Piracy

The company that has copied all the world's information on its servers without permission and has a mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," ironically has decided to be publicly indignant about the alleged copying of its public search information.

• It is the supreme irony that "glass-house Google" has accused Microsoft of copying Google's public search results.
  • In a blog post Google shared its purpose behind its stone-throwing accusation: "...to those who have asked what we want out of this, the answer is simple: we'd like for this practice to stop."

It pathetically ironic that Google can comprehend that it does not like to have its own claimed private or proprietary information copied and made accessible to the world for free, but Google cannot comprehend why anyone else would not like Google to copy their private or proprietary information without permission and make it available to the world for free.

Let's review all of the other entities who like Google would "like for this practice to stop" -- by Google.

Could Google now possibly better understand why:

It is stunning that Google's decision to side with Julian Assange's Wikileaks and make all the stolen secret, private and proprietary Wikileaks information universally accessible to the world via Google search, has gotten virtually no media attention, given the:

• International carnage and controversy caused by Wikileaks reprehensible actions;
• Media's broad coverage of Wikileaks;
• Google's serial disrespect for others as evidenced by its serial privacy, IP, cybersecurity, and antitrust problems around the world that have been broadly covered by the media; and
• Google is the world's leading source for accessing Wikileaks secret, private and proprietary information.

When Google's Acting CEO Eric Schmidt told the DLD media conference in Munich (as reported by Reuters):

Julian Assange's reprehensible Wikileaks data breaches of secret, private and proprietary information to the web, endangering lives, diplomacy and peace, has thrust to the forefront of public debate: what are the responsible boundaries of an "Open Internet?"

• It is an especially timely debate given that the FCC is proposing an "Open Internet Order" for FCC decision on December 21st, and given that the FCC is trying to officially define what an "open Internet" is for the first time, in order to restrict what competitive broadband Internet providers can and cannot do.

It is instructive that the term "open Internet" is found nowhere in law.

Julian Assange's likely-criminal dissemination of many nations' secret national security information via Wikileaks --  in posting secret, proprietary, and private information that clearly endangers lives, diplomacy and peace -- has exposed one of the darkest sides of the broad open Internet movement, which pushes radical transparency, and general disrespect for secrets, confidentiality, privacy, and intellectual property -- to varying degrees.

• Assange tries to justify his reckless, irresponsible and destructive acts by claiming to "Keep Governments Open," without bothering to explain the problem his destructive acts are supposed to solve.

It ironic that the Open Internet Coalition is lobbying the FCC hard now to have the Government force Title II telecom utility regulation on private competitive broadband companies in the name of "openness" -- when there is no identifiable or proven problem to solve.

It is especially ironic that leading corporate proponents of the Open Internet Coalition have been so slow to condemn the obvious harm and criminality of Assange's destructive "open" Wikileaks, but are so quick to condemn competitive broadband companies for not being "open" enough -- when the coalition's  definition of "open" is fluid, and when the coalition has no evidence that broadband providers are not being "open."

If it is now so clear that Assange's Wikileaks are a serious problem, why did it take three massive wikileaks over a period of several months for Open Internet member:

The evidence is increasingly difficult to ignore that the FTC & DOJ, over the last two Administrations, repeatedly failed to enforce Section 7 of the Clayton Antitrust Act, and have allowed Google's acquisitions of YouTube, DoubleClick, and AdMob to illegally "substantially... lessen competition" and "tend to create a monopoly."

• This analysis will spotlight that Google's display advertising and mobile businesses would not be tending to monopoly, and would not be anti-competitively lessening competition, but for the illegal acquisition of market power via YouTube, DoubleClick, and AdMob.
• This analysis is also a sobering backdrop of the exceptionally high stakes for the competitiveness of the online travel vertical if Google is allowed to acquire even more market power via its proposed acquisition of ITA Software.

I.  Absentee Antitrust Enforcement & Market Failure

Free markets depend on both the rule of law and the equal enforcement of the law to prevent illegal monopolization.

We learned today that Google has the lowest foreign tax rate of the top five U.S. tech companies, an eyebrow-raising 2.4%, and that Google "cut its taxes by $3.1b in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda," per an outstanding investigative expose by Jesse Drucker of Bloomberg.

This exceptional tax dodging feat, while reportedly technically legal, nonetheless raises some important questions that no one has yet asked Google.

Apple's CEO Steve Jobs is wise to publicly debunk Google's claim that: Google defines "openness" (aka -- good), and Apple defines "closedness" (aka -- evil).

• As Google CEO Eric Schmidt said: Google's concept of "openness" is "much easier to understand by opposition" so he defined Google's approach as the "inverse" of Apple's.

Google is right that they are the inverse/opposite of Apple, but not in the way that Google claims -- being open/neutral vs. being closed.

Google's blog post "What we're driving at" announced that Google has "developed technology for cars to drive themselves." Google stated: "Larry and Sergey founded Google because they wanted to help solve really big problems using technology... Our goal is to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people's time and reduce carbon emissions..."

This project raises some interesting questions no one has asked Google yet.

Why are the Big Four networks Fox, NBC, ABC, and CBS, not flocking to Google TV, the largest digital video distribution network in the the world -- by far? And why did Forrester's analyst characterize Google TV's programmer sign-ups to date as "underwhelming?"

The core reason is a profound vision and business model clash between existing programmers/distributors and Google Inc. Why?

In his latest display of no-self-awareness, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, in an interview with the Atlantic, said:

• "China can be best understood as a large, well run business... and China has roughly the following objectives: It wants  to maximize its cash flow; becoming the creditor, if you will, the bank of the world. And Second it wants to maximize both its internal demand as well as export demand. And the entire country seems to be organized around that principle."

Is Google's CEO the only sentient being on the planet that isn't aware that China is organized around the principles of China's National Communist Party?

"If China is best understood as a large, well-run business," why does Communist China censor and imprison their Chinese "customers" if they object too much to China's products and services?