EU

Dear European Commission Official,

Perversely the proposed EC-Google Settlement would restrict the next EC much more than it would restrict Google.

The special Google deal would handcuff EC President-Designate Juncker’s #1 priority “to create a digital single market for consumers and businesses” and “to break down national silos… in data protection… and in competition law.”

The deal would protect Google’s current de facto digital single market from significant new EC digital competition for five years, because the deal would require the EC to shut down its Google search investigation for a five-year period.

Google recently boughtDropcam for $555m, a company which makes inexpensive, easy-to-install, WiFi-video-streaming-cameras that connect to cloud-based networks for convenient monitoring, set-up and retrieval.

Please don’t miss this graphic -- here -- of how the Dropcam acquisition fits into Google’s plans for a new ubiquitous physical surveillance network that will complement and leverage its existing virtual surveillance network.

Please see Google’s new and updated Privacy Rap Sheet here.

Google’s uniquely awful privacy record makes it wish Google had its own “right to be forgotten.”

And Google clearly wants the EC to forget its digital and data dominance, and its many abuses of dominance of Europe’s digital and data economy, because Google knows a core enabler of its market dominance is Google’s willingness to disregard privacy and data protection laws for anti-competitive first-mover advantage.

Google knows data protection rules, and requirements of consumer consent are impediments to gaining dominance -- so it simply ignores them while publicly proclaiming to respect them. Google has learned that its willingness to do what other competitors will not is an unbeatable competition advantage in the marketplace.   

Google’s Privacy Rap Sheet

Who does Google think they are fooling?

What people don’t know about the recent class action lawsuit filed against Google AdSense’s alleged embezzlement of earned revenues from shutting down of AdSense accounts, is that this lawsuit does not depend on any of the evidence of the high-profile whistle-blower that originally brought lots of attention to this alleged AdSense embezzlement racket a few weeks ago.

Under California law, the class action only needs to show that Google wrongfully pocketed earned-revenues due to its partners under Google’s own contract terms. Let the discovery begin and let the facts determine the outcome.

Dear European Commission Official,

Would Interpol, or any EU prosecutor, ever recommend pursuing a lenient settlement with their overall #1 worst offender -- without extracting any punishment, restitution, admission of wrongdoing, or deterrent effect -- rather than prosecuting the worst offender to the full extent of the law?

Would any other prosecutor publicly threaten swift prosecution against a high-profile defendant repeatedly and then give the defendant three chances to settle over a period of several months when the defendant’s first two proposed remedies proved to be demonstrablydeceptive in market tests?  

Of course not! That would be antithetical to the fair, honest, and effective administration of justice.

Then why, after its own investigation found Google to be dominant, and to have abused its dominance in four distinct ways, is DGComp strongly advocating that Google be protected from prosecution for clear violations of EU competition law?

Dear European Commission Official,

The more the European Commission learns about the proposed EC-Google competition settlement, the less sense it makes, and the more scandalous it appears.  

Never has the European Commission been presented with such a controversial, perverse, and unreasonable competition settlement to approve. This is not how the EC’s law enforcement process is supposed to work.

Everyone knows that a worthy settlement is a true compromise, where most parties gain something they need, and on balance support it as a reasonable net gain from the status quo. It is telling that virtually no one but Google is supporting this settlement outcome publicly or coming to Google’s defense. That fact should scream that this proposed settlement is not what it is represented to be.  

Sadly, this particular process and settlement has devolved into an indefensible and perverse spectacle that has brought unwelcome attention and ridicule to a critical EC law enforcement process that must be beyond reproach.

The reason the European Commission has yet to disapprove a DGComp proposed settlement, is that the European Commission has never been presented with a toxic settlement that is so perversely: anti-consumer; un-European; worse than the status quo; pro-dominance; tolerant of dominance abuses; and ineffective in achieving its main priority – “quick resolution.”

Summary

A shocking new legal fact set recently came together in public as a result of a Gmail wiretapping case, Fread v. Google. Revelations of Google’s secret widespread wiretapping of hundreds of millions of people over the last three years, using a NSA-PRISM-like device called “Content One Box” could have Snowden-esque repercussions. 

The New Legal Fact Set:

Please don’t miss my latest Daily Caller op-ed: “Accelerating the De-Americanization of the Internet.”

It explains the broad implications for the Internet of:

• America handing over the master key of the Internet to ICANN; and
• the European Parliament updating privacy law for the first time since 1995 nearly unanimously. 

This is Part 5 of my “World Changing the Internet” research series.

World Changing the Internet.

Part 1: Seven Ways the World is Changing the Internet [1-11-12]

How come the company whose success depends entirely on the public being open, transparent and trusting towards Google, is so closed, secretive and distrusting toward the public?

How come the company with a mission to make the world’s information universally accessible, goes to such extraordinary lengths to cover up evidence in legal documents in public proceedings?

European media could learn an important lesson from their American media brethren about confronting Google’s extensive cover up of the evidence of their wrongdoing in legal proceedings.

In Europe, there was surprisingly little media pushback initially when Google and EC Vice President Joaquin Almunia first proclaimed a secret settlement of charges of Google’s abuse of its search dominance.