Avoiding Avoidance: How to Put an End to Google’s Circumvention of Corporation Tax.
In the UK Public Accounts Committee’s recent session on tax avoidance, Chair Margaret Hodge spoke of Google’s “devious” behaviour and that the search engine in contrast to its philosophy does evil because it uses “smoke and mirrors to avoid paying tax”.
Avoiding Avoidance: How to Put an End to Google’s Circumvention of Corporation Tax
christian fuchs, May 28th 2013
Google’s “New“ Terms of Use and Privacy Policy: Old Exploitation and User Commodification in a New Ideological Skin
Google’s “New“ Terms of Use and Privacy Policy: Old Exploitation and Commodification in a New Ideological Skin.
On March 1st, 2012, Google changed its terms of use and privacy policy. Google’s “new” privacy policy is not new at all and should consequently best be renamed to “privacy violation policy” or “user exploitation policy”.
christian fuchs, March 1st 2012
The Google Street View Surveillance Machine
It is a fact that Google has while taking panorama photographs of streets in cities all over the world (in 34 countries) for its Street View application also collected information about wireless networks and data from open wireless networks that are not password-secured. Maybe it is time to stop talking about corporate social responsibility and to start focusing on the analysis, exposure, and investigation of corporate social irresponsibility.
christian fuchs, May 29th 2010
Google vs. China = economic censorship vs. state-censorship of the Internet
Although China and Google are now going separate ways, they have more in common than they think… Neither China nor Google are the ambassadors of freedom of speech, they are just representatives of two different models of Internet censorship: Internet censorship by state coercion and economic Internet censorship by repressive tolerance.
christian fuchs, April 3rd 2010
Google Buzz: Economic Surveillance – Buzz Off! The Problem of Online Surveillance and the Need for an Alternative Internet
Google Buzz is part of Google’s empire of economic surveillance. It gathers information about user behaviour and user interests in order to store, assess, and sell this data to advertising clients. Google’s online product advertising for Buzz says: “The first thing we all do when we find something interesting is share it. More and more of this kind of sharing takes place online. Google Buzz is a new way to share updates, photos, videos, and more”.
Do people really want to share vast amounts of private data and location data not only with their friends, but also with Google? Can Google be considered as a friend of all humans, or doesn’t it rather accumulate power that can also cause great harm to humans? Do people really always want to tell others where they currently are? Are people really interested in sharing their location data not only with selected friends, but also with Google?
christian fuchs, February 14th 2010