The Daily Signal - Search-Engine Alternative to Google: Freespoke

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Did you know that an estimated 90% of internet search queries are performed by Google? That is an astonishing statistic when you think about one company's market dominance and ability to shape public opinion through search results. It's also highly problematic if you follow Google's pattern of anti-conservative bias and manipulation of its search algorithm. Todd Ricketts, co-owner of Major League Baseball Chicago Cubs, is challenging Google's dominance by launching Freespoke, a search engine that promises unbiased and uncensored information for its users. Read his interview with The Daily Signal or listen to the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, July 25th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rob Lewy. On today's show, I speak with Todd Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and CEO of a new search engine called Freespoke that won't censor your search results. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story to start off the week. But before we get to today's show, Rob and I want to tell you all about one of our other favorite podcasts from the Heritage Foundation podcast network, the Kevin Roberts Show. Dr. Kevin Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation, and now you can hear his political analysis on the most important issues facing America. Each weekly episode of the Kevin Roberts Show is a rallying cry for lovers of freedom everywhere.

The show is packed with analysis on the issues of the day and deep conversations with the movers and shakers of American politics and culture. New shows are available every Wednesday. You can find the Kevin Roberts Show on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen. We even put the full episodes on YouTube. Now stay tuned for today's show. Coming up next. Did you know that an estimated 90% of internet search queries are performed by Google? That is an astonishing statistic when you think about one company's market dominance and ability to shape public opinion through search results.

It's also highly problematic if you followed Google's pattern of anti-conservative bias and manipulation of its search algorithm. Todd Ricketts, co-owner of Major League Baseball Chicago Cubs, is challenging Google's dominance by launching Google's. Freespoke, a search engine that promises unbiased and uncensored information for its users. Todd, thanks for creating this alternative to Google and for joining us to talk about it today. No, thanks for having me. Super happy to be here. Well, before we hear more about the features of Freespoke, I'd like to start by hearing what inspired you to create a competitor to Google, certainly no easy competitor in the marketplace. You know, I think that just in general I have a kind of a skeptical brain and the course of

career just always had this healthy skepticism of what anybody was doing or how they were presenting themselves versus what the reality was. And as I looked at Google results, I always felt like I was getting results that I didn't expect. And I felt like they were like a little bit left-leaning, that they were not showing everything that I was looking for, really, and trying to guide me down a path that was not the path I was looking for. And the best example that I have is I was showing, I was showing this idea to a prospective investor in Freespoke. And I said, you know, one of the crazy things that I've found is that sometimes when you type NRA and Google, the NRA itself is like the sixth thing that comes up. And so we did that. And luckily for me in that in that particular meeting that the NRA came down, it was really subdued basically below the fold in newspaper talk.

And really it just, it just highlighted the fact that like Google, Google is showing you things that are curated and manipulated in a way, specifically like kind of from a news point of view, to lead you down a path or to lead your thinking in a particular way. And I just don't really think that's what search is all about. I've always felt like search should be about presenting all the information and letting you make up your mind. And if I can tie that into like kind of our family business of Ameritrade that we sold to Schwab a couple of years ago. But really, when Ameritrade came into business in 1975, it was deregulation of brokerage commissions. And the idea was that before 1975, you had to pay high commissions to an expensive stockbroker to have access to the stock market. And with the deregulation of commissions, that allowed people to trade stocks without the advice and without the high cost. And really what it did is it allowed people to take control of their own financial future.

And so I think what we're trying to do is kind of a similar vein is like, I want to give people back information. I want people to be able to read all the news and make up their own minds about what's going on in the world. Well, Todd, thank you for that. And in addition to being a co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, you are currently serving as a member of the board of directors for Charles Schwab and previously were a member of the board at TD Ameritrade, a company that your father founded, as you said, in 1975. So you've obviously seen success in the business world. And following up on that last answer, why do you think that there's so much potential for Freespoke right now? And as you look at the potential audience and the users who would benefit from it, why are you bullish about its future? Well, I just look around and I think like the American way is competition.

You know, like obviously when it comes to baseball and it comes to business, I'm a competitor. And I, you think like you said it yourself, Google has 90% of the search queries on the Internet. that's too much for any one market player. There aren't very many industries where you have one player that has such dominance. And being around D.C. a little bit and hearing politicians speak, they talk about regulating these industries. But in my mind, I don't want regulation. I just want competition. Give me a level playing field.

