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Google is the Internet, Too Big to Fail

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google is the Internet, Too Big to Fail
Today, I woke up late, turned on my cellphone’s screen, and saw six new emails. I touched my fingerprint to the display, unlocked the phone, and briefly checked the messages. The contents and senders weren’t all that important though. What was striking, in this brief moment, was what I realized: Google is the Internet.

We’ve been living with the Internet as we know it for a couple decades now. Technology companies have come and gone, but the behemoths have grown to epic proportions. Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have all become some of the largest companies in the world. But there’s a distinct difference between those other names and Google (or, Alphabet, as it’s now called).

The company launched on August 18, 2004 on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange as GOOG. The four-letter ticker symbol was met with great fanfare and excitement. People wanted in on this inventive company that was revolutionizing search, ads, and online video.

Founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, penned an IPO letter before the launch of the stock. They detailed how Google would be different from all the rest. Shareholders wouldn’t be given special privileges and likely wouldn’t benefit from dividends (any time soon). Their votes wouldn’t matter, as control of the company would steadfastly be kept with those in leadership. And the stock could trade wildly, as profits weren’t of utmost importance. Page and Brin wanted to, first and foremost, build great technologies.

This focus on innovation over quarterly profit gains was a winning combination. Alphabet now sits as the second largest market capitalization — to Apple — in America. From a scrappy startup to tens of thousands of employees and billions in profits, this has been a meteoric rise. But it hasn’t always been an easy ride.

Every step they took, they were met with scrutiny. Countless antitrust lawsuits suggest Google is being monopolistic or manipulating search results in their own favor. There are accusations that the company doesn’t respect user’s privacy, and can be easily compelled to hand over what they know to information-hungry government surveillance organizations. They’ve been sued for driving around neighborhoods scanning people’s wi-fi networks and locations, too.

Despite these challenges, their efforts don’t seem to be slowing. The company is creating new hubs around the country. Heck, just north of where I used to live in Colorado they’re building an extensive mini-campus for Googlers! Lest you think construction and new-hires are their only areas of growth, think again. Alphabet is branching into artificial intelligence in mind-bending ways, too. The team, aptly named Google Brain, is leading the charge to develop machines that think for themselves, learn, and become smarter. Right now, they’re capable of beating chess and go champions, moving objects more efficiently, and finding answers more rapidly. In time, it’s easy to see these technologies testing humans’ capabilities.

Amidst this rapid ascendency into artificial intelligence and machine learning is also a company with more earthly ambitions: storing the world’s data. When I get on my smartphone or computer, check my emails in Inbox by Gmail, type out a note about research in Google Drive, write new appointments in Google Calendar, conduct a Google Search to find the 2004 Founders’ IPO Letter for this article, check a stock price on Google Finance (GOOG is at $782 right now), and then wrap this all up by looking at photos from last week on Google Photos, Google is at the heart of it.

Importantly, amidst this growth is an important consideration: most everything is free. For the frugal people that follow my blog, I wouldn’t be surprised if you embraced this cost-effective solution as I do. If you use other technologies, you’ll be spending a small fortune in comparison to Google’s products. Want to get an Apple iPhone? It’ll cost you $600-800 off contract. Google’s smartphones cost about $300-400 less. Want to use a word processor? Microsoft’s will cost you about $10 per month for access. Google’s is free. Interested in getting a new laptop? A good Mac or PC could run you $800-1000. Google’s Chromebooks are about $200-500.

Yes, people will argue that you’re sacrificing your privacy. Some say, “If you use Google, you’re the product because they sell your data to advertisers!” While factually blurry, the gist is true. We’re exchanging this right to services (like the Google Doc I’m typing this into) for our data and privacy. Contrary to popular belief, no individual advertiser has my data; instead, Google aggregates the world’s data for its advertisers.

The cost savings that Google has handed to us has led to an information revolution. Schools can afford to reduce technology costs, while increasing students’ access to the Internet and productivity tools. If we want an answer to Pythagorean theorem, we just Google it. Want to take a free, online course? Google it and start watching the YouTube videos. The answers are there for the taking. Information has been democratized and it’s not because of a government agency or hardware manufacturer. It’s this one software and search company.

