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Welcome, customers, to this column. I write articles and you subscribe to the FT and tell me how wrong I am (to be fair, some of your are kinder). Now, let us imagine you read this piece, or other FT content, for free on Facebook or Google. It is a far sweeter deal, right? You get something for nothing and Big Data can bask in its own beneficence. Apply that to any amount of diverse content. Rarely in the history of human knowledge have so few offered so much to so many for nothing.
各位看官，欢迎你们阅读我的专栏。我的任务是写文章，而你们的任务是订阅英国《金融时报》，以及指摘我的文字（公平来说，有部分读者还是很仁慈的）。现在，假设你们是在Facebook或谷歌(Google)上免费看到这篇文章或英国《金融时报》的其他文章。这是笔非常划算的交易，对吧？你免费享受内容，而大数据也可享受行善之乐。这可以发生在任何数量的各种不同内容上。在人类认知史上，鲜有如此少的内容提供者向如此多的人免费提供如此海量信息的情况。
That, at least, is the story most of us have downloaded. In the rare cases where an entity — such as the European Commission, which is probing Google’s alleged abuse of its dominant position — raises objections, the obloquy is instant. Google, the US government and others accuse Brussels of thinly veiled protectionism.
至少，上述情形是我们大多数人都曾免费下载、读到过的故事。只在极少数情况下，才会有实体对此提出异议，比如欧盟委员会(European Commission)正在调查谷歌涉嫌滥用市场主导地位，结果立即遭到谩骂。谷歌、美国政府以及其他一些人纷纷指责布鲁塞尔方面几乎不加掩饰的保护主义。
If Europe could innovate like the US, perhaps it would spend less time trying to bring others down. There is a reason Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil”. It invests in ways of bringing ever more knowledge to humankind.
如果欧洲的创新力能像美国一样，或许会少花点时间去给别人使绊。谷歌的座右铭“不作恶”(Don’t be evil)并非说说而已。在为人类带来更多知识方面，谷歌进行了投入。
Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, describes Google as a benign monopoly. If it encountered real competition, its research and development budget would vanish — and with it the self-driving car, wearable computers, “loon balloons” beaming cellular data from the stratosphere and so on. We should appreciate the upside to its dominance. Google’s monopoly returns enable it to fund the equivalent of AT&T’s legendary Bell Labs, or Xerox Park, which made so many breakthroughs. Besides, the data industry’s barriers to entry are low. The disrupters can be disrupted.
贝宝(PayPal)联合创始人彼得•蒂尔(Peter Thiel)将谷歌描述为一家善良的垄断企业。如果它遇到真正的挑战，它的研发预算，连同它的无人驾驶汽车、可穿戴计算机，以及从平流层发射无线数据的“Loon”热气球等科技创新都会化为泡影。我们应该认识到其市场主导地位的有利一面。正是有了垄断收益，谷歌才能资助不亚于美国电报电话公司(AT&T)传奇的贝尔实验室(Bell Labs)或施乐帕克研究中心(Xerox Park)的实验室，这些实验室做出的突破创新数不胜数。而且，数字行业的进入门槛很低，破坏者本身也可能遭到破坏。
But there are other sides to this story. The first is that Google’s chief complainants are US companies. This is not a transatlantic spat. It just so happens that Brussels has a tougher competition regime.
但此事还有其他方面。首先，投诉谷歌的主要是美国企业。这不是一场跨大西洋的口水仗，欧盟委员会之所以会展开调查，只是刚好这里的竞争制度比较严格而已。
Yelp, Microsoft, Expedia and others have complained both to Brussels and Washington’s Federal Trade Commission about Google’s alleged anti-competitive practices. Indeed, in a 2012 report, the FTC’s own staff recommended action on three counts against Google for conduct that had resulted in “real harm to consumers and to innovation”. Google had been presenting content “scraped” from other sites as its own. It had also been privileging its own commercial sites in search results — a clear conflict of interest. However, the FTC’s commissioners rejected their staff’s conclusions. It might have been different had the probe been carried out by the Department of Justice, as was the case with Microsoft, which was penalised on both sides of the Atlantic more than a decade ago.
Yelp、微软(Microsoft)、Expedia等企业向欧盟委员会和美国联邦贸易委员会（Federal Trade Commission，简称FTC）都提出过投诉，指称谷歌涉嫌反竞争行为。事实上，在2012年的一份报告中，FTC内部工作人员建议对谷歌的三项罪名采取行动，因为其行为已经“对消费者和创新造成真正伤害”。谷歌此前一直将从其他网站“搜刮”的内容作为自己的内容呈现。它还在搜索结果中优先呈现自己的商业网站，这明显存在利益冲突。然而，FTC委员否定了工作人员的结论。如果调查是由美国司法部(Department of Justice)进行的，情况可能会不同，十多年前微软就接受了美国司法部的调查，并在大西洋两岸都受到了处罚。
Not even Goldman Sachs can match Google’s lobbying clout nowadays. When the report was leaked to the Wall Street Journal in March, Google cajoled the FTC into distancing itself from its own conclusions.
