philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The Internet as we know it is dying

How Facebook and Google are killing the classic Internet and reinventing it in their image

If you’re not an avid gamer, the kind of person who enjoys watching other gamers narrate their own adventures through the latest first-person shooter, you’ve probably never heard of Twitch TV. But the three-year-old site is an extraordinary success story. At peak viewing times, it boasts a bigger audience than MTV, TNT or AMC. 32 million peoplewatched the finals of last year’s “League of Legends” tournament. So there’s little question why Google might be interested in laying down $1 billion for the site. The young male advertising demographic is notoriously hard to corral. Twitch TV’s got it.

But for the gamers who produce much of the content, the idea that Google’s copyright cop, ContentID, might suddenly be patrolling their world is a nightmare. It is not uncommon for Twitch TV gamers to stream themselves playing a game while simultaneously listening to recorded music. If, after integrating with YouTube, rights holders start using ContentID to claim ownership over the intellectual property in over those videos, the advertising revenue generated by those videos would no longer end up in the hands of the creators of that revenue. Even scarier, to some, is that the possibility that years of previously produced streams might suddenly come under interdiction. And ContentID is by no means infallible: They make plenty of (costly) mistakes.

From a copyright holder’s point of view, bringing a new sheriff into town probably seems entirely just and proper. To be sure, there is an element of the Twitch TV squealing that comes off as decidedly juvenile. Grow up kids! Join the real world! But there’s a deeper story here, a tale of dangerous consolidation. Through YouTube, Google already wields an enormous amount of power over the ability of people to make their livings from independently producing online video. Bringing another huge audience under Google’s roof further solidifies Google’s ability to dictate terms: Play by our rules or you don’t play at all. By all accounts, Twitch TV has built its success by virtue of its ability to foster a sense of shared community. Does that community survive once it is sucked into the Google maw?

But the indisputable fact remains. Between the two of them, Facebook and Google control the universe of online advertising and determine how the currents of web traffic flow. (And let’s not forget Amazon’s disproportionate power in the world of retail.) Both companies are engaged in a winner-takes-all strategy of constant expansion, gobbling up any newly emerging companies that have succeeded in accumulating a critical mass of users. Both companies, accountable only to their shareholders, enjoy enormous power in influencing our civic conversations.

It’s no wonder that there is so much sound and fury on the Web. Because they just keep getting bigger, while we feel increasingly powerless.

See the full story here: http://www.salon.com/2014/05/26/the_internet_as_we_know_it_is_dying/