In one of the most memorable presentations from Consensus 2021 in late May, “You Are Getting Manipulated Online! Here’s How Crypto Could Help,” Amy James, Co-Inventor of Open Index Protocol (OIP) helped explain another aspect of Google’s questionable practices and, better yet, a potential solution.James and co-presenters Dr. Robert Epstein and Devon Read presented a case for the ill effects of Google’s monopoly on search — citing an unregulated ability to influence people with search results and a crushing state of monopoly coming from the size of their index.James explained that Google’s index is too large and not open-source — so anyone entering the search space, or anything that uses indexing and searching such as a video platform or social media platform, either has to deal with Google to use their backend or be hopelessly outmatched by the data that Google has already amassed and now hordes.OIP and PIN Network are working on test cases to create expand their open-source blockchain layer with a comprehensive record of metadata — something that would allow Web 3 users to track the actions of entities like Google and all the same time provides an index new tech players can use to power new search and social-based platforms. Effectively, OIP’s goal is to level the playing field, allow new tech companies to compete, and create accountability from everyone including tech giants like Google.We interviewed James after Consensus 2021. Her responses are below.How will an open metadata layer level the playing field with tech companies? How will it serve the user?An open metadata layer allows anyone to resell a publishers content according to their terms, either as a platform or as an individual influencer, and it allows anyone to audit the terms of a given record — as a result, there will be real competition…