From The Nation
By Jeffrey Chester

Should we be worried about Google? Ten years after the search engine was launched by two Stanford University graduate students, Google has become an empowering force and a adopted behavior that has transformed the way we access news and information, shop for goods and services and–increasingly–how we engage in politics. Who would have imagined four years ago, that Google and its subsidiary YouTube would co-sponsor debates in which ordinary citizens could directly engage with presidential candidates?

Last week, Google’s stock hit an all-time high, on the strength of reports that the company will earn more this year than the $10.6 billion it earned in 2006. But while Google has almost overnight become a trusted source of information for the technologically attuned, few have thought to question the extent to which its success poses threats to both our privacy and our aspirations for the positive potential of the Internet.

Google’s dramatic growth is a reflection of its role as the most powerful player in the world of interactive marketing. Ninety-nine percent of Google’s annual revenues (according to its 10K filing with the SEC) comes from selling targeted advertising on its search engine, which is driven by a massive consumer data collection system.

Google is far more than the digital incarnation of Madison Avenue in the twenty-first century. It is the engine driving us into a new communications era, in which interactive marketing will significantly shape our lives. The company is aggressively expanding its advertising role, building out a sales team poised to partner with the biggest brand advertisers on the planet. Google is pitching its souped-up interactive advertising system to global corporations so they can better blend marketing messaged into the news, information and entertainment we consume.

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