So here we are, with Google as the Internet. It’s everything we interact with and rely on to get things done; at least, for much of us. You might be thinking I love this progression, advancement, and technological prowess. But to be honest, I’m concerned.

Here we are in the 21st century, and one company seems to be leading everything. If there’s real competition, they either build their own competitor or swallow it up through acquisitions. People are getting rich — wealth is spilling into their coffers. Meanwhile, we place our trust, data, and reliance on this one company to handle it all.

We don’t get to vote on Google’s proceedings. They aren’t a government agency. What they choose to do with our data is their decision. And even if we used tools like Google Takeout to take everything off their servers, we’d probably end up using Google Search, YouTube, and other Google services to get through our day. We’re stuck with this Internet leader — for better and for possibly worse.

As much as I love the company and everything they’ve done to make the Internet more affordable to everyone, I wonder what it might look like if something failed, new leadership took over that wasn’t friendly to users, or if governments around the world started demanding even more from Google’s servers. Right now, Google is too big to fail. And just like banks, that’s a frightening proposition — no matter the cost savings.

What If College Were A Right?

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College Campuses Are Building Continuously

Ensuring your indebted future

Since my freshman year of college nine years ago, every university I’ve stepped foot on has been “under construction.” With streets closed, detours made, and buildings built to even greater heights, trillions are being spent across the country on “improvements.”

This hyper-development has led to increased tuition and fees for everyday students, but amidst this “progress” sits an all-too-quiet darkness: $1.2 trillion in student loan debt.

The construction, administrator salaries, and student fees (i.e., recreational centers) have all contributed to greater debts. Simultaneously, reduced state-based funding for tuition has saddled students with ever-growing amounts.

Almost every state — despite emphasizing the importance of educations — have cut, cut, cut. They’ve reduced burdens on taxpayers at the cost of individual college students.

Without money, the gap widens

We’ve pushed students into this bind. We’ve enabled this disempowerment and devolution. Now, students must take out student loans or ask wealthy parents. If the latter doesn’t exist, few options remain.

A vacuum has resulted. Private companies and universities have aimed to remedy the gap with digital universities and massive open online courses (MOOCs). These serve increasing populations of students looking for access to education — wherever it can be found. But these “solutions” do not provide the strength and privilege in an in-person education.

Maybe Udacity and MOOCs are incredible inventions, but would we even consider these options if educations were afforded to more people? Communication and engagement with the material, other students, and professors is weaker online.

Sitting in a seat, asking questions, and being an engaged student in a classroom still wins out. While online options might provide help to many, most people don’t learn very well watching a screen for hours on end.

Should student debt be an individual responsibility?

In America, we tend to value individual freedom over social good. The costs are simple: we don’t have a universal health system, paid family leave, or guaranteed vacation days with all employers. In this case, freedom means individual debt, burden, and struggle.

We believe that K-12 years should be taxpayer funded, and then suddenly stop. College educations shift to individual responsibility, as if it’s an optional concept in today’s economy.

Perhaps we cannot make sweeping changes to all these social programs. But maybe we can continue to strengthen the value of education as a right?

Where college education is a right

Thankfully, there’s another way. Much of Europe already has debt-free college educations for their people. For them, K-12 is just the start if you care to pursue additional education.

For some countries, this philosophy of education goes beyond their native-born populace and artificial borders. The University of Ljubljana in Slovenia provides free education to both foreign and native students. Americans have even gone there to dodge the debt in the States.

Americans could provide affordable educations to the masses. I’m a believer in this philosophy. People deserve quality educations in the richest country in the world. And citizens (at very least) could greatly benefit from this true access.

Students wouldn’t be cash strapped upon graduation. They’d buy homes, cars, and support your job and mine.

Instead, they’re forced to pay banks near-endless amounts of interest for decades and have nothing to show for it.

