Unfair march of tech giants: Google and Amazon are suffocating Britain, says ALEX BRUMMER
Google has embedded itself in all our lives. It is difficult to imagine a world without the instant information from its AI-enabled search engine. But like much of 'big tech', Google is an Indian giver.
Few of its services come for free and its layering of searches, by payment rather than merit, is invidious.
A recent estimate by Press Gazette put Google UK income from searches at £15billion.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is perturbed about the way in which Google ranks businesses. If, like this writer, one is seeking to replace a lost car key, the firm which miraculously comes up first on the search is the outfit that paid most for the 11.10am slot on a Monday morning.
The CMA's boss Sarah Cardell, who escaped Rachel Reeves' cull of regulators, perceives this advantage to be against the public interest and wants to designate Google as a firm with 'strategic market status'.
The change would give the authorities the right to intervene in search services to encourage innovation.
Tech titan: Alphabet-owned Google accounts for 90% of searches in the UK in a monopoly rivalling Standard Oil of New Jersey at the start of the 20th Century
Alphabet-owned Google accounts for 90 per cent of searches in the UK in a monopoly rivalling Standard Oil of New Jersey at the start of the 20th century.
Rightly, the regulator wants to simplify access so there are more choices of search engines. Cardell also recognises the lack of transparency when it comes to deploying published information from news sources.
Attitudes in 21st-century Britain and the US bear little resemblance to those of a century ago.
Trust-busting and taking on the overwhelming power of big corporates and the wealthy was a core driver for President Teddy Roosevelt. In the US, billionaires are in charge and efforts at taming Silicon Valley are seen as unpatriotic.
Efforts by France, the EU and others to challenge the domination of Silicon Valley are viewed by the Trump White House and Congress as an assault on US tech hegemony.
Britain finds itself with a big dilemma. Our major retailers and owners of intellectual property correctly see Google, Amazon, Microsoft and their ilk as destroyers.
They undermine the High Street, vacuuming up UK tech innovators such as Deep Minds (owned by Google), weaken creative opportunities for gaming gurus and undermine news organisations.
The desperation to bring in new investment from the digital giants suppresses the opportunity for UK pioneers to prosper, win financial backing and develop Britain's own Silicon Valley.
Only yesterday, Sir Keir Starmer's government was heralding a new dawn for investment in Britain when Amazon announced that it is to invest some £40billion in new state-of-the-art fulfilment centres, new delivery stations and much else.
That's all hunky-dory but the risk is that the more tech and delivery-enabled Amazon becomes, the more difficult it becomes for retailers to compete, hurting our already denuded high streets and traditional skilled shopping jobs.
The resentment might be less were the tech giants bigger corporate taxpayers. Elaborate measures to avoid tax mean direct contributions to the exchequer are limited. The kindness of some strangers we could do without.
Gold rush
It is easy to forget that Andrew Bailey is more economic historian, with a PhD to show for it, than economist.
The past has much to teach us. A century has passed since Bailey's esteemed predecessor Montagu Norman, with the support of the Chancellor Winston Churchill, shackled sterling to gold at the optimistically robust exchange rate of $4.86.
As Bailey noted yesterday, Norman went 'full Trump' in his diaries writing 'GOLD STANDARD' in capital letters.
John Maynard Keynes argued at the time that the consequence was a loss of flexibility, preventing the economy to adjust to economic shocks. The result was deflation, stagnation, and lost jobs.
Yet the allure of bullion shows no sign of abating as viewers of The Gold, the latest TV adaptation of the 1983 Brink's-Mat robbery, would attest.
A survey by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum finds central banks are back in the bullion game with plans to increase holdings by $5 trillion over the next one-to-two years. Will they never learn?
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