November 2009

Kudos to Gordon Crovitz' WSJ column that highlighted the wisdom of Larry Downes, author of "The Laws of Disruption" who cut to the crux of the net neutrality debate in asking the simple pointed question: which is the bigger threat to the Internet -- the FCC or companies?  His answer: the FCC.

• Larry Downes: "U.S. consumers have plenty of reasons to be suspicious of both the FCC and the communications industry." His advice: "Consumers should ask themselves which of these powerful interests is more likely in the end to abuse its power. Who, in other words, has the greater potential to make things worse for everyone?"
• His answer seems sensible: "Absent any evidence of serious market failure yet, I'd much rather deal with the devil I know than a resurgent FCC."

After discussing whether Google should buy the New York Times, Google decided against it because it "would damage its 'neutral' identity", per Ken Auletta's just-published book "Googled: The End of The World as We know It." 

• Google has long claimed to be neutral. Their corporate philosophy statement claims: "We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust."  
• As the world-leading corporate proponent of an industrial policy to mandate net neutrality for all its potential broadband competitors in cloud computing, and as the beneficiary of "The Google Loophole" in the FCC's proposed open Internet regulations (para 104), it is fair to stress test whether Google's claim of a "neutral' identity is true or just cleverly-executed PR.

Is Google Neutral?

First, by the standards of Google's own co-founders, Google's search advertising model is not neutral.

In discussing Google's new "Privacy Dashboard," Fox Business' Neil Cavuto asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt about the ability to delete private information.

• Mr. Cavuto: "How do I know you are deleting it?
• Mr. Schmidt: "Because we say so."

Not being one to accept Google's legendary PR spin without a grain of skepticism, lets review the real significance of Google's new "Privacy Dashboard."

First, to be fair to Google, the privacy dashboard is indeed an incremental improvement over what Google users had before, because it aggregates what was in 21 different places before, into a single more convenient "dashboard." 

• However, Google overhyped the enhanced convenience and control of this single dashboard, because users still have to use the same 21 different steering wheels and brakes they had available before, in order to control Google's multi-directional invasion of their privacy.

Second, this "dashboard" was exceptionally easy for Google to produce. All it basically does is insert a new front-end web navigation page -- to more easily find other existing Google webpages -- much like any website home page offers navigation to pages behind it.

Google's acquisition of AdMob, "the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace," will receive serious antitrust scrutiny focused on whether the deal lessens competition by extending search advertising monopoly to mobile devices. 

• Expect the review process to be a magnet for a host of antitrust, competition, and privacy product/services concerns much like the proposed Google Book Settlement has been a magnet for antitrust, competition, and privacy content concerns. 

First, Google is misleading with its blanket statement: "We don't see any regulatory concerns with this deal."