Dana Blankenhorn

Why I Think Google is in Trouble

Technology in the 21^st century operates by one rule above all.

Software scales. Salesmen don’t. (Image from YouTube.) 

Google is ignoring the rule and will pay a price for it.

In 2020 Google reports it lost $5.6 billion on Google Cloud. That’s in contrast with Amazon and Microsoft, which both made big profits on their cloud operations. Yet Google’s share of the cloud market barely budged. It’s still under 10%.

What happened is that Google let Tom Kurian build an empire. Kurian was hired a few years ago from Oracle to build Google Cloud. He has done that in Oracle’s image, even though Oracle’s image sucks it’s moving to Texas with its tail between its legs.

The Big Political Story of 2021

Money is walking away from the GOP. (Shown, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.)

This has been going on for some time. Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston and New York, the places where money is made, generally vote for Democrats. They do this because Democrats deliver what technology wants. Tech runs on brains. It’s always in the market for more of them. Brains need training, they need to be empowered, they want to be recruited, they like to be comfortable.

This is the big economic change of our time, a move from resources to brains as the gating factor to growth. Resources need force to secure them. Manufacturing needs hands to run machines. Tech needs brains.

The news hasn’t gotten to everyone. Wall Street sharpies think they know more than the market. There are tech executives who want to corner the market on brains and think other brains are a threat.

These views are wrong for the economy.

Still. It’s hard for money to switch sides. The Republican Party is the natural home of money. That’s been true since the 1860s. For generations, however, money sided with progress. Progress is the root of the word progressive. Both Roosevelts ran as progressives. They wanted progress. So did most businesspeople.

Facebook vs. Apple

It’s not as black and white as you think.

To hear the tech press tell the story, Facebook is promoting evil by admitting to its ad tracking and asking users to opt-in. Apple, meanwhile, is on the side of the angels by loudly promoting privacy.

But here’s the deal. Facebook services are free. Apple services are not.

The tech media is cheering for the global elite against the global poor.

The free web has been the greatest wealth production effort in history. Over the last 20 years over 1 billion people, a substantial portion of the world’s population, has been lifted out of extreme poverty by the free web. The freedom of the web, free as in beer, has been driven by the cloud, which pushed costs low enough that they could be supported by advertising.

Murdoch Seeks Takeover of Australia’s Online Market

To some reporters, Australia’s demand that Google and Facebook “pay” for links to local papers seems like a revolution.

It’s not. It’s embezzlement. The embezzler isn’t even the Australian government. They only work for the embezzler.

The embezzler is Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch’s News Corp. has 52% of Australia’s news market, and more than 20% of the electronic news marketplace. The Murdoch press there is, if anything, even more propagandistic than it is here. That’s why Australia has the worst climate policy of any nation in the world.

That’s the “hero” that’s going to “spank big tech” and “save the news business.”

The Big Tech Conspiracy That Wasn’t

Once you show you like something, I offer you more of it.

Is this a conspiracy?

Not unless I’m a scaled Web site. Because this is at the heart of the charge against “Big Tech,” the companies I call Cloud Czars.

• Show a preference for certain videos on YouTube and YouTube offers you more videos like them.
• “Like” things on Facebook or Instagram, and you will get more things like them.
• Follow certain celebrities on Twitter, you’re offered more like them.
• The same with Amazon Kindle books. When you buy something from Amazon, you’ll be followed for days by ads offering the same thing.

The algorithms follow human nature. Chances are that if you like a book about 12^th century monks who solve murders, you might like another one. If you like Henry Winkler, you’ll probably like Ron Howard.

The problem is that if you like crazy conspiracy theories on Instagram, or videos describing the terrors of the Illuminati on YouTube, you’ll get more of them. Like those, you’ll get more. And more and more.