-> Global IT companies collect data to provide personalised advertising.
-> These business practices are contradicting European values and legislations.
-> The European data protection reform aims at forcing companies such as Google to respect European fundamental rights.
-> The implementation of this vision in form of political practices is characterised by friction and conflict.
-> In addition to the regulation of global search engines, Europe should focus on law enforcement and privacy-friendly technologies.
Author: Astrid Mager

-> Globale IT Konzerne sammeln Daten, um personalisierte Werbung anzubieten.
-> Diese Geschäftspraktiken stehen im Spannungsfeld zu europäischen Werten und Gesetzen.
-> Die europäische Datenschutzreform will Firmen wie Google dazu zwingen, europäische Grundrechte zu respektieren.
-> Die Umsetzung dieser Vision in die politische Praxis ist jedoch von Bruchlinien und Konflikten geprägt.
-> Neben der Regulierung von globalen Suchmaschinen sollte Europa vermehrt auf Rechtsdurchsetzung und Privatsphäre-freundliche Technologien setzen.
Autorin: Astrid Mager

Google has been blamed for its de facto monopolistic position on the search engine market, its exploitation of user data, its privacy violations, and, most recently, for possible collaborations with the US-American National Security Agency (NSA). However, blaming Google is not enough, as I suggest in this article. Rather than being ready-made, Google and its ‘algorithmic ideology’ are constantly negotiated in society. Drawing on my previous work I show how the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ gets inscribed in Google’s technical Gestalt by way of social practices. Furthermore, I look at alternative search engines through the lens of ideology. Focusing on search projects like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, YaCy and Wolfram|Alpha I exemplify that there are multiple ideologies at work. There are search engines that carry democratic values, the green ideology, the belief in the commons, and those that subject themselves to the scientific paradigm. In daily practice, however, the capitalist ideology appears to be hegemonic since 1) most users employ Google rather than alternative search engines, 2) a number of small search projects enter strategic alliances with big, commercial players, and 3) choosing a true alternative would require not only awareness and a certain amount of technical know-how, but also effort and patience on the part of users, as I finally discuss.