Acton October

Lord Acton, best known for his observation about the corruption which flows from power, gets mentioned in the other place at the end of September 2007 and the end of October 2008. Clearly an autumnal thing, only spoilt by cropping up earlier this year, in July, in a worry about the market power of Amazon.

However, it is now autumn again, so OK to rise to the bait of Murdoch having a pop at Google in the EU competition courts. An amusing pop in that Murdoch, or at least his people, the people who run the Sun with its stables of phone hackers and topless models, has the sauce to bang on about media morality and about how Google spells the end for a decent & healthy press.

But the fact that the messenger is tainted does not necessarily mean that the message is not true. It is a worry that so much power is now concentrated in Google, despite the various good works that they do: the provision of free search, mail and mapping facilities to name three of the most well known, not to mention the blogging facilities into which I type now. It does seem likely that as time goes on, power will eventually corrupt, and Google will start to do things which are not so cuddly. Can they be trusted not to fiddle with their search rankings for some dark or profitable purpose? Which they might dress up as being for our own good really, just like governments and other do-gooders do when they make us do things that we do not want to do.

I remember back to my last days in the world of work when I spent some time in a plastic paddy bar in the Oxford Road in Reading, where the barman, who was actually Irish, spent some time explaining to me that it was quite wrong for such an important facility as internet search to be run from the private sector for profit. Such search had become just the sort of essential service which ought to be run by the state, of the people for the people. Which was all very well after a few pints of the dark stuff, but seemed a bit tricky in the light of morning. What state are we going to ask to do the job? Would the UN take it on?

Which is where I think I am still at. Not very comfortable, but with no idea what to do about it.

But then this morning I think back to the way in which we broke British Rail up when we privatised it. Maybe daft in that context, but maybe in this context the model should be that we allow Google Central to take the Network Rail role, to provide some central systems which are then leased out to various operators, some of which might be carved out of what is now Google, with these various operators being the people with whom we interact and who compete among themselves for our business, for our clicks.

Which is all very well again, but as things stand now, I do not want some such operator getting between me and Google, and I have gone to some lengths in the past to get rid of such people as have managed to load getting between software on my PC. I trust them a lot less than I trust Google.

So still no idea what to do about it, Maybe one of the clever chaps in the competition bit of the EU will come up with something after all! Earn the considerable bag of oats that he gets - EU pay and conditions being quite something.

PS: I seem to recall that they did something of the breaking up sort in the US to break up the Bell stranglehold on the telephone service there, but apart from it involving baby bells I don't remember how it all turned out.