Google is so synonymous with what it’s used for it’s like Kleenex and Scotch Tape and unlike both of them it’s actually become a verb. When we search for something on the internet we google it. Now a federal judge has ruled that Google is a monopoly which doesn’t mean that we will see the search engine broken into “Google-lets” any time soon but eventually the data juggernaut might actually be forced to make space in cyberspace for genuine competitors.
Data is the present day equivalent of what oil and steel were in the past and Google’s parent company Alphabet is easily the colossus of data collection and Google the goliath of search engines with a market share of 90%. That translates to 8.5 billion searches on Google a day or 99,000 a second and makes it a magnet for advertisers willing to pay lots of money to cut to the front of the line on search results as well as buy the right to annoy and distract us.
There might be free speech but there’s no free search! If you’re using the Alphabet owned Chrome browser like I do to access Google as your search engine, it reminds me of the early days of Hollywood when movie studios owned their own theater chains and if they wished, could show only their own films in them. Maybe the theaters ran ads on the screen before the main feature but today your screen at home is doing it non stop. I feel at times like I’m playing whack-a-mole or macheting my way through a jungle. Google’s ad revenue last year was nearly $225 billion which is roughly the GDP of Portugal or New Zealand.
Equivalencies like these I’ve mentioned use to seem daunting to me but in a world where a baseball player named Shohei Ohtani is being paid over $430,00 for every game he plays somehow they don’t anymore.
Alphabet owns over 250 companies that it payed over $20 billion to acquire to enable Google to gobble up its competition. The Justice Department accuses Google of paying billions annually to device makers— like Apple and Samsung —wireless providers— like AT&T and Verizon —and web browsers— like Mozilla —for Google to be the default search engine on their devices, networks and sites.
Will Google go down as one of the most famous monopolies in American history like Standard Oil, U.S. Steel and Heinz Ketchup? And why did I add the last one? Well, what’s the ultimate compliment you can give a product? Those ketchup bottles in lots of restaurants may have a Heinz label but what do you think they get refilled with? That’s market share. That’s respect. That’s cheating but I bet you still put it, whatever it is, on your burger because you think and want it to be Heinz.
Anyway, I’ve created a couple cartoons to have fun with Google’s dominance. Let me know if you have a favorite. Both have a personal spark of inspiration…
Google Acquires Everything on the Monopoly Board…
A few years ago our older grandson had a fixation with the board game Monopoly. He was eight or nine at the time and roped Jo and me and his younger brother into a game one afternoon that was interminable— FOUR HOURS!
He was the banker but assumed additional roles as our financial advisor and mortgage broker, which meant he kept the game going by keeping all of us out of bankruptcy and thwarting my every effort to achieve it so I could exit.
The invention of the game of Monopoly would actually make a great movie. It involves a woman named Lizzie Magie who invented and patented what she called The Landlord’s Game in 1904. It never sold widely but years later a man named Charles Darrow stole her idea; called his game Monopoly and sold it to Parker Brothers.
When it was discovered that Lizzie Magie had the original patent, Charles Parker— the company founder and not the jazz saxophonist —deceived her into taking the sum of $500 for the rights in perpetuity with no royalties offered and Charles Darrow became the first board game millionaire. Life is not fair as if you didn’t know.
Diogenes Meets Sherman and Mr. Peabody…
I just checked and found out that my vintage Bullwinkle Buren 17 jewels wind up watch might fetch $200 today on eBay. I bought it in 1971 for $12.95 and paid for it with one weekend’s winnings from the CBS Evening News football pool.
I don’t remember the first time I saw Jay Ward’s characters but I loved them instantly. Rocky and His Friends premiered in 1959 when I was 12 and followed American Bandstand in the afternoon after I got home from school and turned on the TV.
I’m sure I’m not the first to observe that Rocky and Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha, Sherman and Mr. Peabody and Dudley Do-Right might have been created to amuse children but even then I felt I was monitoring an advanced class in cartoons way beyond the infantile antics of Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck. It was like being seated at the kids’ table but listening raptly to the adults’ conversation.
And Rocky and His Friends was instructive. In its cunning and beguiling way it taught history. Mr. Peabody and Sherman used their “wayback machine” to time travel and help out and often save the day for a Who’s Who of famous figures from Confucius to Geronimo. I found a list of all of them and interestingly, no ancient Greeks are on it. Diogenes in particular could have certainly used Peabody and Sherman’s assistance. Would Google have found him an honest man? I just asked it and was given a couple candidates. Ever hear of Leon Pilar or R. Budd Dwyer? I didn’t think so but I guess Google has and thinks very highly of them.
And do you think that Sherman might have been named for the Sherman of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890? I didn’t think so and won’t google it to find out. But hey, if you have to google to learn who Sherman and Mr. Peabody are or never heard of Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket J. Squirrel, you’re either a lot younger than I am or grew up not watching much television.
Wow! I watched TV but when I was a kid, my neighborhood was filled with others my age and we played together more than we sat in front of the tube. I like to say that when I was growing up I never played a baseball game organized by parents. But when my kid was growing up he never played a baseball game that wasn't.
Or maybe a lot older, Peter? I did grow up without any television at all.