[mikekchar]

He can be biased as well as having a good point :-) However, I think there is more to be said here. In the past, the companies that most controlled public opinion were media companies. Could we not make the same argument that Rupert Murdoch is a danger to democracy? Or for that matter could we include companies like MSNBC who have been shown in studies to favour certain political personalities? CNN? Fox News?

Historically can we complain that newspapers controlled personal opinion? Even now, we famously have a political figure criticising a news paper for it's less than favourable coverage ;-). But in seriousness, how much has democracy been eroded by the ability of large corporations to send pretty much any message they wish unchecked?

We could certainly argue that Google has a longer reach and a considerable higher degree of ability to actually extract data about the population. But why single out Google? Facebook is still around ;-) Surely we need to be concerned not just about a single entity, but a class of "attacks" against democracy -- many of which we have tolerated in the past. Perhaps we technology is getting to the point where it's a big problem. Or perhaps it's been a big problem for a long time and we haven't really realised (since the arrival of radio and TV or perhaps even the advent of ubiquitous literacy, widespread newspapers).

So, I appreciate the point that pointing the microscope at Google is probably misguided, but I think we need to be more and more cautious about how the dissemination of information allows small numbers of people to effectively measure and control public opinion.