Trying to Stall The Future Never Works

Michael Hedges December 1, 2014 Follow on Twitter

Imagination is not something that can be bottled up and sold over the counter. It is impossible to contain, knows no boundaries, accepts few rules. Those who try always fall short simply because competitive imagination a force that binds us to human nature. It can be very frightening… and that’s good.

The European Parliament voted resoundingly last week to threaten giant American technology company Google with sanctions. The non-binding resolution affirmed contempt for giants, Americans and technology in one breath. Drafted by Spanish MEP Ramon Tremosa and German MEP Andreas Schwab the resolution to push the hesitant European Commission (EC), a separate and distinct body, into beating Google with a stick brought joy to big European publishers and, significantly, big American competitors.

The EuroParl resolution admonished the EC “to consider proposals to separate search engines from other commercial services” to “prevent any abuse in marketing interconnected services by search engine operators.” And, too, “indexing, evaluation, presentation and classification carried out by search engines should be impartial and transparent.” Google was not specifically named in the EuroParl text but certain MEPs remain vexed at perceived inaction against Google and other technology giants by the previous Barroso Commission, specifically former Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia. All of this is taking place as the EU-US free-trade pact (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – TTIP) remains implacably stalled over the Investor State Dispute Settlement arbitration mechanism (ISDS), which would provide legal remedies to companies negatively impacted by national laws, favored by the US side and opposed by European governments.

“In case the proceedings against Google carry on without any satisfying decisions and the current anti-competitive behavior continues to exist, a regulation of the dominant online web search should be envisaged,” said MEPs Tremosa and Schwab in a joint statement following the vote. “In the past, Google has failed to propose adequate remedies to address the Commission's concerns and continued to pursue its practices unabatedly. It continued thereby to suppress competition to the detriment of European consumers and businesses.”

Commissioner Almunia invested four years investigating various anti-trust complaints against Google and negotiating settlements. Publishers, Microsoft-funded lobbyist Fairsearch and respective supporters demanded more concessions. As his term neared an end, Commissioner Almunia first announced that a settlement was nigh then, under considerable pressure, handed the problem to the newly named Juncker Commission.

“I believe the measure makes it known to (European Commission) President Juncker and his team to restore competitive conditions within the European digital market, put at risk by the transformation of search engines as gate-ways to the internet, resulting in the extraordinary collection of users personal data, which is then used to create economic benefits that would otherwise not be possible,” said Italian publisher Carlo De Benedetti to La Repubblica (November 27), which he owns. Yes, indeed, search engines, Google largely, have created enormous wealth serving internet users without regard for legacy publishers. Italian politicians passed a “Google tax” on digital advertising about a year ago only to change their minds three months later after the EC advised it would be discriminatory and, therefore, illegal.

At the end of October the Spanish Parliament passed, to the overwhelming joy of newspaper publishers, deemed snippets used by news aggregators to identify links to original content as subject to copyright and, thereinafter, fees paid to copyright holders. German politicians had passed a similar measure but their friends in the publishing business discovered to their horror that Google simply stopped indexing their content, precipitating a marked decline in web traffic. Belgian publishers, once celebrating their own “Google tax,” quickly capitulated when Google caused Belgium to disappear. Google is not required to index the entirety of the web.

After Spain’s parliament passed the aforementioned “Google tax,” Italy’s newspaper publishers began chirping for one of their own. “The government is sensitive to the issue,” said Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEG) president Maurizio Costa, quoted by La Repubblica (November 7). “It is time that this giant, along with other internet news aggregators, acknowledges the copyright on articles, photos and videos linkable from Google News. It’s true that the Google News page does not have banner ads but Google collects, according to some estimates, more than a billion a year in advertising. That’s what the entire print media invoices.”

Sr. Costa also railed against Google’s European tax home in Ireland, completely legal but costing “a small fortune” in potential tax revenues when government subsidies to newspapers – “resources devoted to pluralism” - have been reduced to “less than 50 million, a quarter compared to only a few years ago.” Sr Costa is a vice president at Fininvest, the media holding company controlled by the Berlusconi family, quite prominent in Italian politics only a few years ago and occasionally at odds with tax authorities.

European politicians eager to please – or return favors to – legacy newspaper publishers seem out of step with a struggling European community of digital entrepreneurs and, arguably, a public pleased with new and varied services. “The European Parliament thinks it has voted against Google,” offered Wired Italia director Massimo Russo in La Stampa (November 28). “In fact, it adopted a resolution against innovation.”

“If yesterday’s resolution would become law,” he continued, “it would mean that the EU could not grow companies that deal with both research and other services. It is precisely this cultural attitude, which always sees risk before opportunity, that could make us lose the race to innovate, the only force that can restart stable growth in our countries. It is no coincidence that Google and others were born in Silicon Valley and not along the Rhine or in the Po Valley.”

Competitive imagination is richly understood in Europe, even within the media sector. “Impatience must not mask the unwillingness or inability of the European Union to facilitate processes and companies that can be competitive with those in the United States,” wrote Corriere della Sera deputy editor Daniele Manca (November 28). “Larry Page (Google co-founder) wants to be in every corner of the future. Indeed, he has imagination: from small pills you ingest that can identify diseases, balloons that put the internet everywhere, wind turbines in the sky. His means and ability to visualize at this magnitude is admirable.”

The EuroParl vote was at the very least intended to send a message to newly installed EC Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, formerly Danish Deputy Prime Minister aligned with the centrist Social Liberal Party. She will need “some time to form her view and decide on next steps,” said spokesperson Ricardo Cardoso in a statement. “It is very important that the application of competition law in individual cases remains independent from politics.”

Lawyers for Google and other search providers will also be sorting out guidelines offered by representatives of European data protection authorities to more rigidly enforce the “right to be forgotten” (RTBF) ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Media freedom and journalist’s rights advocates strongly condemned the decision forcing internet search engines to scrub results on demand as giving politicians, criminals and fellow travelers a free pass to sanitize their histories. Google’s lawyers agreed to comply, under threat of fines, and undertake all costs for what would logically be considered a judicial proceeding but limiting search link removals to European domains. The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party issued a statement on the guidelines last week (November 25) with a promise of further clarification.

“Limiting de-listing to EU domains on the grounds that users tend to access search engines via their national domains cannot be considered a sufficient means to satisfactorily guarantee the rights of data subjects according to the ruling,” said the Working Group statement. “In practice, this means that in any case de-listing should also be effective on all relevant .com domains.” Airbrushing RTBF claims began this past summer, Google notifying web-masters at news portals. That practice displeased the European regulators. Yahoo and Microsoft, owner of search engine Bing, recently began taking down offending links.

Data protection and personal privacy is a very touchy subject among Europeans. Memories linger of bad people making lists. It’s completely lost on Americans culturally free from history and adept at personal reinvention. Five years ago Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg astounded some, horrified others, saying, “Privacy is no longer a social norm.” Disbelief remains in some quarters that Facebook is still around and, more so, that it has become Google’s main worldwide rival.

“It is right to limit the ability of companies like Google and Facebook to use personal data,” wrote Wired Italia’s Massimo Russo, “but to address the issue, Europe should adjust the behavior of companies, not their market power.” Then, too, collecting data is big business, something the giant tech firms understand completely.

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