今日主題：Should digital monopolies be broken up? 電子壟斷需要被打破嗎?
康康精選GRE&GMAT會考的主題，堅持每天精讀一定會進步的哦!! MP3音檔 (按右鍵可下載聽)：喜歡的同學，幫忙推或按讚哦~~
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只有音檔怎夠，聽不懂地方，不用怕，康康幫你準備好中英文稿了：
中英文稿：
Should digital monopolies be broken up?
電子壟斷需要被打破嗎?
European moves against Google are about protecting companies, not consumers
歐洲人反抗谷歌的運動實為保護自身企業，而非消費者
ALTHOUGH no company is mentioned by name, it is very clear which American internet giant the European Parliament has in mind in a resolution that has been doing the rounds in the run-up to a vote on November 27th. One draft calls for “unbundling search engines from other commercial services” to ensure a level playing field for European companies and consumers. This is the latest and most dramatic outbreak of Googlephobia in Europe.
雖然沒有提及任何公司的名字，我們非常清楚哪些美國互聯網巨頭在歐洲議會中已經作為討論對象，被放在於11月27日實行了幾輪的投票決議中。有一項草案呼 籲“解除搜尋引擎和其他商業服務的捆綁“，以確保歐洲企業和消費者進行公平競爭。這是歐洲谷歌恐懼症最新和最戲劇性的暴動。
Europe's former competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, brokered a series of settlements this year requiring Google to give more prominence to rivals' shopping and map services alongside its own in search results. But MEPs want his successor, Margrethe Vestager, to take a firmer line. Hence the calls to dismember the company.
歐洲前競爭委員會專員阿爾穆尼亞，今年促成了一系列內容的解決，要求谷歌在競爭對手的購物和地圖服務方面提供更多的顯著內容，並將其內容一併放入自己的搜索結果中。不過，歐洲議會議員希望他的繼任者瑪格麗特採取更加堅定的策略。因此呼籲分割公司。
The parliament does not actually have the power to carry out this threat. But it touches on a question that has been raised by politicians from Washington to Seoul and brings together all sorts of issues from privacy to industrial policy. How worrying is the dominance of the internet by Google and a handful of other firms?
議會實際上並不具備實施這一威脅的能力。不過，議會倒是已經觸及到了從美國華盛頓到韓國首爾的政客們所提出的問題，並彙集了各種爭議，從私密政策到產業政策。互聯網由谷歌和少數其他公司占主導的現狀是多麼令人擔憂的現狀啊？
Who's afraid of the big bad search engine?
誰害怕這個巨大的壞蛋搜尋引擎呢?
Google (whose executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, is a member of the board of The Economist's parent company) has 68% of the market of web searches in America and more than 90% in many European countries. Like Facebook, Amazon and other tech giants, it benefits from the network effects whereby the popularity of a service attracts more users and thus becomes self-perpetuating. It collects more data than any other company and is better at mining those data for insights. Once people start using Google's search (and its e-mail, maps and digital storage), they rarely move on. Small advertisers find switching to another platform too burdensome to bother.
谷歌（其執行董事長艾瑞克•施密特，是《經濟學人》的母公司董事會的成員）具有在美國網路搜索市場的68 ％和在許多歐洲國家90％以上的份額。像臉書 ，亞馬遜等科技巨頭，它們從網路效應中獲利，由此一個服務的普及，吸引更多的用戶，從而自我延續。谷歌收集比其他任何公司更多的資料，其探索這些資料的洞 察力更好。一旦人們開始使用谷歌的搜索（以及其電子郵件，地圖和數位存儲），他們很少繼續前進搜索。小廣告客戶找到切換到另一個平臺則過於繁瑣費心。
Google is clearly dominant, then; but whether it abuses that dominance is another matter. It stands accused of favouring its own services in search results, making it hard for advertisers to manage campaigns across several online platforms, and presenting answers on some search pages directly rather than referring users to other websites. But its behaviour is not in the same class as Microsoft's systematic campaign against the Netscape browser in the late 1990s: there are no e-mails talking about “cutting off” competitors' “air supply”. What's more, some of the features that hurt Google's competitors benefit its consumers. Giving people flight details, dictionary definitions or a map right away saves them time. And while advertisers often pay hefty rates for clicks, users get Google's service for nothing—rather as plumbers and florists fork out to be listed in Yellow Pages which are given to readers gratis, and nightclubs charge men steep entry prices but let women in free.
谷歌明顯占主導地位，但是否濫用這一優勢則是另一回事。它被指控在搜索結果中偏袒自己的服務，使得廣告商在多個網路平臺管理活動變得困難，並提出了某些搜 尋網頁面直接的答案，而不是向用戶推薦其他網站。但其行為和微軟公司在20世紀90年代末發起的反對美國網景公司流覽器的系統活動是同樣的性質：沒有電子 郵件談論“切斷”競爭對手的“氣源” 。更重要的是，一些特點傷害谷歌的競爭對手從消費者中獲益。給人們提供航班資訊，字典定義或地圖能夠馬上節省了人們的時間。雖然廣告商往往支付高的點擊 率，用戶可以免費得到谷歌的服務——而非水管工和花商掏錢被列在給讀者免費閱讀的黃頁上，並且夜總會會給男人們提高入門價格，但讓女人免費進入。
There are also good reasons why governments should regulate internet monopolies less energetically than offline ones. First, barriers to entry are lower in the digital realm. It has never been easier to launch a new online product or service: consider the rapid rise of Instagram, WhatsApp or Slack. Building a rival infrastructure to a physical incumbent is far more expensive (just ask telecoms operators or energy firms), and as a result there is much less competition (and more need for regulation) in the real world. True, big firms can always buy upstart rivals (as Facebook did with Instagram and WhatsApp, and Google did with Waze, Apture and many more). But such acquisitions then encourage the formation of even more start-ups, creating even more competition for incumbents.
