Not everyone appreciates the search power or the strong dominance Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) holds on the the internet. Axel Springer’s chief executive Mathias Dopfner recently criticized Google in an open letter to a German-based media company.
A letter to Google
The letter was addressed to Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Eric Schmidt and in it, he asked whether Google intended to create a superstate which isn’t accountable to privacy laws or anti-trust laws. Axel Springer owns over 200 newspapers and magazines. Two of the company’s most notable newspapers include Bild and Die Welt.
Google has yet to make a comment on the matter. Dopfner’s letter was not published by his company, it was published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which is not a part of his company. The letter was actually a response to a column written by Schmidt. The Google executive’s column referred to the advertising relationship between Google and Axel Springer.
BBC elaborated a little on the matter: “The company makes 62% of its profits from digital business, he said, and the internet is a great opportunity, but he explained that he was concerned about the role Google plays online. He referred to a long-running dispute between Google and the European Commission, which involved accusations that the search company gave favourable treatment to its own products in search results. Mr Dopfner said the resulting agreement between the two parties was not a compromise but instead the Commission had “sanctioned the introduction of a business model, which in less honourable circles is called extortion.”
A major complaint against Google
Dopfner complains that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) could still discriminate against competitors in search results. He also said Google has a lot more more power than most people realize. He even went as a far as to compare the search giant to state-based monopolies that run German telecom and postal services. Google wasn’t the only company Dopfner criticized; he also complained about Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Mark Zuckerberg. His biggest problem against the social media giant was how data is stored and user privacy is treated.
