Google's Shady History

Google, the corporate giant, not only has information about you, but also has a history of getting in trouble with the government for doing illegal things. Robert Epstein, a Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and the founder and Director Emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Massachusetts, explains what illegal things Google has gotten caught doing (articles from The Guardian & USA Today). Google, overall, is a company that does extremely illegal things, and are solely fined for the crimes they commit. They are lightly regulated for such a massive company.

Source: http://rabbitbuzz.com/

Let’s start with the regular things Google does that they do not get fined for. An article from The Guardian goes into depth about Google’s search algorithm. Google “lists its own products, from e-commerce to pages from its own Google+ network, higher than those of its competitors, even if these are sometimes of less value for consumers and should not be displayed in accordance with the Google algorithm” (Dopfner). Any of Google’s services are displayed above its competitor in a search result. This puts Google at an advantage, and weakens any competition against the company.
           

 Aside from Google’s shady search algorithm, they also have a history of doing illegal acts. From 2010 to 2012, Robert Epstein recorded a list of major offenses that Google was fined for. To begin, in 2010, “Google’s Street View teams — the mobile crews that are systematically filming every street and building in the world, including your home — were accused of deliberately capturing people’s names, telephone numbers, emails, text messages, passwords, search histories, and even online dating information as they drove from neighborhood to neighborhood in the U.S. and more than 30 other countries” (Epstein). Google was fined $25,000 for this massive invasion of privacy, and after that, nothing else was done. Later in 2011, Google got in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission about how the handles user search information, leading to regular privacy audits for the next 20 years. Also in 2011, “Google agreed to pay a whopping $500 million fine to the federal government for illegally marketing Canadian prescription medication to U.S. citizens” (Epstein). This situation could have introduced a dangerous prescription medication into the United States, if it was not for our federal government stopping it.
            

 It is not hard to see that many of the acts Google does are illegal. The things listed above are only a handful of the crimes committed between 2010 and 2012, and there might be many other crimes that they have not gotten caught for. More action needs to be taken to halt Google’s way of doing things, rather than simply fine the multi-billion dollar company that they are.

Future Question: What is Google's history and how big is the company?