就连高盛(Goldman Sachs)也比不上谷歌现今的游说影响力。当FTC对谷歌的调查报告在3月份被泄露给《华尔街日报》(Wall Street Journal)，谷歌劝诱FTC放弃了自己的结论。
The idea that US regulators had in fact agreed with their EU counterparts was too dangerous. Johanna Shelton, Google’s chief lobbyist, has visited the White House more than 100 times . Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, is closer to President Barack Obama than any other business leader. Google even has its own “data diplomacy” outfit, Google Ideas, which is headed by a former state department official. It combines data initiatives against autocracies with business acumen to open up new markets. What is good for Google is good for America — and the world.
认为美国监管部门实际上已经与欧盟监管部门达成一致的想法太过危险。谷歌首席游说官约翰娜•谢尔顿(Johanna Shelton)已经前往白宫逾100次。谷歌董事长埃里克•施密特(Eric Schmidt)与美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)的关系，比任何其他商业领袖都要紧密。谷歌甚至拥有自己的“数据外交”部门——由美国国务院前官员领导的Google Ideas。它把针对专制主义的数据计划与商业敏锐性结合起来，打开新的市场。对谷歌有益的东西，对美国乃至整个世界都是有益的。
But there are hidden costs. Ponder how Google and Facebook, are interacting with you. In exchange for free social networking, emails, videos, search, satellite maps and now telephone calls, they are building your profile in ever more granular detail.
但是，这其中还有隐性成本。仔细考虑下谷歌和Facebook是如何与你互动的。它们以免费的社交网络、电邮、视频、搜索、卫星地图、以及眼下的免费电话作为交换，正在以更加细致入微的细节来建立你的个人信息。
Without really digesting it, we have made a Faustian bargain. They give us free computing power — beyond our wildest imagination — and we reveal ever more about ourselves. The more Google knows about you, the better it teases out preferences you never realised you had.
未经真正地细细品味，我们已经做了一笔浮士德式的交易。它们给了我们免费的计算能力——超出了我们最疯狂的想象——而我们则更多地暴露自己。谷歌越了解你，它就能越好地梳理出甚至连你自己都从未意识到的偏好。
It is an asymmetric exchange. Big Data has our profiles but few of us know how extensive that is. It is the information equivalent of Walmart. The big box retailer drove countless Mom and Pop stores to the wall by acquiring ever more pricing leverage. The job losses went deep, and some of the victims were customers. The model is self-cannibalising.
这是一笔不对等的交换。大数据拥有我们的信息，而我们几乎没人知道其信息量有多广。它是信息界的沃尔玛(Walmart)。这家巨型零售商通过获取越来越大的定价能力，迫使不计其数的夫妻店陷入困境。失业情况加深，一些受害者也是沃尔玛的顾客。这是自我蚕食型的模式。
Apply the Walmart example to the data industry. We now receive most of our content for free (like Asterix against the Romans, the FT, among others, is holding out). Producers of content are suffering.
把沃尔玛的例子应用在数据行业。我们如今获取的绝大多数内容都是免费的（而英国《金融时报》就像对抗罗马人的高卢传奇英雄阿斯泰里斯(Asterix)一样，一直坚持绝不妥协）。而内容的生产者则承受着痛苦。
By the end of this decade, most of the world’s books will have been uploaded to Google’s online library. The company’s sway over our culture and knowledge will be unprecedented. Should we charge Big Data for our personal data? Jeff Hammerbacher, former head of data at Facebook, said: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” In a parallel universe, they might be figuring out something more noteworthy. But what they do brings us untold benefits. Evil does not come into it.
在本世纪的第二个10年结束时，世界上的大多数书籍都将已上传至谷歌的在线图书馆中。该公司对我们的文化与知识的控制将会达到前所未有的水平。我们应该为个人数据向大数据收费吗？Facebook前数据主管杰夫•哈默巴赫尔(Jeff Hammerbacher)称：“我这代人中头脑最为出色的人都在考虑如何让人们点击广告。”在另一个平行宇宙中，他们也许正在考虑更有意义的事。但是，他们所做的事带给了我们数不清的好处。这里面并不涉及邪恶。
We should nevertheless embrace the bargain with open eyes. We are not Big Data’s customers but its product. As long as we grasp that we users are also being used, let the harvest continue.
话虽如此，我们还是应该睁大眼睛来接受这笔交易。我们并非大数据的客户，而是其产品。只要我们清楚我们用户也在被利用着，就让大数据对我们的“收割”继续下去吧。
