This is a post in response to David A. Utter's article posted October 24, 2006, "Imagining Google as Government." Utter advances the idea that a corporate entity with influence to shape law to its favor, orchestrate the direction of the world's information, and subvert traditional social, legal, physical, and even political contraints is, in essence, a form of government. Utter bases his argument by suggesting that a corporation can transcend its identity. Seeking a more adequate description for Google, he attempts to describe the aspects that trascend traditional corporate functions. First, Google succeeds in ligitation that set precedent and establish law favorable to its mission. Second, Google, by way of exclusion or inclusion in its directory, can render ideas, companies, events, and even people almost non-existent, enjoying a monopoly on perceived realities.
However, Utter also makes a few key assumptions. First, he rhetorically asks whether making the law "parallel to your business operations" is similiar to functioning like government. Second, he implies that a government does not necessarily need to operate with physical boundaries. Taken together, and with the plausible concept that Google could have its own currency and even revenue stream much like taxation, Utter leaves the reader to ponder whether a Google Government doesn't already exist.
But ultimately Utter's thesis is weak. Corporations have always mirrored some form of private government. Corporations have by-laws and elected officers. Shareholders are almost analogous to citizens who enjoy the vote; they can exert influence over the board and collectively can alter the internal politics of the corporation. The first successful settlements that eventually evolved in the same colonies that formed the basis for the United States were companies. The Virginia Company; the Mass. Bay Company; so on and so forth. Those companies were financed by hundreds of individual investors who purchased shares in the future profits of the now United States. More recently, we can look at the Ford Motor Company. Ford had the largest private army in history. If the workers decided to strike, particularly prior to legislation giving them mechanisms to redress greviances, local and state officials (who controlled government) were in the company's pockets and on their payrolls. Ford enjoyed local police and even the national guard to quell disturbances.
Establishing legal precedents that favor the corporation advocating how a legislation is shaped does not mean that the laws created are immutable. The Supreme Court can rule against previous rulings when the prior makeup of the justices differ from the political realities of contemporary society. Without the 'actual' government, Utter would have no basis for his argument because everything that Google enjoys and every reason for claiming it's a government unto itself ultimately requires the legal, social, and political mechanisms afforded through the judicial process. Google thrives in societies with governments that allow functional capitalism or laissez faire economics.
Most likely, Utter's close association with the industry in which Google functions exaggerates its significance. Much more influential corporations who enjoyed vast monopolies and unfettered access to controlling policy makers have come and gone. He does force us to clarify our definition of government and raises concern over corporate influence in politics and consequences of dominating future litigation through a series of successful legal precedents. But ultimately, Google is no more government that Ford, Microsoft, U.S. Steel, or the Virginia Company.
Roger Thompson
roger_thompson@mac.com
Government of Google? Not likely.
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