Fraud

In responding to the growing uproar of hypocrisy over comments made during Google's investor call by Google's CFO that "...everybody that uses Chrome gives us a guaranteed locked-in user" for Google," Brandi Sparkles, Google's renowned crisis PR expert, held a press conference today for just Google-friendly media.

• Brandi Sparkles was joined on the Mountain View dais by Google's Official Keeper of the Google Narrative, Mr. Stori Spinner, and Director of Google's "That Was Not Us" Office, Ms. Anne Teetrust-Violet.

Brandi Sparkles read the following statement to friendly reporters and did not take any questions, in keeping with Google CEO Larry Page's new approach to the media.

"All discussion of Chrome and how it gives Google a "locked-in user," and that "the lifetime value of a Chrome user is phenomenal," that some claim occurred on last week's Google earnings call, was not authorized by me, so it simply did not happen.

We are in the process of innovatively "tweaking" our search algorithm so you will not find any evidence to the contrary. Only the extensive remarks by new CEO Larry Page on the call should be considered official, and his comments should be more than enough information and transparency to put this issue permanently to rest.

Google's ignominious Federal rap sheet only grows longer.

• Friday the DOJ effectively charged Google with misrepresentation to the public.
  • Google represented that its cloud service for Government was certified under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) since last July, when in fact it was not FISMA-certified for the product that Google claimed it was.
• This latest Google misrepresentation revelation came in a DOJ filing to the Federal Court which is hearing Google's case against the Department of Interior of the U.S. Government:
  • "On December 16, 2010, counsel for the Government learned that, notwithstanding Google's representations to the public at large, its counsel, the GAO and this court... Google does not have FISMA certification for Google Apps for Government."

I.   What does this mean?

As reports swirl that the FTC and DOJ may be considering a formal antitrust investigation of Google, like the EU already launched in November 2010, Google continues its deceptive, one-dimensional, superficial, antitrust defense mantra that "competition is one click away," and that Google is only focused on users and innovation.

• It is telling that just last week the FTC charged Google with deceptive privacy practices, and Google tacitly admitted its public deceptiveness and misrepresentation in submitting to the FCC's consent order; so I am not alone here in charging that Google is deceptive and misrepresents itself to the public.

So how is Google's antitrust defense deceptive?

First, Google's stale four-year antitrust mantra that competition is but a click away and Google puts users first, is deceptive because Google knows full well that competition and antitrust involves much more than just users -- as they claim -- but an entire competitive ecosystem.

The proposed FTC-Google privacy settlement of EPIC's privacy complaint has many important, surprising, and far-reaching implications.

• (FYI: FTC Release, FTC Complaint, proposed Consent Order, Rosch concurrence, Google statement.)

I applaud the FTC for taking Google's privacy misrepresentations and deceptions so seriously and look forward to the FTC rigorously enforcing this landmark consent order.

Summary of Takeaways:

Three completely different entities, coming from three very different perspectives/motivations, are all making the same charge against Google: that Google forged their work and stole/misused their property in creating its world-leading Android mobile operating system.

Popular bipartisan interest in safeguarding consumers privacy in the U.S. and Europe confronts Google with a core strategic problem because Google's targeted advertising business model is no "privacy by design" and no "privacy by default."

• Google bet wrong and big in assuming that since technology made it so much easier to track and profile users for targeted advertising, users would just accept the new loss of privacy and users and governments would never enforce user demand for choice to protect their privacy.
• Google's all-in company bet on openness, transparency, and sharing, was also a strategic bet against robust privacy, security, and property protections.
• In choosing to brand itself as the penultimate "White Hat" player promoting "openness," Google has effectively designed its business, architecture, and brand to be the main "Black Hat" player on privacy.

Google's No Privacy By Design model is unique.

Brandy Sparkles, Google's roving PR crisis manager parachuted into London last night to snuff out any dissent or questions about Google's purchase of BeatThatQuote.com, a UK price comparison site Google is buying for a reported $37m.

• Google's Brandy Sparkles, known in Google circles as the "Red Adair" of corporate PR crisis management, was called in to snuff out coverage of an impertinent, "little" SEO Book blogpost:  "Google buys BeatThatQuote, A UK comparison site violating Google's rules."
• That post chronicles how Google bought a site that employs lots of the "low quality" "cheating" SEO tactics that Google ruled are unacceptable SEO practices just last month.

After sizing up the SEOBook's charge that Google was being hypocritical in not following its own rules, Brandy Sparkles released the following statement:

"We are the Goog. We make the rules for others on the Internet and we can change them any time we want. That's the way this world works. Life is not fair and Google does not try to be.

Media and antitrust scrutiny of Google's public representations -- that its search rankings are unbiased and objective -- will increase greatly for two reasons:

• First, Google's search dominance does make Google the Internet's content "kingmaker" and it does empower Google to de facto pick winners and losers on the Internet just by subjectively adjusting its ranking algorithm; and
• Second, the more people look into Google's search ranking algorithm, the more obvious it becomes that it is highly subjective, and not objective and unbiased as Google represents.

As the glare of public and investigative scrutiny focuses on Google's "black box" search ranking algorithm, its mystery and mystique fade away, because people come to understand that a search algorithm is just mass automation of the application of subjective variables/biases, subjective judgements of "quality" content and "quality links," subjective judgements of intent, and subjective human ratings of websites and content.

See a preview below of Google's likely official public apology for collecting kids' partial Social Security #s and other private information -- without the permission of their parents.

Per Google's Official Blog:

"We are deeply sorry, very very sorry, and even oh-so-sorry for collecting partial social security numbers, date and place of birth on kindergartners and grade schoolers participating in the Doodle-4-Google contest.

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: