Antitrust

Google’s wiretapping is back in the news. The Guardian reports “Google [Chrome] eavesdropping tool installed on computers without permission.”

This is not an isolated incident. It is a part of a broader Google pattern of behavior.

What should be big news and scandalous here is that the company that has gathered the most Internet users in the world based upon public representations of being pro-privacy and open -- is secretly engaged in widespread wiretapping.  

Wiretapping is illegally intercepting and recording people’s communications without their knowledge or consent. In the U.S., wiretapping is a criminal offense punishable by a fine and up to five years in prison.

After successfully taming the FTC and the DOJ via the intimidation of politically placing seven former Google executives or consultants in senior positions in most every major federal policy or law enforcement area of legal or commercial interest to Google Inc., Google has turned its intimidation modus operandi on the only American law enforcement arm that apparently remains willing to investigate and enforce the law when it comes to Google – state attorneys general.

A succession of demonstrably wrong and lax antitrust decisions by the FTC has created a 90% market share Android mobile monopoly in licensed mobile operating systems that is anti-privacy by design, because Google’s ill-gotten mobile advertising dominance demands bulk data collection of Android users’ app metadata and private information without users meaningful knowledge or consent.

A Satirical Merriam-Webster Press Release

A Sample of New Google Antitrust-Relevant Dictionary Words for 2015

SPRINGFIELD, MASS., June 3, 2015— Gconomy, Gclipse, Gvolution, Gvil, Goobris and other Google antitrust-relevant words join over 1700 new words and definitions added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in 2015, available now in print and online at Merriam-Webster.com. These new additions to America's best-selling dictionary reflect the growing influence Google is having on human endeavor.

Gconomy – Google’s system for the management and development of the three most important factors of production going forward: information, connectivity, and computing power; or, the fastest growing part of the economy.

Surprise! Google-Android is as dominant as Google search in the EU and much more so in the U.S.

Not only does Google face substantial business risk from the EU concluding Google has abused its 90% search dominance by favoring Google Shopping over competitors in Google search results, but Google’s future business in mobile also faces substantial business risk from the EU likely concluding in its investigation of alleged Android abuses of dominance, that Google-Android has >90% mobile operating system (OS) market share because Apple iOS is not an Android competitor for antitrust purposes.

Google-Android faces much more antitrust risk than conventional wisdom appreciates because antitrust law and precedent can define relevant market boundaries very differently than consumer-oriented industry researchers, investment analysts, or the media do for their particular purposes, which can yield a surprisingly dominant market share in this particular antitrust case.

The latest example of Google’s well-established pattern of callous corporate irresponsibility and willful blindness is reporting by the Washington Post that: “If you search Google Maps for the N-word, it gives you the White House.”

Tellingly, Google’s corporate policy of crowd-sourcing without curation/corporate supervision of Google Maps systemically yields racist labels for innumerable places per Danny Sullivan’s analysis of the pervasive problem at MarketingLand.  

Apparently Google is preparing to play political hardball in opposing: the EU’s antitrust Statement of Objections against Google for abusing its 90% dominance of search by anti-competitively favoring Google Shopping over competitive shopping services; and its new antitrust investigation of Google’s Android operating system for anti-competitive tying and bundling of Google services.   

Consider the new ‘smoking gun’ evidence of Google’s “undue political influence” over the FTC, concerning the FTC’s abrupt and unusual closure of the FTC-Google antitrust investigation in January of 2013.

Most have missed entirely the broader significance of the EC-DGComp’s laser-focused Google Statement of Objections (that charge Google is dominant in search and is abusing that dominance in Google Shopping by self-dealing via preferencing Google content over competitors’ content) in the broader context of the EU’s new “platform neutrality” principle to advance a European Single Digital Market.

To date, Google is the only digital company that the EC-DGComp has found to be an abusively dominant “platform” warranting a non-discrimination remedy that Google cannot self-deal. A primary allegation driving the EC’s new antitrust investigation of the Google-Android platform is that Google self-deals by design in requiring Google Search and other Google apps to be offered to users by default on Android.

The significance of what DGComp and the EU do on Google-Android “platform neutrality” could turn out to be the single most important element long term for the European Single Digital Market.

Why?

Android is rapidly becoming Europe’s (and most of the world’s) single dominant digital operating system that increasingly will have the market power to dictate who wins and who loses throughout the markets for digital devices, the Internet of things, the connected home, the connected car, etc.

Google’s EU antitrust defense suffers from “Goobris,” a new word because “hubris” is not big enough to describe the behavior of a single company that denies it is dominant in Europe when it commands >90% share of search, >90% share of search advertising in part via Google Analytics 98% share of ad tracking of Europe’s websites,  and 5 of the top 6, billion-user, universal web platforms: search, video, mobile, maps, and browser.