Fraud

Google Fiber’s motto is “Think big with a gig,” as in gigabit fiber broadband speeds.

However, if one is open to considering non-Google data, there is substantial evidence that Google Fiber’s de facto motto may be more like “Think vig for the pig,” as in the non-transparent, corporate-welfare vigorish that Google Fiber takes to feed Google Inc.’s porcineappetite for 1) Local government subsidies and special government treatment; 2) immunity from state and local law enforcement; and 3) FCC price subsidies and use of consumers’ private-information without consent. 

Why is the world’s leading crusader for openness and transparency so closed and non-transparent?

Why does Google fiercely defend the public’s right to know virtually everything about everyone else, but does not believe the public has any right to know similar things about Google?

Why is Google passionate about discovery of the world’s information, but so fierce in fighting legitimate discovery of Google information?

Facts belie Google’s rote denials that it is dominant, and that favoring its own content over competitors is anti-competitive in the EU. As this post will prove below, the public facts are overwhelming that Google is dominant and self-dealing.

But first, look closely and witness that the entirety of Google’s antitrust defense is essentially political -- that the EU’s antitrust law and precedent shouldn’t be different or tougher than America’s. Specifically, Google essentially is arguing that the EU shouldn’t have a lower market share threshold to be legally considered dominant and the EU shouldn’t have presumption in law that if dominant, the dominant company has “a special responsibility not to allow its conduct to impair competition on the common market.”

That’s wishful whining; it is not a legal antitrust defense in Europe.

It is only fitting that Google faces a Danish prosecutor in EC VP Margrethe Vestager. That’s because Google currently is acting out the role of emperor in the most famous Danish fable by Hans Christian Anderson, the “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

The FTC’s politically messy closure of the FTC-Google antitrust investigation in 2013, chronicled in “Googlegate: the FTC Cover-up Evidence Piles Up,” is not the only major Federal investigation into Google’s business practices that Google’s political influence appears to have made go away in 2013.

The FTC’s Googlegate cover-up problem is that while the FTC may be telling the truth, they apparently are not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Don’t miss the brief summary below of the role political influence played in the politically messy closure of the FTC-Google antitrust investigation in 2013.

The evidence of FTC special treatment for Google, coupled with an apparent FTC cover-up of the political influence that may have defanged the FTC’s investigative process, is particularly relevant to: the European Commission’s current antitrust investigation of Google’s abuses of its <90% dominance in Europe; reported U.S. Senate oversight interest in the FTC’s closure of the Google investigation; and Mississippi AG Jim Hood’s State-led antitrust and consumer protection investigation of Google.

Public evidence concerning the amount of special access Google has to the highest reaches of the U.S. Government creates at least the appearance that the U.S. Government’s business may not be “conducted with impartiality and integrity” as required under Federal ethics rules.

Previously unknown facts about the FTC staff’s 2011 Google search bias investigation have the makings of a potential scandal and cover-up with broad repercussions for Google with the European Commission, other countries, the FTC, State AGs and Congress.   

The WSJ gained inadvertent access to the FTC’s 2011 staff report about its investigation of Google’s search practices. FTC staff concluded: Google abused its monopoly power in search and search advertising; harmed Internet users and competitors; and manipulated its search results by favoring its own content over competitors’ content.

I.   Summary

Expect the FCC’s new Open Internet Order’s assertion of Title II authority ultimately to be rejected in court (90%), because of its core illegal confiscatory purpose and its serial ends-justify-the-means trampling of due process. 

The FCC’s Title II legal defense is a “modern” day version of “the Emperor has no clothes” fable, where the vain FCC confidently parades in public clothed in the legal fabric that utopian legal alchemists have convinced the FCC is invisible only to those who are “hopelessly stupid” or “unfit for their positions.” Sadly, this emperor (the FCC) has no clothes (sustainable legal case).

As EC law enforcement confronts Google’s uniquely extensive wrongdoing in competition, privacy/security, property, and tax matters, it is critical to examine if Google’s longstanding public promises to consumers to gain their trust are in fact true and trustworthy.

Central to law enforcement’s role in determining the extent of its Google charges, penalties and remedies is determining whether or not the infractions were willful or unintentional.

Dear European Commission Official,

History teaches that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Specifically, as the new European Commission takes charge of the mess that is the Google competition case, it is important to learn from, and not repeat, Mr. Almunia’s many big Google mistakes.  

Summary of Almunia-Google Mistakes