And let me go out there and put out a product that's an alternative to Google and to the other search engines that are out there. And the fact that there are a couple other search engines popping up right now. now too, just highlights the fact that there's a need out there in the market for an alternative to search. You previously served as the CEO of ending spending, which focused on fiscal issues, and we're national finance chairman for the Republican National Committee. So as somebody who's worked in in both conservative politics and Republican politics, I'm sure you've seen the anti-conservative bias firsthand.

What are some of the notable things that big tech has done that really sparked your interest to focus on an alternative to Google? There's a few good topics. The one that jumps out at me that is most recent is how Google was sending RNC emails into people's spam folder. Now, I think it's fairly common that you get a bit of spam into your spam folder. But in 2020, Google, if you had a Gmail account, 80% of emails sent from the Republican National Committee to Gmail. emails were put into spam compared to less than 10% of emails from the Democrat National Committee. I mean, that's a big deal, first of all, because these email campaigns are expensive and lots of people have Gmail. But it's just an insight into how Google thinks about conservative

views and conservative values. And you don't have to look too far that during COVID, how there was so much suppressed information on people who just questioned what the CDC was saying and questioned like what were lockdowns and masks and all these things we did were they the right thing. And so if you said that, you were immediately taken off of YouTube or taken down from a Google search. So there's lots of examples of where big tech is trying to guide the thinking of the American people, which I just don't think is right. And I don't think it's healthy. And I don't think, I think it's, you know, dangerous. Well, I want to come back to that in just a moment. By the way, that study that you referenced came from the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina

State University. So was not a partisan study in any means. And as somebody who has worked for a number of years to overcome the algorithmic bias of the social media companies, and we made a pivot several years ago at the Daily Signal to invest in email. So we certainly appreciate what you're talking about there because it is the primary means in which daily signal users and our audience receives its information. So we know that when it is filtered into different inboxes or spam, it can have a big impact on the number of people who are seeing our content. Exactly. I want to ask you now about some of the features and characteristics that users can expect from

Free Spoke. You've talked about the principles behind the search engine. When they go to use the search engine themselves, what are some of the things that they'll find there? Well, specifically on news and current events, we identify the sources. as either being left or right or middle of the road. And really, I mean, it's not like a panacea. It doesn't solve everything. But what it does is it gives you some quick context of where the person who wrote that story is coming from.

And so you can kind of like adjust in your own mind. Like, okay, is this, do I have to add a green assault to what I'm reading because I know this person is coming at it from either a left or a right bias. And so really we're just trying to help people sort through. Again, it comes back to like putting information in front of people. and helping them come to their own conclusions. And it's really something that just seems to be outside of what the big tech world is thinking right now, where they want to guide your thinking.

And the other part of it is that we're trying to search all sorts of content. Our crawler is looking for new content all the time, and we're expanding that crawl all the time, trying to find new sources of relevant information and highlighting those things. And really, if you go look for news on Google, you'll find the New York Times kind of pays for that first slot all the time. And so we avoid having that by not having people pay for that slot. And we're trying to put content up as it is relevant, not as it's paid for. Well, again, I feel like we have a lot of synergy here as somebody who believes that it's important to label news and commentary, and we do that on the Daily Signal. I like the fact that you are

taking that step and providing users with that additional information. I imagine, though, so many people that work at left-leaning news outlets tried to hide under the banner of mainstream media. What might they say if they object to the classification that you've given them? Have you been in a situation where a news outlet has complained? And if they do complain, what's your response going to be? You know, we have had a couple outlets say that they want to be labeled as middle. So it is interesting to you ask that. But we're going to continue to do it our way.

We look at several sources. There's ad fonts as an organization that identifies content, as left, right center sort of thinking. And we look at a few others. We look at it ourselves, too, an identifying language that is either left or right. But we're going to continue to label things to the best of our ability and as clearly as possible.

Big tech platforms are promising to combat misinformation almost on a daily basis, be it for climate change or COVID. You've talked about this now a couple of times. Why is it important to provide people with the facts and let them think for themselves? Well, I think it goes back to that old saying is like, you know, one man's terrorists is another man's freedom fighter. And so when you get into this world of what you consider misinformation, it's a little scary to think that there's some 25-year-old kid in Silicon Valley that gets to decide that. I think that like people are smart enough to know for themselves what's good information and what's bad information. And I don't think we need to have, we need to have this thought police.

