How To Stop Google From Taking Over The World

Realistically, Will Google Eventually Take Over The World?

In about fifty years or so? Possibly, but the field of contenders for the title of ‘global overlord’ might be larger than you think.

Google is, in a nutshell, the largest private information company in the world. As much as other contenders (like Facebook/Meta, Tencent, etc.) understand the minutiae of peoples’ lives, or have a software and hardware stranglehold (Like Apple or Microsoft) on people’s lives, they’re missing one thing: Big picture data.

Google knows about trends. Global trends. Regional trends. Even local trends. That’s because it knows the questions that are being asked at any given time and the most likely believable source for answers. So with the right combination of AI, machine learning, and subject matter experts, Google can theoretically build prediction models unlike anything ever seen on the face of the Earth. They would likely be more accurate than anything built by the Five Eyes intelligence agencies because Google doesn’t have to sift in the same way they do.

That said, Google does have some blind spots. It’s banned in some parts of the world, and there are tech and Internet voids in the world that aren’t likely to be filled any time soon. Their trend calculations are incomplete. For now.

They also have some service gaps: Energy production, hardware production, financial management, and social media being the big four. Even if they had power, chips, banking, and the voice of the people, they aren’t a sure thing as far as corporate masters go.

On the political side, we also have to assume one of two scenarios: People reject traditional government and adopt a corporatocracy, where corporations and corporate interests take direct control. Or people are apathetic enough to allow hardcore crony capitalism or full plutocracy to take over globally. As much as some people throw those words around casually today, either of those scenarios in their purest forms would make modern politics look like a kumbaya-singing meditation chamber. There would likely be open corporate wars, and actual pay-per-vote schemes enshrined into the legal system.

In the (highly) unlikely situation where that happens, Google is well-positioned to make the right moves ahead of time and be well-positioned when the global revolution comes.

But to be honest, it isn’t very realistic that any single corporation will take over the entire world. Or even a cabal of corporations. But on the off chance that we do start sliding down that path, let’s talk about ways that we can stop Google’s ascent to ultimate power.

First: Stop Google From Expanding To Other Industries

This will involve a lot of regulation… let’s be real though. All of these steps will involve regulation at a near-global level. No one individual can make even a tiny dent in the Alphabet juggernaut.

But yes, someone needs to stop Google from expanding into other industries ASAP. If they want to do power generation, fine, as long as it’s just to cover their own needs. If they want to do chip manufacturing, fine, as long as it’s only for their own phones, consoles, and IoT devices.

What you don’t want is Google displacing major green energy companies, chip fabrication companies, or social media companies. Even as bad as some of the current options are in those fields, consolidating that kind of power under the Alphabet umbrella would be a big step in the wrong direction.

Would they even consider those sorts of expansions beyond their own needs? Of course, they would. It’s not like they haven’t tried in the past. On the social side: Google Lively, Google+, and most recently Google Keen. All total failures, which is probably good news for the world.

And of course, they’re in smaller scale production on the power side. For solar, they’re involved in Project Sunroof. As long as it remains a series of strategic partnerships outside of their direct control, that should be fine. And they want to go carbon neutral by building solar-powered data centers. Also fine, as long as they stop there.

For chips, they’ve developed the Tensor. This is one to watch… will it start and stop with smartphones? Or are they eventually going after the likes of ARM/Nvidia? AMD? Intel?

It’s probably in the world’s best interest to stop Google’s ‘deep’ expansion into these areas. Self-sufficiency is fine. Anti-competitive industry blitzes, though? Not so much.

Second: Stop Google From Merging With Any Heavy Hitters

Of course, the easiest way to creep towards overlord status is to buy and merge your way to the top. Google already buys companies like pairs of blue jeans. But in order to stop them from going full Borg, regulation needs to keep them from becoming heavy hitters in tangentially related industries.

One of the big nightmare mergers would be Alphabet and Saudi Aramco. Saudi Aramco is the second-largest company in the world by value (Just behind Apple, just in front of Microsoft), and the biggest energy producer on the planet. Power is a limiting factor for a lot of things. Removing those limits would give Google a stranglehold over an untold number of sectors, while simultaneously creating the largest megacorp in the world, topping Apple’s value by over $1.2 trillion.

And as undesirable as it would be to see Alphabet get involved in operating systems or social media, there’s one prospect more frightening: Consumer distribution. That’s why governments should stop Google and Amazon from ever merging. This hellish combination would put the most powerful and far-reaching advertising company in the world and the most powerful and far-reaching product vendor in the world under one umbrella. The potential abuses are legion. And that megacorp would outvalue Apple by just about a cool $1 trillion.

But even looking much farther down the line, any significant acquisition in unrelated industries must be stopped. Alphabet already has so many lanes. In alphabetical order, the big ones are A.I., software automation, biotechnology, Cloud computing, computer hardware, computer software, corporate venture capital, drone delivery, drug research, E-mail, fiber ISP, health care, Internet advertising, Internet search, mobile operating systems, mobile phones, multimedia, robotics, streaming, vehicle automation.

Just to name a few.

Expanding their grasp any further is just asking for a single, Borg-line megacorp to spring from the shadows and start worldwide conquest.

Third: Stop Google From Censoring Scientific And Historical Facts

Google has been known to willingly comply with censorship requests that go beyond things that might violate ethical standards and good taste. They’ve complied with government requests to remove ads and stories that simply make them look bad. They’ve airbrushed out the bad aspects of government actions and inactions at both local and global levels. They rarely, if ever, challenge governmental attempts to rewrite history by limiting the results of certain kinds of searches in that country.

A line needs to be drawn. Scientific and historical facts must never be omitted from Google search results, or banned from their advertisements. To do so sets a precedent that makes Google the keeper of what is significant and not… and the keeper of what should be known and remembered, and not.

If that’s allowed at the governmental level now, what happens if Google were to take some measure of political control? It would be the norm for governments to censor search results that aren’t in their self-interest. And the search engine would be the government.

That’s a self-perpetuating cycle that is chilling at a whole new level. In order to stop it, we need to stop normalizing government censorship of search results that return scientific and historical facts. Otherwise, nothing will stop Google from taking over the world if they ever get a significant foothold. Because then they would be in control of history. And thus, they would control what lessons everyone takes into the future.