Back in 2015, Google announced the formation of Alphabet, a holding company under which the company’s several and disparate divisions would fall. URL: abc.xyz. Pretty much the whole ball of wax.

As we’ve mentioned previously, Congress and multiple Attorney Generals have the world’s four most powerful tech companies in their sights: Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. There are also no less than 50 state investigation into Google, as @matthewstoller reported in an informative series of tweets. The focus: Google’s concentration of corporate power and thuggish behavior.

@jasonfried  When Google puts 4 paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own brand name, you’re forced to pay up if you want to be found. It’s a shakedown. It’s ransom

As Stoller said, “It lost antitrust suits in Europe and Russia. The EU has now combined the competition and big tech regulatory portfolios just to deal with Google.”

The Elephant in the Living Room

While much of the media focus has been on Facebook, Google has always been the elephant in the living room. Stoller suggests that “It will only get worse for Google. The corporation is just too corrupt and conflicted. Based on what I heard from state AGs, foreign enforcers, angry competitors and members in Congress, Google in its current form is fucked. The corporation should just break itself up now.”

But note to self: This ain’t your father’s Microsoft when they faced antitrust issues back in the relatively innocent days of tech. Nor is the tech landscape or trajectory the same.  Nothing stops Google, who recently Claim(ed) ‘Quantum Supremacy,’ Marking a Major Milestone in Computing. And why should it, in a world increasing powered and controlled by technology?

The Age of Biometrics

Consider this: Think twice before using facial-recognition technology or fingerprint scanning, MarketWatch notes. Ditching credit cards for facial recognition removes the last physical barrier between our bodies and Corporate America. That sector has exploded and is expected to grow exponentially in the next few years. Apple and Samsung – can you say Android – have sold tens of millions of devices with fingerprint scanning (and facial recognition) technology, while “legal experts say that presents a problem. “There is no generally applicable federal law that regulates the private sector’s collection and use of biometric information in the U.S.,” speaking of elephant in the living room.

We also know that police departments have been giving homeowners Ring video doorbells (owned by Amazon) for free, purportedly to help prevent crime, of course – and increase the scope of the surveillance state.

When we suggest to people something as simple as using an alternative search engine to Google – Startpage, DuckDuckGo, for example – they tend to shrug and insist that privacy is gone and what’s the difference? And while our elected officials may at long last have cast their attention on antitrust, biometric scanning is alive and well, growing exponentially and getting little attention. As MarketWatch notes, only “three states — Washington, Texas and Illinois — have enacted statutes governing biometric information privacy.”

What to speak of the fact that ‘Perfectly real’ deepfakes will arrive in 6 months to a year, technology pioneer Hao Li says.China is far ahead of the world in controlling its population via ‘social scores,’ and let’s not forget who helped them to develop some of that technology. No one opted in for facial recognition and fingerprint capture. Not a shot was fired, question asked, or congressional oversight committee formed. It’s too much power to put in the hands of the few.

To be effective and truly have impact, the investigative focus needs to be on data collection, precisely who owns it and how invasive we will allow it to be. Former executive chairman of Alphabet Eric Schmidt famously said that Google’s Policy Is To ‘Get Right Up To The Creepy Line’ without going past it. Without oversight, it seems we’re not sure who can define precisely where that line is, and from what we’ve witnessed so far, it seems Google et al clearly know no boundaries. Onward and forward.