You are here June 2011
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2011-06-23 18:51
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2011-06-24 11:23
While the big Google antitrust news is that the FTC is about to launch a formal sweeping antitrust investigation of Google, which will play out over time almost entirely behind the scenes, the big public-facing news for Google antitrust is that Google's current CEO Larry Page and former CEO Eric Schmidt are refusing to publicly testify before the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee per reports.
There are several reasons this refusal to publicly testify is exceptionally problematic for Google.
First, Google loudly proclaims that they have done nothing wrong, that everything they do benefits users and promotes innovation, that competition is one click away, and that they have free speech rights to edit their search results as they see fit.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2011-06-27 11:27
Find an FTC-Google Antitrust Primer here that asks and answers the Top Ten Questions about:
- Google's admission it has received a subpoena and is under formal investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations; and
- What the FTC is likely investigating and thinking, given that the FTC cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.
This primer is based on a combination of new analysis and an update of the best of four years of Google antitrust research, which can be found at: www.Googleopoly.net.
The Top Ten Q&A are:
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2011-06-27 23:47
In another blow to its competition policy credibility and objectivity, the FCC's 308 page, 15th Wireless Competition Report, amazingly reached no conclusion about whether the wireless market was effectively competitive, despite overwhelming evidence of effective competition throughout the report and a dearth of evidence in the report of any discernible anti-competitive issues that would suggest the wireless market was somehow not effectively competitive.
- The stark incongruity between the overwhelming evidence in the report, and the absence of what should have been an easy report conclusion that the wireless market is effectively competitive, is certainly not "data-driven policy making at work.
- It appears to be politics at work to support and provide political cover for the FCC's maverick policy desire to promote de-competition policy and more expansive FCC economic regulation and common carrier-like duties a la net neutrality and data roaming -- in the face of strong opposition from Congress and the Courts that the FCC is over-reaching its statutory authority.
If only the FCC absorbed the significance of the data compiled in their own report, the FCC would conclude that the wireless market was effectively competitive.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2011-06-30 14:08
Four recent developments signal that net neutrality proponents of the FCC's December Open Internet Order are hearing footsteps and looking over their shoulder, increasingly concerned about the ultimate legal and political survivability of the net neutrality regulations/order.
First, professor Susan Crawford, one of the most ardent proponents of net neutrality rules and Title II reclassification, penned a telling and surprisingly candid analysis of how the Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn a California ban on the sale/rental of violent video games to minors, on First Amendment free speech grounds, very likely helps broadband providers' free speech argument to overturn the FCC's net neutrality rules.
- Professor Crawford concludes: "Today's news is that the absolutist approach of the current Supreme Court to protection of speakers of all kinds -- including distributors of speech -- signals that the carriers will be likely to find a sympathetic ear there."
The irony here is that a net neutrality proponent thought leader is implicitly acknowledging that the main slogan of FreePress/Save The Internet and others -- that "net neutrality is the First Amendment of the Internet" -- is a totally bogus.
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