Search engines, first and foremost Google, do not present objective results. Google's business model is based on data trading and has been outlined with the term surveillance capitalism. In the ITA dossier "New Paths towards Open Data", ITA researcher and search engine expert Astrid Mager and political scientist Fynn Semken ask how discrimination can be avoided and what alternatives exist.

For the authors, one of the central issues is the protection of individual data protection rights. But this is precisely what makes it difficult, because data-sharing mandates are needed to enable smaller companies to share data. However, these are in conflict with individual data protection. One way, therefore, is to establish new anonymization techniques to make data accessible, but not assignable.