也有很好的理由來解釋為什麼政府要較少精力充沛地去規範互聯網壟斷而非下線的活動。首先，在數字領域進入門檻較低。它從未如此簡單推出一個新的線上產品或 服務：考慮Instagram，WhatsApp或Slack的迅速崛起。建設一個對手基礎設施到物理依靠更為昂貴（只是要求電信運營商或能源公司），並 因此有比在現實世界中少得多的競爭（需要更多的監管）。誠然，大公司可以隨時購買新的競爭對手（如臉書使用Instagram和WhatsApp，谷歌利 用Waze，Apture以及其他更多的軟體使用等等）。但這樣的收購則鼓勵更多的創業企業的形成，從而創造更激烈的競爭。
Second, although switching from Google and other online giants is not costless, their products do not lock customers in as Windows, Microsoft's operating system, did. And although network effects may persist for a while, they do not confer a lasting advantage: consider the decline of MySpace, or more recently of Orkut, Google's once-dominant social network in Brazil, both eclipsed by Facebook—itself threatened by a wave of messaging apps.
其次，儘管從谷歌和其他網路巨頭的轉換不是沒有代價的，他們的產品不鎖定網頁裡的客戶或是微軟的作業系統。並且，雖然網路效應可能會持續一段時間，他們並 沒有賦予持久的優勢：考慮MySpace的衰落，還有最近的Orkut，谷歌曾經在巴西社交網路占領導地位，都是由Facebook而致衰落-而其本身也 受到一波消息應用程式的威脅。
Finally, the lesson of recent decades is that technology monopolists (think of IBM in mainframes or Microsoft in PC operating systems) may be dominant for a while, but they are eventually toppled when they fail to move with the times, or when new technologies expand the market in unexpected ways, exposing them to new rivals. Facebook is eating into Google's advertising revenue. Despite the success of Android, Google's mobile platform, the rise of smartphones may undermine Google: users now spend more time on apps than on the web, and Google is gradually losing control of Android as other firms build their own mobile ecosystems on top of its open-source underpinnings. So far, no company has remained information technology's top dog from one cycle to the next. Sometimes former monopolies end up with a lucrative franchise in a legacy area, as Microsoft and IBM have. But the kingdoms they rule turn out to be only part of a much larger map.
最後，近數十年來的經驗教訓是，技術的壟斷者（認為主機中IBM或是PC作業系統中的微軟）可能一時佔據主導地位，但他們未能與時並進，或是當新技術以意 想不到的方式擴大自己的市場，將其暴露給新的競爭對手，最終只能走向崩塌。臉書正在蠶食谷歌的廣告收入。儘管安卓，谷歌的移動平臺出現成功，智慧手機的興 起可能會破壞谷歌的地位：使用者現在花更多的時間在應用程式上而非網路，並且谷歌正在逐漸失去對安卓的控制，因為其他企業正在開源的基礎上建立自己的移動 生態系統。到目前為止，沒有一家公司一直保持資訊技術的頂峰，並從一個週期維持到下一個週期。有時候，前者壟斷結束了在傳統領域利潤豐厚的專營權，微軟和 IBM都有這種情況。但他們統治的王國最終變成是一個更大的地圖的一部分。
Looking after their own
照顧好自己的業務
The European Parliament's Googlephobia looks a mask for two concerns, one worthier than the other. The lamentable one, which American politicians pointed out this week, is a desire to protect European companies. Among the loudest voices lobbying against Google are Axel Springer and Hubert Burda Media, two German media giants. Instead of attacking successful American companies, Europe's leaders should ask themselves why their continent has not produced a Google or a Facebook. Opening up the EU's digital services market would do more to create one than protecting local incumbents.
歐洲議會的谷歌恐懼症查找兩個關注熱點，其中一個比另一個更具有價值。可悲的是，美國的政治家在本周指出，其實際是以保護歐洲企業的願望。其中呼聲最高的 反對谷歌的遊說是阿克塞爾•施普林格和布林達傳媒集團，兩家德國媒體巨頭。相比攻擊成功的美國公司，歐洲領導人應該反問自己，為什麼他們大陸還沒有產生一 個谷歌或臉書的公司。開放歐盟的數位服務市場會做更多的創建一個強大的公司，而非僅僅保護本地老牌。
The good reason for worrying about the internet giants is privacy. It is right to limit the ability of Google and Facebook to use personal data: their services should, for instance, come with default settings guarding privacy, so companies gathering personal information have to ask consumers to opt in. Europe's politicians have shown more interest in this than American ones. But to address these concerns, they should regulate companies' behaviour, not their market power. Some clearer thinking by European politicians would benefit the continent's citizens.
擔心互聯網巨頭的一個重要原因是隱私。限制谷歌和臉書使用個人資料的許可權是正確的。他們的服務應該做到配備預設設置保護隱私權，因此公司收集的個人資訊 要問消費者自己的選擇。歐洲的政客在這方面表現出比美國更多的興趣。但要解決這些問題，就應該規範企業的行為，不是他們的市場力量。歐洲一些政客更清晰的 思維將有利於歐洲大陸的公民。
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