Why Google is the Recording Industry of the 21st Century

If you’ve been following any of the news in the music and recording industry you know that Radiohead announced they will be releasing their music for free, eliminating the recording industry middle man. Nine Inch Nails followed suit a few days later, followed by Oasis and Jamiroquai. The music wants to be free from monopolistic middle men who want to limit it’s reach, manage it’s distribution, and control it’s pricing. However the problem is music doesn’t need the middle men, once the technology and the delivery infrastructure have developed, the middle men act as an impediment to growth and progress. Right now the musicians have outgrown the middlemen and no longer need them. Just because the music business dies doesn’t mean there won’t be great artists producing great music. This story follows an interesting parallel to Google’s desire to control, and manipulate advertising, most recently text link advertising …

Let’s cover the basics, in case you hadn’t noticed Google has been on a slow and steady course to manipulate the online advertising market, in fact they’ve been doing it slowly and methodically since the summer of 2006. I documented my first hand experience with this price gouging in July of 2006 Google Adwords Quality Score - Set to Pillage and Plunder. The exact same process was repeated again November of 2006 Adwords Quality Update II = Price Gouging Round II. Then Google set about tightening it’s grip on the online advertising world yet again in August of 2007, obfuscating price increases with a Byzantine algorithmic update purported to improve the user experience - New Google Adwords Formula = Just Pay Us More.

With advertisers beaten into submission on pricing, the war shifted fronts, this time to people offering alternatives to Google, in the form of text link advertising. The first attack was straight out of 1984 by George Orwell, by encouraging citizens to report dissidents who didn’t follow “the rules“. What happens next, take a few high profile sites and make and example by banning them, or hitting them with a penalty.

Where’s the parallel … the recoding industry developed an infrastructure to distribute music. Google developed an infrastructure to distribute advertising. Both industries profited immensely being the middleman in a monopolistic marketplace. Now that the monopoly they enjoyed for so long is under market pressure to open up, and they are fighting to maintain control. The music industry looks to shut down the consumer with burdensome DRM. Google threatens to de-index web publishers who don’t implement official Google approved advertising methods. Google maintains that these actions are to prevent people from “buying their way to the top of the SERP’s” however their actions speak louder than their words, and their hypocrisy is crystal clear.