Information Technology
Freedom and Monopoly

Is Google a free speech opportunist?

Burgess COMMENTARY
IMHO this question cannot be answered quickly with simple reference to existing law, constitutional and otherwise. Good law and rules for society emerge from long debate and consensus, and a good economy and society emerges as a result of an efficient competitive marketplace. In modern times the bulk of economic activity has concentrated into huge entities that exhibit the characteristics of oligopoly if not monopoly.

I favor Google ... at the moment ... but want to be able to move to other suppliers of search when I choose, based on the performance of the various companies and products. I would like the rule and law makers to focus more on the broader question of markets and competition rather than on the minutae of corporate behavior in the existing framework of law and regulation.

I would also ask that the conversation include not only what is good for the companies and the investors, but also on all the other stakeholders including society at large. Up to now only a rather small amount of the productivity arising from the technology revolution of the last 40 years has accrued directly to society, an inordinate amount ... almost the whole ... has gone to investors and investor/executives.
Peter Burgess

Is Google a free speech opportunist?

Google says the First Amendment should apply to its search results — even if this allows the company to favor its own products over those of its competitors. Is this a legitimate argument?

photo: Aaron Amot Rumors are swirling that the federal government is about to sue Google over claims that the company rigs its search results. Google has responded by invoking its right to free speech — but not everyone is buying this.

Tim Wu, a prominent law professor at Columbia, is not convinced that Google is invoking its First Amendment rights in good faith. He suggests that Google and other big companies are cynically invoking constitutional freedoms as part of a corporate deregulation agenda.

“We’re living in a golden age of First Amendment opportunism,” said Wu, speaking Friday at a Penn Law School conference titled “The Evolving Internet.”

In Wu’s view, search results are not really speech in the first space. Instead, he argues, Google’s algorithms are closer to other automated communication tools like navigation devices or even car alarms.

Google, of course, doesn’t share this view. The company prefers to be compared to a newspaper editor — whose choice of what to put in the paper is an undisputed free speech right. In practical terms, this means Google should be able to favor its own restaurant reviews over competing services like Yelp.

So who is right? Most of us would agree with Wu that Google’s search results fall somewhere in the middle of a communication continuum where the editor is on one end and the car alarm is on the other. The hard question is whether Google is far enough along the line to qualify for the First Amendment.

More broadly, this dilemma doesn’t apply just to Google. In the age of the algorithm, other companies may also rush to protect computer-based communication. Should Amazon, for instance, be allowed to argue that its product recommendation are a form of free speech?

The point here is that the choice of whether or not to sue Google is part of a larger process in which the country must decide where free speech stops and legitimate regulation begins.

(Image by kentoh via Shutterstock)

Most would agree that Google’s result are protected editorial speech and I find this bizarre notion you express about wanting to limit speech is decidedly un-American, especially during these times when freedom of expression is under attack.

The supreme court recently acknowledged that violent video games are a form of speech, notice that they are software as well, more on that see:

We’re Not Censoring YOU—Just Your Computer! http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/were-not-censoring-you-just-your-computer/

They can’t play newspaper editor and have the same safe harbour rights given to ISPs. Pick one Google.