They go around telling you that, you know, that you have to have these thoughts on climate change. Like what is the consensus on climate change? And I often say, I'm not a denier, but I like to have an honest conversation. And so any sort of platform that says they're going to suppress information of people that question the consensus. on climate change, that is frightening to me. You know, I think that at one time, you know, Galileo said the earth was round and was put in jail because he wasn't part of like the accepted thinking of the Flat Earth Society at the time. And so we don't ever want to be put in one of those positions where we have a society

where people who question the mores of the day yet canceled. It's the most horrifying thing. And it, I mean, we're seeing it everywhere, too, especially. in Hollywood, you see people get canceled and labeled as whatever for comments that are just honest comments. And, you know, one of the things we want to do is kind of make sure that we don't cancel people and let people have that platform to speak. It's so true. And I think one of the other aspects that you've seen social media companies employ and even some legacy media outlets is the use of fact checkers. And those fact checkers obviously come in with an agenda. And the

social media companies will work in tandem with them and in many cases try to suppress content that comes from outlets like ours at the Daily Signal or others. So there are a number of challenges and ways that they're trying to combat misinformation in their words that ultimately just try to advance a certain agenda that they're trying to push. No, that's 100%. And that's exactly just highlights the need for platforms like Free Spoke and there's going to be others that we need. You know, and I don't know if we're going to expand beyond search in the future, but If you look at, you know, places like Twitter or like Instagram and these other platforms, there's a real problem out there. Like, we need to, as Americans, we need to have all the information and not just one view.

Well, I'm curious on that point because there has been so much focus in the conservative space, whether it be truth social or whether it be other platforms that have emerged recently. What inspired you to focus on search as opposed to some of the other aspects of big tech like a social media platform? was there a particular thing that you felt that there was maybe an opportunity here that didn't exist elsewhere? I guess there was kind of two parts to it. The first thing, which was completely wrong in my thinking, I'm like, well, how hard can it be to build a search engine? I kind of say that a little tongue in cheek because it's incredibly difficult to build any sort of, you know, crawling technology that tags things in a way that makes sense. So that was really hard. But really, the real reason that I thought search was a great place to start is that going back to Google has such a massive market share that you don't have to get 50% of the market to have a viable business.

If you think that Google has a billion regular users and you just think of yourself, well, if I get like 10 million, like if I could just get 1% of that market, I have a viable business or even a 10th of a percent. So it's just such a massive market. I felt like that's where the opportunity presented itself to have a business and that's viable, even if you're not a market leader. Well, that is certainly true. And you've already seen, I think, in the success that you've had in building a community, you call them free folk. Tell us about who the free folk are and what they've been doing to perfect the platform

and provide that feedback that has been beneficial in terms of creating a new business. Well, I mean, the free folk is just kind of a fun name that we use for the people who use our search engine. But really, free spoke is for everybody. I don't come. I'm a Republican, but I don't come to this business thinking like, oh, this is a search engine for Republicans. This should be everyone who wants to find the truth or educate themselves. It just so happens that those people today tend to be more conservative and more Republican. You know, a lot of people on the left seem to be okay with, okay with the way Google results

and other platforms present information. But so really, we're intended for everybody. And so everybody should be a free folk. And I think that, you know, if you're an intellectual person in this country, you should be thinking, this is a product that I need. Well, one of the other things that we haven't talked about yet, but I think is another important feature is the fact that you do not track or sell your users information. Why was it important for you to build that into the search engine?

You know, it hasn't been something that has, well, it's been talked about, but we haven't seen it in the mass market. But I think as time goes on, people are going to become more and more concerned about their privacy of their personal information that's out there on the Internet. And even Eric Schmidt from Google, you called it the creepy line. Like Google tries to, you know, walk right up to the creepy line without being creepy. but I think the fact that he ever said that is creepy. And so really protecting your privacy on the internet is going to be really important.

I think more and more so as we go forward and more as more and more of your information is out there. And people just need to be able to make decisions as to what the world can see about them. You know, when you're on the internet, I think people should always have this in the back of their head. Is that if you're not paying for something, you are the product. You know, your information is being sold to advertisers by that website or that, you know, that search engine. And so if you're not paying for it, you're the product. And so if people can have that mindset when they get on the internet, I think it would go a long ways in protecting their own privacy. I think particularly as this younger generation emerges and so much of their life, pretty much their entire life, is now online from the time that they were born.

I agree with you. That is going to be a bigger issue. And it's a concern that I think all of us have as we see how. how these companies can sometimes manipulate data and know things about us that we never expected would end up where they are. Todd, I want to shift for just a moment. Talk about some of your own personal experiences and what led you to this point. You've had a tremendously successful life. And as we talked about earlier with Ameritrade and some of the values that your father and your family brought to that company,

your brother, obviously, being the governor of Nebraska. Why are you a conservative? How did you get to that point in your life? And share with our listeners a little bit more about your own personal story. I grew up in Nebraska with like two great parents that taught us different things. My mom loves sports and always taught us to be competitors. And I always kind of say that she taught us to be competitors on the field and kind and compassionate off the field. and my dad was really just about risk-taking and entrepreneurship.