Stop Calling It “Personal Finance”

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Personal finance change

No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.
–Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Frugaling is fast approaching its third anniversary. Three years of articles, debates, conversations, comments, and millions of visitors. It’s been a humbling journey, but I’ve struggled with a concept at the center of my writing: “personal finance.”

The term grew in popularity in the early 1900s. It was primarily deployed and embraced by the middle classes of America. To scrimp and save was seen as virtuous. You could take nicer vacations, save for retirement, or give more to charity by budgeting better. Undoubtedly, all good things.

“Personal finance” has allowed many to live a fuller life, but also placed much of the burden and responsibility on individuals. Unfortunately, little has changed in nearly 100 years of regular use. Amidst record breaking income and wealth inequality, we seem frozen in time — continuing the use of this term without reservation or thought.

We must ask ourselves some questions about financial education and planning: Are people able to scrimp and save like years prior? Does personal finance capture the economic hardship many face? Is this the best advice we can offer after 100+ years of collective financial experience?

The answer is no, no, and no.

When I break from the 100-year-old script of personal finance and call out the tragedy of income and wealth disparities, people tend to invoke the personal responsibility argument. In response, I receive comments and emails from devout readers who balk at my hesitation to call out financial errs and place more emphasis on society. They tend to ask, What’s the point of saving and making more money if people aren’t personally responsible? They suggest that finances are personal and failure is on the individual.

Over time, I’ve grown increasingly more resistant to the term. For the oppressed, try as they might, their budgets do not add up. They must seek social assistance or face dire consequences (i.e., hunger, eviction, and homelessness).

Whether we know it, prefer it, or like it, personal finance alludes to personal responsibility for errors and successes.

Fail? It’s your fault.

Succeed? It’s your smarts.

Can’t we do better than these oversimplified, overused assumptions? Fortunately, we have an opportunity to approach finance in a new way. It starts with a reinvention of terms. As inequality has worsened, the term has become antiquated and inaccurate. We need to shift to something more appropriate, which captures the diversity of responsibility.

Today I propose we seek a new term and call it: “social finance.” Whereas personal finance places the burden solely on the individual, social finance highlights the environmental, societal, and governmental consequences to an individual.

With social finance, we understand that budgeting will be more difficult for African American men than White guys like me. Why? Because I was afforded great privilege. For instance, one-third of African American men will go to prison in their lifetime. Word to the wise: it’s not because black men are more predisposed to crime than white men.

With social finance, we understand that making money will be more difficult for women than White guys like me. Why? Because I continually earn more than women; not because I work harder, but because society pays women 64% of what I make as a man.

With social finance, we understand that intellectual and physical disabilities affect earning potential — not temporarily-abled White guys like me. Why? Because persons with disabilities are prejudicially fired, refused work opportunities, and the first to lose their jobs to automation and outsourcing.

Personal finance fits well within Western culture. We value hard work, ethic, and personal responsibility above all else. The idea of social finance will be challenging for many, but I believe we can do it. What do you think?

Sometimes I Forget We’re At War

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Act Up on Berlin Wall - Cold War

We are spending all of this money for death and destruction, and not nearly enough money for life and constructive development…when the guns of war become a national obsession, social needs inevitably suffer.
– Martin Luther King

I leaned over to my girlfriend, and conspiratorially – by heart – recited the Pledge of Allegiance: “One Nation, under God, indivisible….” Even as I said the words, I was surprised by my own fluency. How could I remember this pledge? The answer was simple: I was a product of the American education system. Thus, I spent every morning of class – Kindergarten through 12th grade – up, at attention, and announcing allegiance to my country of birth, as if it was sensitive to my voice. Without my verbal confirmation of unwavering support, the class and country would look down upon me – not just because I’d be sitting down.

Amidst my puberty, horrible awkwardness with the opposite sex, and raging hormones displaced on parents, America fought wars. I vividly remember biology class in 6th grade, when the loudspeaker croaked alive – class would be cancelled. Then, teachers sobbed and kids went home. My parents hurried as fast as they could – to hug me and check to see if I was alright. Of course I was – this was Pittsburgh, mah! But we couldn’t stop watching the news for weeks. Over and over again, the World Trade Center towers fell.

