Conflict of Interest

More evidence continues to surface that Big Internet companies expect and seek exceptional special treatment from Government that other companies simply do not expect or seek.

Ironically six of the original European colonial powers of yesteryear, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, have aligned  to resist the new virtual-colonial-power -- Google’s hegemony over online private data.

These six leading EU members, which comprise 75% of the EU economy, have jointly launched national investigations of Google’s privacy actions. That’s because Google has paternalistically rebuffed and ignored the EU belief that Google’s 2012 unification of its sixty privacy policies is a serious violation of European data protection law, because it does not allow any meaningful use transparency or user choice to opt-out of Google’s private data collection.

“Google and the World Brain” -- Presented by Polar Star Films; Directed by Ben Lewis; An Official Selection of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. See the movie's website here, and facebook page here. To view the two minute trailer – click here.

Review: Four stars out of four. 

In telling the important untold story of Google’s Herculean and controversial efforts to digitize all the world’s books, Director Ben Lewis’ genius insight was unearthing the fascinating “why?” behind it all – which is Google CEO Larry Page’s deep passion for Artificial Intelligence or “AI.”

Google’s many innovations are well known. What has not been appreciated until the debut of this outstanding documentary film is how Google’s frenetic innovation machine fits together. Ben Lewis effectively offers us a new organizing principle to understand why Google alone has a mission to organize the world’s information – Larry Page’s quest to create an Artificial Intelligence.

The big problem with Google Glass is that it disrespects others’ privacy in the real world.

In creating an innovative form-factor for Google users to use most all of Google’s services in the real-world on-the-go and hands-free, Google Glass would fundamentally change how Google users socially interact and affect others in society.

In the virtual world, Google is a champion of users having the freedom to do most whatever they want online. In the real physical world, people’s freedoms begin to end when they begin to seriously infringe upon the freedoms of others – like the freedom of reasonable privacy.  

The greatest Google privacy outcries have been when Google products disregarded and disrespected non-Google users’ or others’ privacy. Gmail users may have assented to Google scanning their emails to target personal ads to get free email, but the billion or so non-Gmail users that happen to trade emails with Gmail never agreed to Google’s privacy-invading deal.

(The updated Google Privacy Rap Sheet is here.)

In response to Google getting sanctioned $7m for privacy violations by 38 State Attorneys General for its unauthorized collection” of private WiFi data nationwide between 2008 and 2010, Google’s public relations mantra is: “we work hard to get privacy right at Google, but in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue.”

Free culture activist, Derek Khanna, has thrust himself into the limelight again with yet more misrepresentations of copyright law. His latest copyright-neutering effort is a “call to arms” to “the digital generation” to oppose a Librarian of Congress 1998 DMCA copyright ruling, that it is illegal to break into a cell-phone’s software in order to “unlock” it -- without the permission of, or payment to, the software’s owner.  

If the Internet Association is presumptuous enough to unilaterally deem itself “the unified voice of the Internet economy,” I guess we should not be surprised that on the same day that our duly-elected President delivered the State of the Union, the unelected President of the Internet Association would be presumptuous enough to deliver the “State of the Internet.” 

Please see the full pictorial analysis in “Googleopoly X: Google’s Dominance is Spreading at an Accelerating Rate" – here.”

• (See Googleopoly I–IX at www.Googleopoly.net.)

The conclusions and recommendations for antitrust authorities are reprinted below.

• Note: Given the old adage is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, please don’t miss the Googleopoly pictorial charts that: make this complex subject much simpler and more accessible; tell this important story more interestingly and clearly, and enable the reader to better understand the critically important big picture dynamics addressed in this analysis.

A. Conclusions:

Google’s recent public actions appear to be a tacit admission that its antitrust risks in the EU are more serious than it has acknowledged publicly.

• First, Google’s recent newspaper settlements -- with the Belgian and the French media -- signal that Google appreciates it is now considered by the EU to be a de facto essential facility for consumer information access.
• Second, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s sudden, rapid acceleration of his selling of his personal Google stock holdings trumpet his apparent insider pessimism about Google’s growing antitrust, property-infringement, privacy and tax liabilities.     

Google’s Content Settlements

Given that Google has just submitted detailed antitrust remedies to rectify the EU's findings that Google has abused its market dominance in four different ways, and given that earlier this year the FTC found that Google violated antitrust laws in a fifth different way, it is instructive and important to simply chronicle all of Google antitrust violations in one place to let the consistency, breadth, and seriousness of Google's anti-competitive behavior sink in.

Please don't miss: "Google's Global Antitrust Rap Sheet" -- here.

First, it shows that Google has violated antitrust laws in TEN DIFFERENT ways over the last five years!

• That is exceptionally hard to do unless a company is genuinely a predatory monopolist that is extending its market power in every direction, and has a culture of unaccountability.

Second, Google is under antitrust scrutiny, investigation, or supervision in NINE DIFFERENT countries and the EU.

• It is telling that most everywhere Google goes antitrust scrutiny or other trouble with the law follows.

The obvious takeaway here is Google is a global serial antitrust offender and recidivist.