He always felt like you really should always be making mistakes and always failing at something. And if you're not, you're not trying enough new things. And so he started several businesses before Ameritrade became successful and continues to do that. He's a little bit of a serial entrepreneur. And I think that sort of bug or that gene is in our family where, you know, my siblings and I were always trying to push the envelope and test the common thinking and see where there's markets that have opportunities. And you've obviously had great success with your Major League Baseball team, the Chicago Cubs.

As a lifelong baseball fan myself, albeit for the Pittsburgh Pirates, your division rival. I want to spend just a moment here in closing to have you tell the story about how you help transform the Cubs. Obviously, a franchise that had struggled, that hadn't been to the World Series. and then that moment when you won the World Series championship, what was it like? You were there. Obviously, you experienced firsthand yourself,

but it took five years, as I understand it, to really get to that point where you were able to transform an organization that had struggled into a World Series champion. Yeah, there's a couple facets to it that are pretty interesting. When we bought the team, we had a pretty clear view of what Tribune ownership had been of the Cubs. And so if you keep in mind that they were,

owned by the Chicago Tribune, which also owned WGN, which was the TV network that they were on. They came at the asset of the Chicago Cubs looking at it, like, this is great TV content. And so they were able to broadcast Cubs games and make a lot of money at their television station, and they weren't so concerned about how the team did on the field as long as they had all that content to put on TV. I think that is the number one reason why the team suffered so much in the 80s. 90s and early 2000s. And so we looked at that and we said like, look, this is a team that should be winning all the time. This is a team that has great fans in a big city with a great

ballpark. And if you just ran it like a business that was trying to win, you would most certainly win. And it took us six years to win the World Series. But I'd say it took us about a year to put our strategic plan in place, which we call the five year plan. So it took us five years from the time we were able to get our strategy in place. And really, it was just kind of taking the whole business down to the studs. If you think about it in renovating a house, we revamped ticketing. We revamped our whole advertising campaign. We revamped everything in baseball. We built new facilities down in the Dominican Republic. We built a new spring training facility in Arizona. We invested heavily in Wrigley Field itself to kind of bring it up to the 20th century as far as a place that people could come and watch a game the way people do today instead of a hundred-year-old building.

And I think all those things, that seriousness on every level and thoughtfulness at every level kind of just went through the entire organization to a point where people just held themselves to a higher standard and still do hold themselves to a higher standard in whatever job they have at the Cubs. And like, you know, with that culminating in a 2016 World Series win, it was it was just it was such a great feeling to be able to give that gift back to the city of Chicago having lived in Chicago for 30 years and being a big fan myself to give that gift to all these fans had been waiting so long to have that celebration and that sort of success it was really great well Todd we hope as conservatives although I hesitate to say this as again as a

Pirates fan that you have that same success with freepoke because Because seeing that up close and, of course, you know, it's so difficult, as we know, the competitive environment in Major League Baseball and the challenge that you're up against here with Google, I think, is a massive one. But it is so needed to have an alternative. And I think that there are many Daily Signal listeners, people who tune into this podcast or read our site, who are looking for something other than the dominant player in that market. Before we wrap here, tell our users, our listeners, how they can get more information about FreeSpoke, how they can log in and get involved. I understand, obviously, it's on the web, but you have an app as well. 100%. Yeah, we have Freespoke.com is our online search engine.

And then you can go to either the Droid or the Apple Store and download the Freespoke app, so you can use it on your mobile device and just have it there at the ready all the time. And I've been showing people how you can move. safari out of your quick access bar down at the bottom of your phone and put freespoke into it to use it as your default search engine. That's a great idea. Yes. I think so often the challenges that the preloaded settings obviously favor the big competitors.

So we should encourage our Daily Signal listeners to do that as well. Todd, thanks so much for being a guest on the Daily Signal podcast today. We appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure. I would finish by saying freedom and competition. or what made our country great. And so we should never let anybody have a 90% market share of anything, without a challenge at least.

