When in comes to the consolidation of power and influence in greedy tech industry corporations, that may be the case.
Natural News founder Mike Adams wrote about a week ago that the Google monopoly should be broken up for the benefit of consumers, the competitive marketplace, and free information flow.
A Times Op-Ed seems to agree with the Health Ranger about Google in general, suggesting that the government may need to regulate the giant search engine like a public utility given its gatekeeping sway over web traffic and e-commerce.
"We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending that unfettered monoliths don’t inflict damage on our privacy and democracy," wrote Jonathan Taplin , director emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab.
Postponing the decision may mean that breaking up Google (with its 88 percent market share in search advertising) and the other dominant Big Data entities may result in a situation where anti-trust laws will provide the only remedy, Taplin suggested.
Earlier this year, Big-Pharma loving Google recently blacklisted Natural News on a flimsy pretext for six days and has a history of playing games with its search algorithm tweaks to the detriment of many businesses and alternative media websites. (Related: Read more about alternative media at Censored.news.)
For most, if not all, Natural News readers, government intervention in the private sector is seldom, if ever, an effective solution.
Breaking up the Google monopoly may be the only way to fully preserve freedom of speech on the web, Mike Adams explained, however.
Google seems determined to enslave humanity in a delusional bubble of false information from “official” sources that only know how to LIE. Those sources, of course, all tend to be Leftist, liberal sources that have now repeatedly shown they are completely intolerant of all opposing views, labeling them “hate speech” even if they are reasoned, rational analysis or opinions.
Google-owned YouTube has also demonetized videos produced by independent journalists who don't follow the progressive, globalist party line, effectively implementing a form of revenue-loss censorship.
Recall that during the 2016 presidential campaign, Google was accused of manipulating auto-complete search results to suppress negative stories about Hillary Clinton. To the surprise of no one, Google staffers also supposedly worked directly on the Clinton campaign. Over the past eight years, Google lobbyists practically lived at the White House, and a revolving door of employment existed between the federal government and Google.
As an alternative, the Health Ranger developed GoodGopher.com (which, unlike Google, doesn't spy on the user), providing uncensored search results from thousands of independent media websites.
Short of intrusive regulation, the Times essay suggests that Google should be disallowed from gobbling up any more tech firms and should no longer qualify for the DMCA safe-harbor clause that enables it to enjoy a "free ride on content produced by others."
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