During this presentation, Dr. Robert Epstein discussed his brilliant ideas of why he thinks Google has taken over mainstream media in the United States. Epstein also details his thoughts on Google's bias taking over politics and influencing citizens of the United States on major votes or other decisions.
Most of my own ideas and beliefs about this topic align perfectly with Epstein’s. During the presentation, Epstein talked about how Google is a free service, and basically, everyone uses it because of that. However, they are actually paying for it after all but not with their money. They are paying for it with their privacy and information. It was been proven true that Google tracks its users. Google’s main goal is to influence users to be consumers of the products they want and to believe in what they want them to believe in. Most people are okay with sacrificing their privacy. They aren’t bothered in the slightest by a company spying on their every move, but I and others with the same beliefs around me couldn’t disagree more.
What Google really desires is control. They fully believe that if they have control over what citizens see then they have control over the world. I believe they are right about this. If Google has our eyes always shifted on a certain belief, then eventually the consumer will believe it. Google controls what pops up first when we search for something. Therefore, they control what we click on. Citizens use Google for everything. They use it for Gmail, Google documents, Siri, and so much more that they don’t even realize. A few years ago, Apple made a deal with Google. They paid Google to use their search engine for Siri on iPhones. Apple now pays Google more than 10 billion dollars a year for that search engine on their devices. Additionally, Siri is Google biased. Siri just takes information from Google. It should also be said that most of Google’s biased information is often extremely liberal.
Towards the end of the presentation, a question was asked from a student about rigging elections 200 years ago. He asked why this is different than what Google does in today's elections. Epstein said it’s different because Google controls everything we see. Back 200 years ago they didn’t have that power. In conclusion, Google’s overuse of its power and control over the world has caused people to believe things they didn’t originally support.
image source