That was Todd Ricketts, co-owner of Major League Baseball Chicago Cubs, and the founder of a new search engine called Freespoke. Visit it at freespoke.com or download the app. At the Heritage Foundation, we believe that every single policy issue discussed in D.C. tells a story. So we want to tell it well. On the Heritage Explains podcast, co-host Tim Decher and Michelle Cordero,

Take one policy issue a week, mix in a creative blend of clips, narration, and hard-hitting interviews to equip you on crucial issues in under 20 minutes. So get your story straight. Subscribe to Heritage Explains wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who's up first? Well, we recently received a couple five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. In response to Doug Blair's recent interview.

with Cully Stimson discussing how some district attorneys won't enforce pro-life laws, listener Stakes Are High, writes that I even recognize the names of district attorneys in California in Illinois is proof they are just playing the spotlight grabbing game. I live in South Alabama. I'm not in the legal profession, never been in a courtroom except for jury duty. I depend on the judicial system to protect those who need protection. The innocent victim, of crime and corruption, not the criminals. I pray for peace. And one of our listeners writes in, great podcast, love the quick review of headlines, followed by more in-depth topics. Listen to this podcast every morning while walking at 6 a.m.

Well, thank you all so much for those reviews on Apple Podcasts. You can leave us a review or send us an email at letters at daily signal.com. And yours might just be featured on next week's show. The Heritage Foundation takes to field on offense with their young leaders program. I'm Evelyn Homily from Hillsdale College. I'm Harrison Stewart from the University of Virginia. I'm a journalism intern with the Daily Signal. I'm a digital productions intern in communications.

For spring, summer, and fall semesters, the Heritage Foundation hosts undergraduate and postgraduate interns right here in the nation's capital to train our country's future conservative leaders. As a Daily Signal intern, I've had the opportunity to cover exciting events here in D.C. and work in a fast-paced environment with some of the conservative movement's best journalists. In YLP, interns are on the cutting edge of the conservative movement, attending exclusive briefings from Heritage experts, members of Congress, and movement leaders fighting for the fate of our country.

It's been exciting connecting with big names in the political world and better understanding our nation's greatest threats. If you want to go on offense with other passionate, dedicated conservatives, go to heritage.org slash intern to learn more about the Young Leaders Program. It's Monday, and that means we have some good news. Evelyn is back with us today. Evelyn, over to you. Thanks, Virginia.

What would you do if you were on a late-night drive and saw flames and smoke inside a home as you drove by? Well, most of us would probably stop the car and call 911. But on July 11th, one young man went above and beyond by risking his own life to save others. 25-year-old Nick Bostick of Lafayette, Indiana, was driving home from work a little after midnight, when he drove by a house in flames and knew he had to do something.

Here's what he told WLFI News 18. Slammed on the brakes. I turned the steering wheel and I did a 180. I ran into the back of the house and I was yelling for anybody. Four faces, three or four faces came out the top. Nick led the four children outside and made sure they were safe before he re-entered the house to find a six-year-old little girl who was still trapped upstairs. Nick eventually found the six-year-old and carried her outside to safety

after having to break and jump through a second-story window. He suffered smoke inhalation, burns, and an arm injury, but has recovered enough to leave the hospital. Nick said that he sees his injuries as a small sacrifice for saving those five lives. It was all worth it. I kept reminding myself, like, what a small sacrifice, you know what I mean, like this temporary pain.

Oh, yeah, it's so worth it. Nick had a chance to meet the children's parents in person after they invited him to their church service. They welcomed me to their family as a part of their own, which is super cool, and I'm super honored for it. A GoFundMe campaign created to thank Nick for his heroic service and help him with his hospital bills has raised $350,000 in donations. Nick has maintained an attitude of humility as the Lafayette community and people across America

are thanking him for his bravery. He told Fox 59 Lafayette that God used him that night. and that he would want others to do the same thing for him. If it was me up there trapped in the fire or asleep and there was a fire, I would be hoping that the guy driving by or something I would consider to do the same if they were able to. Waking up every morning I have something to remind me of why I'm here. It's still alive.

Why God keeps me here. And he worked through me. He used me like his instrument that night. Praise for his selflessness, courage, tenacity, and steadfast calmness by the Lafayette Police Department. Nick's story is a moving reminder of what it means. means to truly be a good neighbor. Evelyn, thank you so much for sharing that.

It's great to start the week off with some positivity. We're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rurkishay Audio Network. All of our shows can be found at daily signal.com slash podcast. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review and a five-star rating. It really means a lot to us and helps us spread the words even more listeners. Be sure to follow us on Twitter.

at DailySignal and Facebook.com slash the DailySignal News. Have a great week and we'll be back with you all tomorrow morning. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. The executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Doug Blair. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visit DailySignal.com.