Less Is More Not A Media-Tech Concept

Michael Hedges April 22, 2014 Follow on Twitter

Psychiatry often recommends the exercise of committing anxieties to writing. It offers to the therapist insight into the painful world of demons. To the patient it is release, desensitizing the fear. Affirmations, like ‘be happy’, work the same way.

“We are afraid of Google,” wrote German publisher Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner in an open letter to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) (April 16). In just over four thousand words, Herr Döpfner offered a passionate and reasonably polite rebuke to Dr. Schmidt’s response in FAZ (April 9) to German internet entrepreneur Robert Maier’s ripping “Fear of Google” commentary (FAZ April 3). Dr. Schmidt explained the principles of innovation. Herr Maier said Google now controls the world.

Publisher’s complaints about the business practices of search engine giant Google, real and imagined, have genesis in the battering from the internet and new media’s rise followed by changes in consumer behavior and shifts in ad spending. On each of these waves Google has surfed to huge success and, say some, a relentless desire for more. “Google doesn’t need us but we need Google, “ winced Herr Döpfner.

Dependence on the internet means, to Herr Döpfner and many others one-sided, dependence on Google. “Our business relationship is that of the Goliath of Google to the David of Axel Springer,” he penned. “When Google changed an algorithm one of our subsidiaries lost 70 percent of its traffic within a few days. The fact that this subsidiary is a competitor of Google’s is certainly a coincidence.”

The internet is not the problem, said Herr Döpfner, noting that more than half Axel Springer’s profits are now derived from the digital realm. “From the perspective of a publishing house, the internet is not a threat, but rather the greatest opportunity in the last few decades,” he continued. “This means that we are not talking about the internet here, but only about the role that Google plays within it.”

Attempts by publishers to force ancillary copyright terms on Google – and other search providers – through lawsuit after lawsuit have largely failed. Rich companies attract superior legal talent who argue with existing rules. “The statement ‘if you don't like Google, you can remove yourself from their listings and go elsewhere’ is about as realistic as recommending to an opponent of nuclear power that he just stop using electricity,” explains Herr Döpfner. “He simply cannot do this in real life unless he wants to join the Amish.” The Old Order Amish religious sect in the United States shuns modernity.

If everything about Google dismays Herr Döpfner, he also takes aim at the European Commission. Once upon a time, big publishers could count on a degree of support from politicians. After a lengthy investigation, EC Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia, who retires this year, effectively settled the abuse of dominant market position complaint against Google without forcing, as publishers demanded, payments.

“The Commissioner has instead proposed a ‘settlement’ that has left anyone with any understanding of the issue speechless,” he railed. “Commissioner Almunia ought to reflect once again on whether it is wise, as a kind of final official act, to create a situation that will go down in history as a nail in the coffin of the already sclerotic European internet economy.”

For Herr Döpfner – and many others – Google is simply too pervasive and too powerful. It dominates internet search. Its Android smartphone operating system is everywhere. It operates e-commerce portals. There’s Chrome, Gmail and Google+. “And now Google is planning driverless cars, in order to compete in the long term with the car industry from Toyota to VW,” he complains. “Google will then not only know where we drive our cars but how we are occupying ourselves when we are in the car. Forget Big Brother - Google is better!”

Google just bought drone maker Titan Aerospace. Facebook bought drone-making competitor Ascenta. The objective, it seems, is wireless – and proprietary – internet delivery. “You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to find this alarming,” said Herr Döpfner.

References to Orwell’s 1984 notwithstanding, Herr Döpfner raises privacy concerns so often dismissed by the American technology entrepreneurs. It was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous dismissal of a question about collecting personal information. “Ever since then I have thought about this sentence again and again. I find it terrible. Behind this statement there is a state of mind and an image of humanity typically cultivated in totalitarian regimes. Such a statement could have come from the head of East Germany’s Stasi or other secret police in service of a dictatorship.”

Nobody doubts that these tech giants – and others, not necessarily domiciled in the US – see collecting and selling personal data as the next financial tidal wave, far bigger than selling ad banners on websites. “Google is the world’s most powerful bank but dealing only in behavioral currency,” noted Herr Döpfner. “Nobody capitalizes on their knowledge about us as effectively as Google. This is impressive and dangerous.”

In conclusion, Herr Döpfner asks for “voluntary self-restraint” from Google, not something in the media-tech vocabulary. “Less is sometimes more. And you can win yourself to death.”

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