Is Google Evil?

Google is being sued again in Europe.  If someone or some company is being "sued," that means they are being forced to appear in a courtroom and can potentially lose a lot of money.

Basically Europeans and European governments are upset about Google for a number of reasons.

1)  The "right to be forgotten."  If there is material on Google which a person does not think is accurate or which a person finds embarrassing, Google will refuse to remove it unless the person obtains a court order.

Google claims that they believe in "freedom of speech," but, in reality, Google does not seem to want to hire and pay for extra staff to make sure that its search engine provides accurate information.  Europeans feel that Google wants to make money from them, but doesn't want to act responsibly in return.

Basically European governments are arguing that Google is turning the internet into an unreliable sewer.  What's a sewer?  When you flush your toilet all the stuff in your toilet bowl goes down into the sewer system.  So Europeans are saying that because Google loves money so much, it has turned the internet from an information super-highway into an information sewer. It's getting to the point where you can't trust ANY information to be found on the internet.

2)  The theft of private information.  It looks as if Google regularly "steals" private information and then sells it to make money from Google users.

3)  Google is becoming a monopoly.  Monopolies are businesses that dominate a market.  Monopolies are terrible for any economy - they make huge profits, but consumers are forced to pay whatever the monopoly wants them to pay.  If you own a business, you need Google to get your business online, and you have to pay what Google wants you to pay to get online.   

http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-assault-google-shows-industry-201707809.html