There’s an ominous cloud of bias, censorship and control building on the horizon of the New Media Marketplace thanks to Google. If you’re in business, a blogger, or do any type of marketing or news reporting using New Media — you’d better pay attention to an alarming trend of censorship.

Concerns with Google’s far reaching power over news dissemination and search engine domination are nothing new. As early as 2002 people began to speak out.

At first, some called concerns over Google’s goals of global search domination an alarmist cry. Many in the New Media and open-source communities saw any such concerns being rooted in marketplace competition. (After all, some thought Google was going to save us all from the “evil empire” of Microsoft.)

A 2004 mini-movie clip ‘EPIC 2014′ by Robin Sloan forecasts in vivid detail Google’s goal to “save the world” and unite all the internet in a “personalized information construct.” Sounds inspiring, right?

Some saw the predictions summarized in EPIC 2014 as reassuring. That small business, bloggers, and the New Media would wrest back control from the mass media outlets of the 20th century. Others saw the forecast as chilling. Now with Google’s track record of actual actions over the last two years, the general consensus is shifting overwhelmingly to the later.

(If you haven’t seen the movie, watch it now to understand the full context of what you’re about to read. If you are visually impaired, Robin Good has a summary transcript here.)

Google gets big, green, and ugly

Since Google has becoming a publicly traded company, it’s been infused with huge amounts of money. But with that influx of cash, it’s like the companies underlying personality and character has been put on some type of steroidal serum. Like mild and meek Bruce Banner turning into the menacing and uncontrollable Hulk — Google is getting bigger, greener, and uglier.

Just look at the Google growth time line. Over the last three years or so, that time line has been increasingly punctuated by reports of Google’s bullying of businesses, undeniable political bias, and censorship. Reports from the old media, bloggers, and other New Media sources make it clear the track Google is on.

New Media censorship overseas

One of the more recent fire storms on that growth time line was Google’s agreement with China’s Dictatorial Communist regime to censor the content of their China specific search engine. It seems the “altruistic” Google preferred to add a huge influx of ad revenue from a billion Chinese rather than flex their muscles to protect human rights and the free flow of uncensored information.

Censorship of business, bloggers, and New Media within US borders

It’s not just in China that censorship is taking place. For the last year or so there have been blog posts, threads, and other stories suspecting Google of a biased censorship with the US borders. Internet marketers, business owners, bloggers, and others have always been suspicious of ranking shifts and ad rate moves being solely explained by “search algorithm updates.” Now new evidence shows that these concerns are justified.

Noel Sheppard from the Business & Media Institute brings it all together in this comprehensive overview of Google bias and censorship at The American Thinker. It’s quite a chilling article detailing the Google money trail! It’s a MUST READ!

No matter what your political leanings, left or right, the Google growth time line should set off alarm bells. Just as business owners, bloggers, and marketers of all political persuasions came together to protect Net Neutrality, so also we need to set aside political differences on Google’s censorship and suspect business practices.

One reason Noel mentions is the direct financial impact that Google’s censorship can have on business owners and bloggers:

“… to new media providers like e-zines and web journals, referrals from Google News can comprise 20 percent or more of their unique reads in a given day, which is the bread and butter for determining current and future ad revenue.

With that in mind, how much power does a company that disseminates almost half of the country’s word search results command over the opinions of our growing population, and what protections exist against abuses of such overreaching power?”

As a publicly traded company, all of us can have an impact with words — not using Google AdWords, and by letting our words be heard. If we don’t speak out and take action Google will think they can get away with whatever they want.

Business owner or not — BEWARE!

You may not worry about your blog or business web site right now. But what lies down the road?

Remember Gmail is structured with 1 gig of storage space to encourage you to keep all or as much of your correspondence online with Google. Similarly the new Google Notebook is an attempt to have you “bring all your planning and research together in one convenient place.”

Both are currently spidered by Goggle with all your info indexed. It’s not public (yet.) And this indexing is supposedly only to help them “improve search algorithms and efficiency.”

But what happens if Google’s neutrality continues to erode and censorship creeps in more and more? What happened in Hitler’s Germany in the 1930’s could become a worldwide reality.

I hate when people throw around analogies of current events with historical facts without any true knowledge of history. And in that light, I use this analogy not from a governmental standpoint. But because a business that can sanction the free flow of ideas worldwide and control the free market with the stroke of a computer key is more of a potential threat to free speech than any one country’s government ever could be.

I’m not trying to be an alarmist — just a entrepreneurial realist

The fact is that as business owners and bloggers we must constantly be on watch for trends that can affect us, positive and negative. You must be aware of where information is coming from, and what bias that source has. If not, you place yourself at the whims of that source to move your opinion in whatever direction they like without any logic or self-influence on your part.

Remember that no decision or action happens in a vacuum

No human being is truly neutral or unbiased. But when a company holds as it’s main goal to be the dominant engine for worldwide information exchange and filtering, they must not let those biases censor the free exchange of ideas in the marketplace. And you must protect your rights to free and innovative thought by protecting the free exchange of ideas.

Copyright © RPM Success Group Inc. 2002-2006. All full copyright rights are reserved by RPM Success Group inc. Other bloggers and journalists are allowed to excerpt and link to posts (as is common with bloggers,) as full credit/attribution is given to AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com and RPM Success Group Inc.

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John-Paul is a published author and weekly columnist for the Honolulu Star Bulletin. As a Business Coach he helps small business owners market, manage, and sell more with self-influence and persuasion. You can reach J.P. directly via [communicationcommando@gmail.com].