France Fines Google: Is Atlas Shrugging?
By Randall Holcombe • Friday February 3, 2012 9:10 AM PDT • 6 Comments
In Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, businesses push government to pass law after law that aids weaker businesses by penalizing successful ones. There’s the “Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule” to prevent destructive competition among firms in an industry, and the “Equalization of Opportunity Bill” that limits the number of businesses one person can own. Throughout the novel government enacts laws and policies to hold back successful companies for the benefit of their struggling competitors.
The book is fiction, of course, but many people have observed how the fictional events in this novel published more than half a century ago have eerie parallels in real-world government policy. One example is a fine that has been levied on Google by a French court, because Google has been giving away its mapping services, undercutting a French business that was trying to sell the same services. Just as in Atlas Shrugged, firms that give consumers a better deal are held back to protect those firms that don’t offer consumers something equally attractive.
The EU is attacking Google on another front as well, challenging their privacy policy, not because they say there is anything wrong with it, but because they want more time to investigate it. Google gives away most of its services, and nobody is forced to use those services or deal with Google at all. If people don’t like Google’s policies, they don’t have to use their services. Why should any government be involved?
Google appears to be a target just because it is a large successful company that gives people things they want—often at no charge. The threats Ayn Rand foresaw to our freedoms are showing up in the news daily.
Tags: Books, Business, Corporatism, Corruption, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Europe, Free Market, Liberty, Monopoly and Antitrust, Nanny State, Philosophy, Politics, Progressivism, Regulation, The State 
Atlas Shrugged does seem prophetic in so many ways.
Sadly, this brilliant book is being ridiculed by a tenured Professor at my law school. He does not give reasons as to why; he simply mentions Atlas Shrugged and tries to point to the “evils” it entails...I sincerely doubt he ever read it.
Keep up the good work!
Stina Jackson | Feb 4, 2012 | Reply
Your professor must be a collectivist/socialist, he must think that everyone has a right to your property, specially intellectual property.
Nuno | Feb 6, 2012 | Reply
Ms. Rand understood that in a free market monopolies can not exist. They are and will always be creations of government. If I could have “one wish” it would be that every individual who seeks public office must pass an exam based upon the writings of Ms. Rand.
Carl Selmasska | Feb 7, 2012 | Reply
A very good post.
By the way – remember Rand’s last piece of writing “The Sanction of the Victim” – the education system is the heart of the collectivists. Stop giving money to universities (put the begging letters they send into the trash – and work to get politicians to vote against the spending demands of the “educators”). And stop taking their “qualifications” seriously.
For example, whatever poltitical differences we may have with Abe Lincoln – he was a good practicing lawyer, he represented people well in court.
Yet Lincoln did not have a day’s formal legal eduation.
So why should Stina Jackson have to sit there and pretend to respect some moron – simply because the person is a “Professor of Law” who can mess up his life by making sure he does not get a piece of paper called a “law degree”?
Paul Marks | Feb 7, 2012 | Reply
If Atlas were shrugging, these companies would resist the governments, instead of sucking up to them or rolling over everytime a government pulls a stunt like this. Google should have responded creatively, perhaps by posting a link to this story of how the French gun-verment is screwing with them as the first result of any request for a map. And the name,address and email of the rotten judge that made this decision would be the second result. But I fear Google will roll over on this the way Twitter did recently when it announced it will respect various countries’ “laws”.
PaulTheCabDriver | Feb 10, 2012 | Reply
“...a large successful company that gives people things they want—often at no charge.”
The stark contrast between that state of affairs and the alternative that government offers us is enough to make every do-gooder politician and bureaucrat shamed to the point of lashing out. I’m not suprised that they look on Google with some degree of envy at their effectiveness in satisfying REAL human wants and needs.
ArbutusJoe | Feb 14, 2012 | Reply