Who Really Controls The Internet?

We need to take a serious look at who has how much influence via the internet. I’ve been watching the news for just the last couple weeks, and I’ve actually become concerned for conservatives. Supposedly, evangelical Christians compose the majority of the Right wing. True or not, for the sake of discussion, we'll accept it for now. The immediate problem is that the Church has always been the last to take advantage of technological development. So, while we conservatives may control talk radio, the liberals have taken over the blogosphere.

Let’s talk about fundraising activities. Check out this from Act Blue. Or, check out this from the Ft. Worth Star Telegram. Clearly, the left is more organized in terms of benefiting from the internet.

Let’s talk about pure influence. The NY Times reported a left wing plot to manipulate Google data. If you read the article, it's not such a fantasy idea as you might believe. You should add to that what Robert Cox, at the Examiner wrote about who owns what. It turns out all the major portals to the internet are owed or controlled by the left.

Don’t think it matters? Consider that, according to USA Today, 98 percent of the money donated to political parties by Google employees — “Google Millionaires” — went to Democrats.

But it’s not just Google’s media and financial muscle that benefits the left. Liberals run the leading blog search engine — Technorati. They run the leading blog software manufacturer — Six Apart. They invented two of the most important blogging technologies — Podcasting and RSS. The list goes on and on.

There was also this note on Blogger:

There's a saying in the software industry -- it's always good to eat your own dog food. Wikipedia has a great article about this:
"... the company has not merely considered the value of the product for consumers (that is, whether the dog will eat the dog food), but actually is a consumer of the product. When properly executed, this can add a new level of sincerity to advertising and customer relations, as well as helping to shape the product."

Blogger is quintessentially Google dogfood. We use it to publish the main Google Blog, ad-related blogs like Inside AdWords and AdSense, product-specific blogs like those for Reader and Book Search, and even language-specific blogs like Google 한국 블로그 and Google Россия. At last count there were 37 Google blogs powered by Blogger, and even more are in the works.

I’ll quote Robert Cox, again: “Still don’t think it matters?”

The big bright spots for the Right, such as they are, can be found at the Milblogger Ring and The Truth Laid Bare. The Milblogger Ring has successfully brought together those of the military stripe for mutual support and information. And, over at The Truth Laid Bare, you’ll find a list of the top blogs linked to their ecosystem. Their list has blogs from all political stripes, which is good. But, take a trip through the top 30 links and see how many of each side there are. Even there, the Left has some dominance.

The question is what is the Right going to do? Is there room in the markets for a Right Wing version of Google? RSS? YouTube? I don’t know, but I hope there is. I do know that the informational strangle hold of the MSM and the internet will not get better if the Right does nothing.