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What Big Tech's Monopoly Powers Mean for Our Culture

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 23 2017, @03:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-narrow-view dept.

canopic jug writes:

Elizabeth Kolbert at The New Yorker writes about the implications that technology monopolies have for culture by asking "Who owns the Internet?". Three decades ago, few used the Internet for much of anything and the web wasn't even around. Today, nearly everybody uses the web, and to a lesser extent, other parts of the Internet for just about everything. However, despite massive growth, the Web has narrowed very much: "Google now controls nearly ninety per cent of search advertising, Facebook almost eighty per cent of mobile social traffic, and Amazon about seventy-five per cent of e-book sales."

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:36PM (#558142)

    I used to think that as well but became disillusioned after reading this [ieee.org] interview with Astro Teller. He's the head of "X" which is Alphabet/Google's innovation lab and the one which you're referencing whether or not you realize it. I'd recommend reading things in context but a telling quote or two from Teller is:

    I get asked frequently, “At what stage do you make a business plan for the moonshot?” And the answer is never Stage 1 or Stage 5 or Stage 17. The answer is always, “Is making a business plan the next most efficient thing we can do to try to kill this project?”

    ...

    I look forward to hearing your more detailed business plan for me to [build/sell household robots] when you have it. Look, I’m very serious. We care about this. We want to solve this. I don’t think that what I want in terms of the future is different than what you want. We’re trying to find a path that actually is a financially responsible path. It doesn’t mean that we’re not taking risks, that we might not be wrong, that we might not have to entirely stop or go back and try again. But it can’t just be a Hail Mary, it can’t be “I wanna build Rosie the robot” so we’re just going to build it whether it makes any sense to or not.

    ...

    Spectrum: Some recent reports said X is under pressure to show it can deliver a financial windfall to Alphabet. Is this kind of pressure something new?

    Teller: Of course not. We’ve always had as our mission to make things that solve a real large problem in the world and can produce the kinds of returns to Alphabet that will justify our ongoing existence. No matter how well-meaning the founders and the board of Alphabet might be, they are not going to just pour indefinite money into something they don’t have high confidence will produce more value than they’re spending.

    The whole division is far more pragmatic than the moonshot reputation. What he's talking about in the first quote about trying to kill the project is that that's generally stage 1 of any idea at X. 'How can we kill this project?' If they can kill it, they do - and move on. And the reasons for a project being killed do include there being no crystal clear path to profit. When pressed on the value of such a system Teller ends up stumbling over his words trying to explain why Google isn't pursuing it without simply saying they're concerned it won't produce sufficient revenue. For a ctrl+f the question includes "Robots aren't the best solution, is that what you're saying?"

    I still personally believe that Google is covertly cooking up some exciting progress intermingling between AI and robotics - e.g. DeepMind meet Boston Dynamics (or whatever was yielded from them before they moved on.) But logically, I think that belief is probably more emotional than rationally justified. They're just a big corporation trying to make lots of money. That's not where innovations come from. On the other hand Google is supporting initiatives like DeepMind but that's likely because that whole team is capable of likely operating on a budget of $1 million a year excluding extraneous costs like hardware which vertical integration ensures will have a price approaching $0. And their product is likely already being directly integrated into things such as Google's search.