I had stood atop those towers a year prior. My 12-year-old mind couldn’t compute how some of the tallest buildings in the world became shorter than our house – the great had fallen. I was more concerned and interested with rollerblading, biking, and playing videogames.

Our leader delivered rousing messages of revenge. They would pay. To us nincompoops, “they” was this exceedingly abstract term. Who were “they?” Could you be “they?” Could we be “they?” Then “they” became “terrorists.” The terrorists who would pay.

We were told the terrorists couldn’t accept our way of life. The terrorists couldn’t understand our freedoms. The terrorists couldn’t accept our Westernized culture where women could work, roam, and divorce as they please.

Across the Muslim-majority world, America aggressed. Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Libya, and other sovereign nations felt the boot of U.S. military. We killed, slaughtered, massacred, bombed, shot, and burned. Thousands of service members and “enemy combatants” died. An unknown number of civilians also perished.

When I was 17, I almost enlisted in the U.S. Army. I wanted to be a 17X (“Seventeen x-ray”). This new position short-tracked enlisted folks into a Special Forces career. I idolized their bravery, willpower, and strength. But I backed down after considering what else I could do with my life – at least for the next few years. Nonetheless, I admired every other friend and neighbor that committed to this hard choice.

All these words – written in past tense – belie the reality of my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. Sometimes I forget we’re still at war even today. Fifteen years and counting, the War on Terror remains unresolved and unsolved. We cannot completely write these tragedies in history books and say we’ve moved onto a new chapter. We cannot say this will be last combat troop found blown up by an improvised explosive device or dictator that suffers our wrath. We’re not finished yet.

In 2015, the War on Terror was estimated to cost at least $1.7 trillion. No, writing that word – “trillion” – doesn’t do it justice. Let me write out every zero behind it.

$1,700,000,000,000.

The first three zeros are for a great day’s work. The second three zeros give you a lawyers’ salary. The third three zeros will buy you a fleet of Airbus aircraft. The next three zeros give you a greater gross domestic product than countries. And the next digit – the number for trillion – buys you a country or two or three.

This level of wealth could’ve bought us a lot of influence in the world, rebuilt our crumbling infrastructure, provided greater humanitarian relief for refugees, and more. But we didn’t think twice within this representative democracy to vote in representatives who would vote in favor of war repeatedly. Those votes were easy in comparison to providing safe bridges, smooth roads, clean water, affordable education, universal healthcare, and/or subsidizing clean energy. The initiatives that would’ve directly impacted our lives for the better – those were the partisan battles of my adolescence. And even if we enacted all those plans, we would still have money leftover to feed the impoverished, house the homeless, and have a roaring economy.

We chose war.

This choice cost us every year as taxpayers, too. About 18-20% of the federal budget goes towards “National Defense” spending. For every dollar, we burn 20% with the goal of keeping us safe. If I snatched away one-fifth of every paycheck from you, wouldn’t you do something about it? Would you let me siphon off your hard-earned dollars?

But I don’t hate all taxes. In fact, I love them! They pay for libraries, fire and police departments, National Guard troops, family members’ disability payments, and Medicare. They provide for those in need; albeit, they could do better. They provide grants and funding for disadvantaged populations to go to college; albeit, they could do better. They provide unemployment support if we lose our jobs suddenly; albeit, they could do better.

We’ve spent 15 years punishing the Muslim-majority countries without resolution. If bloodshed is not enough, are we not sick of war’s economic costs for those at home and abroad? Are we not tired of losing one-fifth of our work? Are we not tired of our worldwide reputation of war before diplomacy?

Years passed where I dreamt of serving my leaders. I wanted to take care of soldiers in combat as a psychologist. I used to take great pride in our flag, to stand with allegiance, and be a good citizen. I loved when I unwrapped my U.S. passport for the first time to flip through the pages of history and read our proud declarations of freedom. But I’ve been changed by a war more than half my life.

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