murder in January, that she had
searched "how to kill someone and not get caught" (not like that!).
And Google does make difficult decisions on the content its search users see
every time it tweaks that inscrutable algorithm to define what makes a website
credible, or what keywords push it to the top of the page.
The government has started to pay attention to Google
now, and with a once-docile Washington on the attack, more consumers will
likely start caring, too. Executives should make sure they seize on future
invitations to the dinner table. Otherwise, the government and users alike
might dig right in.
- Molly Roberts writes about technology and society for
The Post's Opinions section.
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