Just imagine, how content publishing and journalism alone would have developed, if publishers wouldn't be cut off by the advertising cartel of Google and Facebook.
Or if they would have rubbed 2 brain cells together in 2005 and actually tried to come up with an attractive web presence.
It's like the news media saw what was happening with music and napster/the internet and thought, "Glad that could never happen to us" and went right back to the printing press to fire off the next day's issue.
In the original context I read the statement "either google is screwed or society is screwed" as referring to the lawsuit, not Google's behavior.
That is, to project some of my own opinions: If something like this is not enough to cause major consequences for a big company like google, there is little hope that anything will.
It’s not just ads - there’s a general feeling with a lot of their products and services priorities have shifted away from protecting the user.
You could find a bone to pick with any big company. It’s just clear priorities at the company have shifted from their fun growth days of just doing what’s best/right for users to optimizing for money and other KPIs - search, ads, you name it.
It’s definitely noticeable and their size/monopoly definitely has influence on society.
> (although some might argue their quality has gone down)
Isn’t that the entire thing the article argues? That journalism (real journalism, that is meant to keep those in power on the straight and narrow), suffers because not enough money goes to the actual journalists? Stock is the public’s perception of something’s value, but the actual value to society can not be measured in stocks.
Looking at the NYTimes stock as an example it seems that they are doing pretty well these days (although some might argue their quality has gone down)