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Google just announced that it will offer a system enabling the Web to work as smoothly on mobiles as it does on PC’s. Rumors have been around that Google would eventually enter the mobile phone market, and now it appears as if the path is being paved. Next week Google will allow independent designers to modify the software (known as Android) and Google based phones are due out late next year.

So how is this bit of Google news via Reuters something for “unplugged” scrutiny? Google is a virtual monopoly already – that’s how. Google currently has the longest Wikipedia page I have ever seen just listing what it owns. From stand alone applications like Adwords Editor to hardware products the list is staggering. Google has its hairy foot in every door in and out of the Web and is now poised to insert software across the mobile telecommunications matrix. I wonder if this sounds significant to everyone else?

Laissez–faire Geekism

Without going deep into economic principles, Google occupies a rather unique position in the annals of supply and demand economics. In this rather “upside down” business model Google created a free commodity, added quality and then attracted price with their initial search engine. The closest business model I can think of anything like this was broadcast television back in the 50’s and 60’s – where anyone with a TV could watch network TV shows and only advertising provided revenue.

What makes Google a relative monopoly is the way their talons crisscross the Web landscape and especially how they can now leverage advertising, business and innovations. In a nutshell – absolute power corrupts is the appropriate term. This simple concept is virtually unavoidable in a historical and absolute sense.

Significance, Significance, Significance

The significance of Google’s growth and dealings is in the impact it has over a worldwide, super-connected tool like the Internet. An article by Marc Fawzi on Evolving Trends expressed this effectively so:

“It is not any better or worse than it used to be under the Microsoft monopoly for the small companies that must compete with Google . But it’s much worse for us the people because what is at stake now is much bigger. It’s no longer about our PCs and LANs, it’s about the future of the entire Web.”

This is the point exactly, we cannot afford to offer up even greater technologies and tools to the kind of abuses that huge corporations have inflicted over the course of history. As the world becomes smaller, and resources more acutely limited – allowing too much power to flow through just a few hands has obvious implications, at least to students of history and reality. There are arguments on the other side of the isle of course, but what are the motivations for these?

A Thing in Itself

Turning philosophy to evaluate the scope of operations of major corporations may seem naïve or overly normative, but in a way we have lost much of our ability to reason because of a subdued normative capability. Numbers and graphical stimuli, popular culture and even Machiavellian recipes have pervaded out very thinking. I have often wondered why no normative or reasoning argument has been able to sway the seemingly endless march of money and power. Lack of reason on the part of the vast majority of people is the reason. Immanuel Kant would likely have evaluated 21^st Century thinking so far as: “A collective mind that utilizes the wrong or limited innate categories to misunderstand what is wrong.” Arguments against Google being a dangerous virtual monopoly are centered on technicalities that may not even apply to this new form of market control.

A correctly reasoning mind should ask the question: “What is Google in and of itself?” Who is behind the operation, what are the motivations and where is the natural end to all these mergers and acquisitions? Instead we are bombarded with half witted cravings for the candy of mediocre services and copy-cat innovation. An astute friend of mine and I were talking about Google and the inherent evil that resides inside the cold calculating machine once it reaches this level. He said that Google is really “beyond evil” in that it does not even take note of people, issues or any ideology beyond expansion.

The End

In the end it is the stockholder that blindly considers their ROI or earnings that powers such mechanical and cold machines. Think about that person of means whose only real consideration is profit or money after the day is done. Is this what we have come down to – a modern but primeval group of oligarchs in lazy control over the Internet, politics, industry and the fate of billions? This is why I hate Google! It represents a lazy and mediocre evolution of something that could have been fabulous and good for everyone. Not satisfied to perfect any of its massive holdings, but intent on grabbing more and more until nothing is left – for the woebegone retired dentist or public servant, and of course the MAN at the top. So, there is the import for those who can grasp it – part one of beyond good and Google.